#street fighter origins: sagat

[tekkenenjoyerblue]

So the Street Fighter Origins: Sagat comic is VERY good, getting to see Bison in a tanktop though?

[kumad0rii]

Some old Sagat art

This art was piece that won some crazy competition, the main theme of the artwork was “the character and their pet” and I instantly thought about him with his amazing tiger (I hate how his right arm looks but art overall looks kinda good so yea)

[jadesnapart]

I hosted an art giveaway on my twitter account the other month and these were the final pieces for the winners!!!

Sagat in his SFV attire and an original character from a TTRPG campaign! thank you to everyone that participated in the raffle.

I might have to pivot elsewhere soon, so maybe there will be more raffles on the horizon sooner rather than later! (maybe even here?!?!)

[kickbutt-avenue]

[spicymancer]

You said that Beck's dad was like the villain of the previous story. do you have any lore about him you can or want to share like what type of villain he was? as well who else on the roster would have been a returning character and was it one of them the took him down?

I haven't explored him too much since he's such a background element but I picture him as an M. Bison / Sagat style big bad. Juggernaut playstyle like Ganondorf Smash Bros or Marisa SF6

Since the fighting game story centers around most of the cast banging each other I didn't really feel like it was a great idea to put her dad into the cast.

In the fictional "fighting game" history the only returning character's from the "previous game" at the moment are Helen and Vincent. With some references to predecessors like Sister Leona's mentor and the original owner of Gibson's body. Rumble After Dark is meant to evoke a Street Fighter: Third Strike where an existing franchise suddenly gets a mostly new generation cast.

I have a bucket of loose lore tidbits about the setting and cast though I like to leave it mostly evocative rather than go into detail about every tiny thing. I tend to think implicit vibes and snippets of flavor text style worldbuilding is more evocative than the somewhat tedious "wiki" style lore bookkeeping that happens in some of the more hardcore fandoms.

[maxwell-grant]

you've talked about Vega and Bison, any thoughts on Balrog?

I think I got the wrong impression across when I called Balrog a punchable goon in my Vega post, because when I call Balrog a goon, that's not me saying I think he's just a dumb grunt, more so that this is what he represents within the Four Kings. Within them, he is The Henchman, the muscle of Shadaloo, Bison's strong arm. Shadaloo is a crime syndicate with thugs and enforcers to throw around and Balrog is one of them, and where sheer individual brute strength is concerned, Balrog sits atop the food chain. He is not just a goon, he is the king of goons, here to remind you that fireballs or fancy spin kicks won't save you, the guy who can and will smash the greatest fighters in the world with a strategy called punching them real hard till they fall.

Before you can face the greatest villain in the world with powers beyond comprehension, before you can face the former Final Boss and greatest fighter in the world, and before you can fight for your life against the assassin who awaits at the top of the world, there is a brick wall of power and violence for you to crash against, The Strongest Fist in The World, and he's here to break everything, the rules and your face alike. Within the Four Kings, he is the first you fight, and he was originally described as the weakest among them, a trait that has been de-emphasized as him and Vega stand on equal ground nowadays, but that idea in itself was important to what separated Balrog from the other 3.

The Four Kings operated on a degree above all the other fighters, led by the supervillain dictator and comprising the former unbeatable king, the untouchable aristocrat, and Balrog, the disgraced champion. Unlike the other 3, Balrog had not transcended society or the fighting circuit entirely, in fact he had already fallen from the top of both, and had risen again by selling out to the dark criminal underbelly spreading through the world. Meeting Balrog establishes that crime has seized control over the ring, and has enabled vicious and dishonorable fighters to prosper, this before you meet Sagat and see how even the greatest among existing fighters can be corrupted by it. Worse, it means Shadaloo is seizing control of the warriors to be, with the young boxing champion already among the ranks of it's top enforcers. It's very easy to overlook that Balrog used to be the youngest of the World Warriors, as well as the backstory that led him where he is.

Born as the youngest child in a poor family, he spent his childhood fighting in the slums. He became a boxer, attracted by the prospect of getting rich quick, but he didn't know how to hold back and often pushed his opponents beyond recovery

He was born and raised in the slums, influenced to fight hard so he could leave. Since he was poor, he needed to devote himself to the fight, although he did not join forces with other gangsters to commit crimes. He did not serve anyone, and does not make anyone his minion. The only thing he can truly trust is his own fists. That was the lesson Balrog learned from living through hell. The most efficient way to make money with your fists was from boxing prize money. - Street Fighter 2 Complete File

He started taking chances in petty street fights, using only his two fists as his weapons he rises to become the worlds best. He’s just a guy going for the American Dream. His brute force style boxing is actually quite advantageous, but he squanders his winnings on gambling, booze, and women. But as long as he’s in Las Vegas, he stays playing the hero. - SF2 Las Vegas stage description

I think over the years a lot of what defined Balrog is the fact that he sits at the low end of the totem pole of the Four Kings and the fact that he kinda demands to be written more "realistically" than the others. He's not a guy who shoots fireballs or does fancy kicks, he is just a really strong boxer. He is not a serial villain out to rule the world, he is not a vengeful titan toiling in solitude, he is not a maniacal rich man with a double life, and he is no scheming mad scientist, he is just a really strong boxer who wants more than what he has. All he wants is to get paid, but he doesn't know how to spend his money. He is a piece of shit, too much so to even be an anti-hero, but by design he is a lesser piece of shit than the other guys. And up until Ed's debut, he didn't have a lot of other options other than to just be Shadaloo's main muscle / henchman. He can't just be a regular character, he is one of the Four Kings, he has boss status around him, but he isn't going to redeem himself into a cold but benign rival / central figure of operatic character drama the way Sagat did, and he can't be the irredeemable murderous creep Vega is, and he's obviously never going to be like M.Bison.

