I'm a detail man, you know this. I'm good at spotting patterns in comics, games, movies and pop culture. I try to share anything I find out with you. It starts usually as a quirk that I notice. Then being the obsessive compulsive that I am I do my homework, study the history of it and I try to deconstruct the way the games were put together, find gaps, praise design and look for ways to improve the title. Sorry if I come off as some sort of videogame snob for thinking I can improve anything from the outside. But that's my hobby and someday I'd like it to be my job. Today I'd like to ease you into the Street Fighter world the only way I know how. Pick a few of my favorite subjects and apply it to the game.

I've griped about fighting game character designs in the past. I've also done my fair share to catch people up to speed with an abridged history of Street Fighter. What I have to say today is a little more esoteric. I'm delving into the psychology of game design. How something as subtle as a color or animation can take us out of the illusion of playing. Make us not like a title or character as much as we should. How minute and subtle details are sometimes missed by the developers because they can't see the forest for the trees. I'll begin by deconstructing one of the new characters, Abel the grappler. To do this we have to understand how something like his design, choice of colors and trademark "Tornado Throw" can make or break him. 

Abel is a strong choice to be added to the lineup, more so than Crimson Viper because he captures a lot of the classic themes that made the original SF II cast memorable. The most important feature is that he looks like a fighter. His punching gloves and gi are a dead giveaway but look closer and you'll notice more details. His face is young but stern. His hair an odd cut, almost a mohawk, not modern and not classic. His body is covered in scars, almost gruesome the way they are all over his arms and even face. Are these scars from fights, warfare or something else? The designers know how to put in enough clues and yet not make things too obvious. They allow us to imagine a characters history before he or she was put in the game. So let's take his design apart and see if we can find room for improvement. 

Abel is colored in blue, a very strong primary color. With the exception of Dan, who wears pink, every character in Street Fighter has vivid primary colors associated with them. Blue takes on an additional meaning for Abel. He is the new strongman, the modern European fighter who, like Fedor Emelianeko seems to roll over his opponents. He was pinned with the blue color because is as the opposite of red. As you may know red is also associated with Zangief the wrestler. Zangief is the original powerhouse,overly strong in design with a similar crazy haircut. He's covered in grizzly scars, not grizzly as in gory but literal scars acquired while fighting bears. The scars on both characters symbolize the brutal techniques they practice, which are not meant to be refined and "pretty" like Chinese Kung-Fu. The two forms of fighting focus on raw strength, power and the ability to take a hit. If you remember blue was also the color given to Rainbow Mika, a female wrestler and sort of Sakura to Zangief. It works well on Abel because his MMA style balances out the wrestling. 

The Street Fighter IV team could have worked harder to make the design of Abel fit better in context. The choice of blue was a good first step but putting it on a gi diffuses it. Originally a solid blue, the latest renders of Abel have stripes in the colors of the French flag on his shoulder, breaking up the color. Combining his gi with a black belt and punching gloves makes his upper torso too similar to Ken and Ryu; the "karate" guys. The design of his lower half is also odd, white shorts paired with oversized shin guards look poorly matched. Abel is supposed to represent the MMA dynamo, the new generation of fighter. His design is inconsistent with the best MMA guys who usually only wear shorts and gloves. They go without a top or shin guards for most of their matches. The gi's of Ken and Ryu represent the classic fighter, but are also archaic in the modern fighting scene. Very few MMA guys battle with traditional garb. Alex from Street Fighter III was the first new-gen MMA guy, his original image clearly demonstrates that. But his in-ring garb was replaced by a pair of overalls for the actual game. This minor change of clothes (not his primary color which remained green) sent mixed messages to players. By just being some strong guy in overalls players didn't know that he had an actual fighting background. The lack of some visual clue to his training diffused his style and purpose within the context of the game.

Abel can be seen as a second chance to get the MMA guy right, the second coming of Alex perhaps. So far Capcom is slightly off the look that gels with his purpose. The stripes on his gi are a national identifier and previous to him only Guile openly (or arrogantly depending on who you ask) showed off his national colors in the game. The solid color top works better without the red and white stripes which draw our eyes away from his face. In fact he works better without the gi altogether. His body is laced in scars, similar to Zangief, giving him an irregular quality, a memorable trait. Alex himself also had unique scars, under his eyes and shoulders. As we learned in my Ryu: Final dissection, the scars that many SF characters, like Sagat, carry are not only physical but psychological and symbolic scars as well. A good design incorporates the scar for a deeper reaction other than a visceral "it looks cool." It would be ideal to see more of Abel's scars, maybe he doesn't have to go shirtless like Zangief or Alex but his scars are part of his identity.

