Yang Lee

''Street Fighter III'' is a Capcom developed fighting game series and part of their '' Street Fighter'' franchise. Intended as the follow up to '' Street Fighter II'' and its subsequent re-releases, the series began with the arcade release of '' Street Fighter III: New Generation'' in 1997. The games featured a whole new cast, with the only returning members being Ryu and Ken, two characters introduced in the first '' Street Fighter'' video game. Subsequent sequels would add additional characters, with the third game, named '' Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike'' also seeing the return of Chun-Li from ''Street Fighter II''.

Conception and design

Production at Capcom on the first game in the series started in 1994, and was initially planned to be a separate fighting game franchise entirely. ''Street Fighter II'' series producer Noritaka Funamizu felt fatigued with the '' Street Fighter'' franchise due to dwindling sales on home consoles, and the emerging 3D fighting game market thanks to titles such as '' Virtua Fighter''. Capcom however insisted to stick with 2D sprites for their games, and to this end started development on the CPS-3 arcade hardware to support higher color counts for said sprites. When executives at the company pushed for a follow-up to ''II'', Funamizu instead wanted to try and make a new game entirely. At this point, producer Tomoshi Sadamoto at the company had started work on a game titled ''New Generation''. Capcom character designer Akira Yasuda felt that the game's roster lacked personality. Additionally he asserted the company was likely going to make the game into a ''Street Fighter'' title, and suggested pre-emptively to add that franchise's protagonist Ryu to the game's roster. He proved correct, as the game was re-christened ''Street Fighter III: New Generation.

Though several other characters were also initially considered for inclusion from the ''Street Fighter II'' roster, particularly Ken and Chun-Li, the development team instead chose to focus on a mostly original cast. This proved some difficulty however for Sadamoto as he felt most of the designs were not as well established as those in ''II'', and had particular difficulty in creating female character designs. Yasuda however suggested to make the first female character a ninja, stating "Ninjas are cool!" While this led to the creation of Ibuki, another idea suggested was to introduce a character that was "Yuki in Africa" based off model Yuki Uchida. Yasuda designed the character, leading to the creation of Elena, which helped solidify the development team's vision for the rest of the game's roster. As development progressed Ken, Ryu's counterpart character from the series, was later also added to the roster. Meanwhile when choosing a protagonist, they selected an American character, Alex, as they felt martial arts were more popular at the time in America and wanted to target that audience.

The finalized cast however still proved difficult to create. Yasuda continued to work on the character designs, attempting to stay within Sadamoto's design constraints unlike previous games where he made the design choices more directly. In an interview with gaming website '' Polygon'', when asked if in retrospect the game would have done better if it had not been a ''Street Fighter'' title, Yasuda stated while he liked some of the characters, "if I had to change the past, I'd rather just not have worked on that game at all". Meanwhile, Capcom's North American branch's design support for the title, Chris Tang, expressed shock at seeing the new character designs once they were revealed, with the character Oro in particular causing him to question if Yasuda had left Capcom. Other issues arose from a lack of software support to develop for the CPS-3 hardware, and the amount of detail the higher resolutions demanded of the designs. Character balance also proved an issue, as unlike other Capcom fighting games each developer was in charge of fine tuning their own character's gameplay, resulting in some feeling more suitable for ''Street Fighter''s gameplay, while others felt more in line with Capcom's '' Darkstalkers'' fighting game franchise. The long development meanwhile caused one planned character, Hugo, to be delayed until the game's follow up title, ''Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact'', alongside other new character and returning character Akuma.

Introduced in ''New Generation''

Alex

is a wrestler from New York who seeks to fight Gill to avenge his mentor Tom.

Alex was created early in development to be the series' protagonist, and was designed by Akira Yasuda. Early versions of his character established him as a police officer that used to be a professional wrestler, influenced by how popular the World Wrestling Federation (later renamed WWE) was at the time. They wanted a character that stood apart from Ryu, and was intended to be a simple protagonist so the supporting cast could be "flashy", with Sadamoto comparing it to how manga ''Saint Seiya'' approached its cast.

Dudley

A gentleman British boxer who seeks to recover his late father's antique Jaguar convertible from Gill.

Elena

An African princess from Kenya who uses the fighting style of capoeira. She seeks to make new friends. All of her attacks use her legs or feet, even the punch button attacks and throws.

Gill

The leader of a secret organization which seeks to turn the Earth into a utopia. He can manipulate fire and ice.

Ibuki

An aspiring female ninja who is sent to retrieve a document from Gill's organization.

Necro

is the codename of Illia, a young Russian man who was mutated by Gill and now acts as an elastic living bioweapon. He later escapes with the help of his girlfriend Effie, and the two go on the run from Gill and his soldiers. Necro was designed by Yasuda, who made a model out of paper clay for the sprite artist to reference.

Ken Masters

As the current U.S. martial arts champion, Ken seeks to test his strength against his old friend and rival Ryu, once again. When developing the game Ken's character development progressed directly to the sprite design phase, as they were able to use Ryu as a template. The development team found his design easily to build around, but with ''3rd Strike'' they focused on improving the character's gameplay and adding more leg-based techniques to help subtly differentiate him further from Ryu.

Oro

A seclusive hermit who seeks a fighter worthy to inherit his fighting style.

