Ranking Every Street Fighter Character Part 1

When you’re finished here move on to part 2, part 3 and the finale.

Street Fighter’s characters are some of the most iconic in the world. You can find them on billboards, in murals decorating the sides of shops from San Francisco to Brazil, and as piñatas at your local grocery store. They’re often shallow caricatures of the cultures they represent, but that over-to-the-top characterization is part of why these characters have stuck around for so long; seeing your culture on a TV screen, no matter how careless the portrayal, can mean a lot when you don’t see it anywhere else.

In the spirit of global street fighting, we’ve decided to pit every Street Fighter character against each other for the prize of our affection. We’ve collected a panel of experts (two experts, to be exact) and ranked characters from every game in the series (and we do mean every game) from worst to best. Who is the best fighter of streets? Read on to find out.

Part 2

1 of 25 97. Khyber: Khyber, one of the four Bison Troopers in the Street Fighter: The Movie game, is undeniably the worst character in the series. Not only is he part of the one of the worst ideas in Street Fighter history, but he doesn't even get to wear one of the good colors as part of his unifrom—he gets yellow. Is yellow a bad color in general? No. Is it the color you should wear when you're trying to strike fear into the heart of Bison's enemies? Absolutely not. He also has the gall to copy some of Dhalsim's moves, and that's just not cool.

2 of 25 96. Arkane: One of the many Bison Troopers who only made an appearance in the arcade versions of the Street Fighter: The Movie tie-in game, Arkane is a little cookie-cutter. His trademark ability to stretch limbs and teleport is similar to Dhalsim, a character suspiciously absent from both the Street Fighter movie and the game. Like the other Bison Troopers, Arkane sits somewhere between a clone fighter and a not-so-subtle allusion to Mortal Kombat's infamous ninjas, but is altogether wholly replaceable.

3 of 25 95. F7: Wanna know how terrible the Bison Troopers are? They don't even get to have their own entry in the Street Fighter wiki—they're all under "Bison Troopers", a page so unimportant to Street Fighter history it's not even worth linking to. F7 gets an edge over the other two dimwits before him since he has moves from all the other Bison Troopers, so if you're gonna pick a Bison Trooper to unlock first (please don't), it may as well be this one.

4 of 25 94. Blade: The cyborg Blade is a marginal cut above the other Bison Troopers, if not simply because he has an identity and story instead of just being a palette swap. Though none of the plot of Street Fighter: The Movie is actually canonical, Blade is Guile's brother Gunloc in deep cover at Shadaloo as a cyborg. Many of his moves are copies of Guile's, including the signature Sonic Boom, but at least he has a goofy backstory to make up for lacking in character. Non-canonical goofiness is at least better than just being a carbon copy of the other three troopers.

5 of 25 93. Captain Sawada: Poor Captain Sawada. He's the original Nash, having served with Guile in the military in Street Fighter: The Movie one year before Street Fighter: Alpha came out. Since everyone wanted to forget everything to do with the movie, he only made one other appearance, in the American Street Fighter cartoon. And you have to feel bad for the actor who played him, Kenya Sawada; not only could the writers not bother giving his character an original name, they dubbed over most of his lines in the film.

6 of 25 92. Gill: A cult leader with Messianic aspirations, Gill is polarizing to say the least. An Adonis with a penchant for narcissism, most of Gill's character is a little one-note. Even his design was created to show off the graphical power of Street Fighter III through his dual-color body. Unlike his brother Urien, though, Gill became an afterthought and little more than a graphical test and a weird character. Looks like beauty is only skin-deep, even in Street Fighter.

7 of 25 91-90. Cycloid Beta/Cycloid Gamma: Cycloids Beta and Gamma are amalgams of other characters' moves in the "plus" version of Street Fighter EX, and there's really not much more to them. They renamed all their borrowed moves to add their own name to them (like "Beta Justice Fist"), which I don't think would fly in an American court of law. They were tepid characters at best, and realizing that the cast of the game was two characters less diverse than you expected was kind of a bummer.

8 of 25 89. Geki: An unplayable ninja who appeared in the first Street Fighter and none since, Geki is a reference not to a person, but an entire clan of ninja. This specific Geki only appears to fight Ken and Ryu in the original Street Fighter game, but he's notable for both an early appearance of ninja, and for introducing the claw weapon that would later be used by series mainstay Vega.

9 of 25 88. Rufus: I get what Capcom was going for when they designed Rufus, but it is just not a good idea. Exploiting the "awful American tourist" trope was funny about four years before Street Fighter IV came out, so by the time Rufus made his debut he already seemed like a dated concept. His kung fu shtick gets old after the first few fights you play with or as him, he's maybe the most annoying character in the main series, and the only thing he had going for him (a dive kick move) became less unique once Yun and Yang made it into Street Fighter IV. He's a joke at a culture's expense (like so many characters in this series), but he has even less subtlety than the cast of Street Fighter II. Think about that.

10 of 25 87. V. Rosso: For a guy named "Vulcano," you think that Rosso would be a bit more memorable. V. Rosso, however, falls prey to being another fighter in a series filled with better versions of what he does. Summoning lava is cool, but his look and attitude is a tired repeat of the "flamboyant fighter" archetype that was all-too-rampant in that era of fighting games.