Even if a player is not interested in Abel or MMA characters in SF, in the back of their mind they know he fits. They may not realize it right away but they know he fits because part of the timeless design that goes into Street Fighter is deeper than a costume. The visual quirk is what sets them apart from every other fighter. Allow me to digress and connect this point with past Street Fighter designs. As I was mentioning to Adriel in the podcasts, I am a fan of lucha libre. I come from a family that loves old school wrestling. My brothers and I know our fighting arts, we even practiced a few, so when we play games or watch movies we can see the influence, spot the shenanigans, admire the choreography and so forth. By watching and listening to my family I know that many eyes see more detail than one pair ever could.

I believe that in order to design better SF characters everyone in the team has to learn as much as they can about the fighting arts, be they scripted or real. Wrestling for example has several styles, there is traditional Greco-Roman wrestling and it's modern freestyle counterpart. The there are also the pro wrestling formats that are popular on TV and in the independent circuits. A person working on SF should know the subtleties between lucha libre in Mexico, pro wrestling in the USA and puroresu in Japan. They aren't all the same thing yet share many elements in common. Not only should the people working on SF know the styles and history but also the various mechanics associated with simple strikes and stances. From boxing to krav maga, a programmer should be as well versed in how to throw a punch as much as an animator. I know it sounds like overkill but these are things that we as gamers take for granted but developers should know something about. Looking at the progress of fighting games over the past 20 years I've noticed that more and more of the characters and their moves are left up to pure imagination rather than research. I feel it has weakened the genre. 

To further digress... when Hideo Kojima starts on an Metal Gear Solid project his team goes on field trips and even has military-style exercises in their own offices to hone their strategies. He gives new members of the team a chance to opt-out of the training because once they are finished with it they never view the world the same way again. This attention to detail and complete immersion in military strategies, weapons and techniques helps make every generation of MGS better than the last. The more trained eyes on the project the more likely they are to catch and fix details during the development process. I don't expect Capcom to set up a wrestling ring at their HQ but perhaps they could send their team to watch wrestling matches, see actual boxing matches and watch MMA fighters train (if they don't already). It would give them a firm appreciation for the fighting arts and help balance the fantasy element in SF with the real. Wait, fantasy element, what am I talking about? Now we take things back towards SF IV...

When someone mentions a Mexican character being added to Street Fighter what immediately comes to mind? That's right, the luchador! 

Like my friend Adriel brought up in a podcast, why is that people in general think that lucha libre is the only form of fighting the Mexicans can contribute to the genre? I applaud the legacy of wrestling characters by Capcom but I am also saddened that this was the first place that they looked when adding another new character to the series. Part of the early charm of SF was in the character designs. They weren't strictly based on legendary fighters like Mas Oyama or Fedor but it didn't hurt if the influence was there as well. They also weren't caricatures of a certain forms of martial arts like Virtua Fighter. Street Fighter worked because there was some level of fantasy mixed in with very simple, cleanly designed characters. Fantasy in the ways that we could see their chi become fireballs and dragon punches but also fantasy in the way they looked. SF II character design was simple but set a standard that could not be topped. The purists would take it a step further and say that the icons themselves haven't changed since the advent of Karate Champ almost 25 years ago. There is certainly some truth to that perception. As the "red and white" karate guys have been battling for a long while.

One of the concept characters for SF II was the Masked Man, a wrestler that looked like Tiger Mask. They decided not to pursue that character when the roster was finalized. A couple of years later when the team was working on characters for SF III they sketched out a few concepts that stuck. Their new big guy, the new Zangief would be a Mexican. Rather than make him a luchador as 99% of the other designers out there would, and Capcom just a few years prior would have; they instead made him absolutely unique. T. Hawk was a member of the Thunder Foot band of natives that live in Mexico. He featured a great look that was not as racist as some people make out to be. He wasn't wearing a beaded vest, swinging a tomahawk and whooping it up with a headdress, like Killer Instinct's Chief Thunder. Instead T. Hawk sported a simple denim vest with some pants and boots, clean and to the point. It was his massive size that helped make him memorable. He fits in perfectly with SF because we can tell many things about him just by looking at his design.