Ryu

A returning character from the first two ''Street Fighter'' games, Ryu seeks to better his skills and find worthy opponents. Ryu's design required few early design sketches because of how recognizable the character had become within the company. In particular they wanted to emphasize his white headbang, in contrast to the red headband that was exclusive to the '' Street Fighter Alpha'' series of games that had released during ''New Generation''s development.

Sean Matsuda

A young Japanese-Brazilian fighter who becomes Ken's self-appointed apprentice.

Yun and Yang Lee

: (Yun)
: (Yang)
The Lee Brothers, and were separated from their birth parents when they were young. They were raised by an adoptive grandfather who runs a restaurant in Hong Kong and have eight underground bosses as godfathers. By the time of '' Street Fighter III'', the two brothers are the leaders of their local town. Yun, the elder of the two, is described as being more responsible, while his younger brother Yang is calmer and more analytical.

The Lee brothers were intended to be "popular from the start", and "flashier" than series protagonist Alex. In particular their designs were built around the parry system, a new gameplay element unique to ''Street Fighter III'', and they were given kung fu as a martial art to highlight this aspect. In addition to giving them the most consideration during development, they also wanted to emphasize the pair's boyish youth. Of the cast they had the smoothest development, going from concept to completion with little revision in between.

Introduced in ''2nd Impact''

Akuma

Hugo

:
is a member of the Andore family, recurring enemies in the '' Final Fight'' series whose designs are based off real life professional wrestler Andre the Giant. A German man of massive height, he acts as a professional wrestler himself. Managed by fellow ''Final Fight'' character Poison, they seek to develop their own wrestling promotion by forcibly recruiting other fighters. Outside of ''Street Fighter III'', Hugo returns alongside Poison for ''Ultra Street Fighter IV'', ''SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos'', and ''Street Fighter x Tekken''.

The Andore family was created for the 1989 beat 'em up '' Final Fight'', designed by Yasuda. They were inspired by Yasuda's love of large wrestlers such as Stan Hansen and Andre the Giant, with the appearance of the Andores and by extension Hugo based directly off the latter. In an interview, Yasuda stated he enjoyed such characters for the idea of being able to control them, but also being able to defeat them from a distance.

Urien

:
is the younger brother of Gill, and was initially raised to be the leader of the Illuminati. However, after it became apparent Urien was mentally unstable, the position went to Gill. Despite now being the second in command, Urien harbors a deep resentment for his brother. Outside of ''Street Fighter III'', Urien has also appeared in '' Capcom Fighting Evolution'' and ''Street Fighter V''.

Introduced in ''3rd Strike''

Chun-Li

is returning character from ''Street Fighter II''. Despite being retired from competitive fighting for some time, she takes it up again to help find a missing child.

When working on Chun-Li for ''3rd Strike'', the development team ran into a problem as they needed input from Yasuda, who had originally designed the character. However, he was unreachable as he was currently working on character designs for the '' Gundam'' franchise in Tokyo, Japan. They instead traveled to him, and with his help were able to finalize her design for the game.

Makoto

is a young Japanese woman described as a tomboy. A black belt in karate, she seeks to bring fame back to her family's dojo after it fell into disrepair. Makoto was a character originally intended for inclusion in ''2nd Impact'', however they were unable to complete her character in time for that game's release.

Q

is a mysterious individual in a trenchcoat and fedora, whose face is concealed by an expressionless metal mask locked with a key. When developing his character they wanted him to be robotic and feel "like it's being manipulated from behind the scenes". Character designer Hiroshi Shibaki was initially unsure how to approach the character, and worked worked with others on the development team to figure out his details. Q was purposefully made as a mysterious character with no intended answers as to who he actually was.

Remy

is a young turquoise-haired man from France who seeks revenge on his father for abandoning him to pursue martial arts. Driven insane by the death of his sister, he extends that rage towards all martial artists. Remy was created as a "beautiful man" archtype, something the development team felt Capcom was not particularly known for. Remy was added late in development, the team was happy his character was able to be completed.

Twelve

is a humanoid creature with a solid white body, and has a rounded head that features black eyes and a thin mouth. Physically a prototype of the body intended for Necro, Twelve is a shapeshifter that can transform parts of his body into various weapons or fully mimic other fighters.

When developing Twelve, they aimed for a design that was "deliberately weird and atypical", revolving around a concept of breaking rules they had established for the series.

Critical reception

The introduction of ''Street Fighter III''s cast proved controversial at the time, particularly among the players of the franchise. Matt Edwards of '' Eurogamer'' described the series' first game as "a mixture of baffling design choices" particularly in how it handled the characters, noting that many of the characters felt too similar to previous characters introduced in ''Street Fighter II'', with Yun, Ibuki and Alex being particular standouts in his eyes. Sam Stone of ''Comic Book Resources'' meanwhile suggested by being released after the '' Street Fighter Alpha'' series of games, which featured characters more recognizable to the fandom, Capcom was essentially competing with itself, which helped to severely hamper ''New Generations'' sales to the point they were one-fifth of those of the much older ''Street Fighter II''s and caused the franchise to remain untouched until the 2008 release of '' Street Fighter IV''.

Not all reception was negative however. Edwards emphasized by comparison with the release of ''3rd Strike'' the characters felt more refined, even if the introduction of Remy felt too similar to previous character Guile. '' Paste''s Elijah Gonzalez attributed some of the series' cult favorite status to how the cast was made up of "oddball characters ..each with a distinct look that catches the eye" that was emphasized by how well the game's pixel art expressed their personalities.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Characters In The Street Fighter III Series
Street Fighter characters
Street Fighter