The closest anyone else came to making a character as memorable would be in another contemporary fighter, Garou Mark of the Wolves. Tizoc the wrestler falls into the traps that developers following in the footsteps of SF II are want to do. Namely they made the Mexican a luchador. Although his costume was a great gimmick he was just another luchador. T. Hawk was Tizoc without the mask and more graceful moves. The best developers can get a character and game in the same vein but not quite replicate the SF formula 100%. T. Hawk and Tizoc are worth mentioning because they represent a great attempt at creating a memorable fighter that looks simple and realistic yet whose design has enough fantasy behind it to sell it to the audience. Now we return back to Abel and draw several comparisons between him and T. Hawk. 

Abel has a good appearance that requires some tweaks to make him a better visual fit in SF IV. Abel's costume should reflect some of his MMA background but his true hook lies within his scars. As a red headband sets off Ryu or giant metal bracelets capture the image of Chun-Li, so too should scars identify the player with Abel. Grossly scarred characters, like Kaoru Hanayama come up again and again in a contemporary fighting story Baki the Grappler. The series in both manga and anime shows that while there are some awesome fighters out there, the fights and fighters themselves can be very ugly. Kaoru is memorable for his fighting ability but more so for the patchwork of scars covering his body. In this way a tortured MMA character that brings in elements of real fighters and even a popular manga would fit better in Street Fighter context than just some strong guy in a blue gi and some oversized shin guards. Here is where the SF team has an uphill battle. Almost every possible character "look" has already been used. The best any developer can do is come up with a hybrid borrowing elements from other games, comics, manga or anime and put their own spin on it. As I stated a few paragraphs before the templates for Ken and Ryu could have come from Player 1 and Player 2 in Karate Champ. If I were to suggest what Abel should have looked then you could figure out where I drew the influences from. Look at the image out below as to what I'd say Abel should have looked like. Better, worse or the same from what has already been revealed? You tell me.

Now let's tackle the other element that is either hit or miss, I literally mean the moves. Street Fighter did not always focus on characters that could shoot fireballs. The original SF II cast was balanced in such a way as that those without projectile moves had an almost even chance against those that did. To do this some characters had strikes or grabs that hit before Ken, Ryu or Guile's fireball/sonic booms. Others had ways of dodging attacks entirely. Abel has some unique trapping and strike moves that fit with the archetypes Zangief and E. Honda. Those are characters that do well for some tournament players and undoubtedly Abel is going to be a quick study as well. He does seem to have a move that sticks out, seems odd even among the world of fireballs and dragon punches. To make my case I have to return to T. Hawk. As a character that towered over Sagat and Zangief you'd expect T. Hawk to be all power moves and no finesse. Instead the SF II team invented a fictional native martial art that looked like a combination of the eagle dance with open palm kung-fu. Even though he was massive, T. Hawk had a graceful, almost weightless way about him. His contemporaries Cammy, Dee Jay and Fei Long were also in the planning stages for SF III when they were instead added to a SF II update. Those four characters still had room to grow or possibly end up being cut altogether. Cammy and T. Hawk were furthest along in development and it shows. Their look and move selection worked well in the game whereas Dee Jay had too generic a design with zero range on his machine gun punch. Not to mention that Fei Long was a carbon copy of Bruce Lee rather than be more "inspired by" the dragon. The Mexican Typhoon, a power move assigned to T. Hawk was unbalanced and appeared far too simple for him to do. Even though he was the largest SF character to date it was absurd that he could effortlessly swing a 400 pound character around with one hand. Many players called shenanigans on it.

Here is where another piece of psychology comes into play. The willing suspension of disbelief is what allows us to enjoy a book, movie or videogame. It is what allows us to put ourselves in a giant robot on another planet, or as a soldier in Van'a'diel or as a professional basketball player in the playoffs. At least for a moment anyhow. Directors are careful to keep the illusion going as best they can with the music they choose, voice actors they hire, colors, lighting, animation and every other piece that goes into making the game. Even if the director is careful they might still inadvertently let something slip through. When we notice that something it breaks that illusion, the suspension of disbelief. For Street Fighter it is paramount not to break the illusion because the game is so straightforward. A fighting game is a glorified version of paper, rock and scissors. There are many avenues to approach it but infinitely more ways to mess it up, or break the illusion. In SF players routinely suspend their disbelief because the ground rules have been set as to what the characters can and can't do. We believe an Indian mystic can easily stretch his limbs, breathe fire and teleport or that a Brazilian wild man can be green-skinned and spark with electricity because they represent undiscovered or mystical fighters and fighting arts. We get taken out of the illusion when we see a character do something out of place. The Mexican Typhoon is one such move. Abel has a similar odd move, many of you on 1UP mentioned it when his first footage was revealed. You can see the questionable Tornado Throw about 2:10 into this video. 

So what is it about this move that throws us off? Why are we willing to believe in fireballs and other such things but not in ragdoll opponents? For this I compare the physics of SF to the physics featured in animation, specifically cartoons. Cartoons make the impossible seem possible. An object can appear to have it's own weight and volume even if it is only a 2-dimensional frame. The theory of animation holds this to be true; if animated properly a cartoon can make us believe in so-called cartoon physics. John K. explains to us what makes a cartoon. His mentor Eddie Fitzgerald not only knows art and animation but is also knowledgeable on the entire culture and history of film and theory as well. I learned by reading and listening to the masters of cartooning and observed how the artist can trick our mind. If you apply their lessons to SF you would find out how the Mexican Typhoon or the Tornado Throw breaks the illusion. 

The short answer is that it is too easy for Abel or T. Hawk to swing an opponent through the air. By comparison Darun Mister's Brahma Bomb, Hugo'sMoonsault Press and Zangief's spinning piledriver are more believable attacks because the characters appear to carry mass and weight behind their actions. Regardless of how big and strong they are drawn our mind tells us that it is impossible for them to swing a character at arms length easily. But SF is a game filled with fantastic moves, the big characters that don't have flashy fireballs need something equally impressive. Designers have to create a "catch all" power move that lookes great whether it is being used against someone as small as Sakura or as large as E. Honda. The power moves that looked best did so by keeping their opponents in close contact. Even if the character jumped into the air while performing the move our mind told us that they were strong enough to hold onto their opponent as long as they rotated along with them. Zangief, Hugo and Darun all have great moves because they rotate and flip along with their victim. On the opposite end of the spectrum T. Hawk and Abel's power move allows them to remain stiff while they hurtle their opponent weightlessly through the air.

So I've had the audacity to suggest changing Abel's appearance, how would I fix his signature move, or T. Hawk's for that matter? Every slam or throw for smaller characters has relied on the weight and mass of one character used against the other. These are the principles of judo throws. The larger the character the more they can get away with. One way of giving Abel or any big guy an awesome move without bogging it down with "realism" would be by learning from classic SF characters and even contemporary characters from other titles.

T. Hawk's Mexican Typhoon could have worked if he did a front flip while slamming his opponent's head into the ground. Or Capcom could have tried something even more outlandish, like an actual move inspired by nature. T. Hawk's moves were already based on the birds of prey. Did you know that the bald eagle has a particularly brutal way of fighting off competitors? In the middle of an aerial battle with another eagle they have been known to lock talons and hurtle themselves toward the ground, check out the death spin about a minute into this video. These were similar to the over-the-top moves featured in Capcom's wrestling game Super Muscle Bomber. T. Hawk could have jumped in the air and ridden his opponent into a death spin as well. It would have fit in context and not have looked out of place as his Typhoon did. 

As for Abel I wouldn't suggest the same sort of jumping, flipping destruction for his opponent. His moves, like his MMA origin are more ground-based. To see what looks good in 3D, something that could help design a power move for Abel we should study the competition. In a contemporary fighter Wolf Hawkfield's giant swing looks great, with enough balance between realism and fantasy. Plus it's a move that can also dominate opponents in the arcade. If you're not in the know a real world Giant Swing is possible too. In pro wrestling there are a few moves as impressive as Brock Lesnar's F5. If a performer can lift, spin and flip an opponent that weighs almost 500 pounds in real life then it wouldn't be much of a stretch to see Abel spin like a top with someone as massive as Zangief on his shoulders. In this way an MMA fighter with a background in amateur and pro wrestling is the perfect template for Abel. The Tornado Throw can be fixed if he didn't hold his opponent at arms length but instead put his them on his shoulders and spun with them until crashing them into the ground. This is how I'd fix his trademark move and prepare Abel for his big debut. What do you think about that?