In fact, Balrog is so not like Bison that they've made a point several times of showing that, if Balrog ever takes over Shadaloo, he's near immediately driving it into the ground gambling it all on girls and booze. And as much as this beat is played for gags intending to highlight Balrog as an idiot with poor impulse control, it's also always been kind of a testament of what little moral character he has, and also kind of sad. Like, Balrog achieves his dream of being the champ, and he blows everything he gains as a result of it. You put Bison's doomsday weapon in front of him, and he'll just smash it not knowing what it's worth, with Birdie of all people exasperated by how little this guy is thinking about the plan. You hand him the reigns of the criminal syndicate that practically rules the world, and all he can think to do with it is just go to Vegas to get blackjack and hookers until he goes bankrupt again. He doesn't have any selfless intentions, but he has no evil plans in him either. Balrog is the king of goons, and he has no idea how to be anything more.

I only recently discovered that the SFIV: Aftermath movie, showing what happened between SF2 and IV, depicts Balrog having developed a serious drinking problem, and it's even what the Shadaloo agent uses to bring him back to the ranks. It's depressing, and I don't think it's a beat you could pin on the other World Warriors (well maybe Ken as of late). Yeah, he would, of course he would after losing his job and lifeline, becoming unable to live with himself unless he's getting hammered.

Gouken: You cannot see the true path through clouded eyes."

Rose: "All the money and fame in the world cannot heal your dark soul…"

And it's a really stark contrast to the way we see him circa SFV, when he's palling around with Ed, the two trying to run schemes together, looking out for each other, being bickering chums. It's maybe the first nice interaction Balrog's ever had with literally anybody in the series and it's something they'd reiterate with Ed in 6, that he's well aware Balrog wasn't a good person or a great father figure and Balrog would be the first to tell you that, but he still thinks fondly on the guy. That no matter how rough their days got, Balrog never hurt him, never beat him, never treated him differently over his power or origin, and that allowed Ed to resist losing himself to Psycho Power. Ed had to abandon Balrog in the first place in order to never hurt him with said power, and the scene where they depart in V is so heartbreaking in large part because holy shit Balrog is sad? How can Balrog even get that sad, since when does he care about anything other than his fight money. It sneaks up on you how much the two valued each other, and that Balrog for once in his life had something that he wasn't going to gamble away in Vegas. The old saying about how you never know what you have until you lose it.

Ed brought something really special out of him that nobody, certainly not Balrog, ever thought was there. Ed makes no illusions about Balrog being a nasty piece of work who made bad calls. Chalk it up to his closer contact to human nature than the other Shadaloo members giving him a space to mature and represent something better of it than before, or his long-running ability to destroy Shadaloo when given the slightest degree of decisive power over it, but the fact is that Balrog was never going to redeem himself. Instead, in spite of himself, he helped do something even better: redeem the future. He rescued a lab experiment and raised him to be a new boxing champ, and now said boxer goes around liberating all the other would-be Shadaloo freaks so he can lead them as an elite force to reclaim the future that Shadaloo once stood to corrupt. And so the king of goons got to pass his title to someone who can make it into so much more.

Rose: "Hands that grasp at all around them will lose touch with what matters."

Gill: "A crude desire… I doubt that is what you truly want. You've just yet to discover that which you cherish."

[remy2fang]

F.A.N.G in Granblue Fantasy.

The event was called Granblue Fighter V and it was the 2nd collaboration with Street Fighter. The first was Granblue Fighter Ultra. This event ran between April 15, 2016 through April 25, 2016.

Rashid and Karin were playable characters and F.A.N.G and Necalli were enemies. M. Bison appeared too.

In Ultra Granblue Fighter, Ryu and Chun-Li were playable. M. Bison (Vega, Dictator) and Sagat were enemies.

Here’s the entire story for Granblue Fighter V. Listen to their glorious voices 💜💜

For translations, go here: https://gbf.wiki/Granblue_Fighter_V/Story#Ep._4-1

For the FANG fight scenes, I complied the animations I could find from various different videos on YouTube. Credits go to chokottosister and Hiroshi Sora.

Although still voiced by Shigeru Chiba, his dialogue delivery is different from the original SFV version. In SFV, he doesn’t say “Shishiruirui” when doing his Critical Art, but in Granblue he does. Here’s his sound clips from SFV for comparison:

If you want to see art of other characters, go here. Playable characters are in Character. NPC/enemies are in Character/Lore/NPC/etc. Just type their names in the search bar under the categories. Bison is Vega btw : https://gbf-img.com

For sprites go here. Playable characters, go to Characters/Human (2015 and 2016). For enemies/NPC’s, go to Enemies/Humans (easiest to find it from Oldest first) : https://mizagbf.github.io/GBFAL/

I knew about these clips for years but never made a long post about it. Thanks for reading!

[annon-guy2]

Street Fighter ll: Favorite World Warrior Poll

Note: I'm going off the original twelve characters from Street Fighter ll, so Akuma, Thunder Hawk, Dee Jay, Cammy White, Fei Long, Evil Ryu and Violent Ken are not included.

[bulletblade]

Welcome back to part 4 of our X-Men vs. Street Fighter 2 Roster.

Rules:

1. X-Men and Street Fighter Characters only*

2. No Deadpool, Kamala Khan, Wanda, Pietro, or Namor will be added to the base roster.

With that out of the way, here's our roster:

Why were they added?

It's Mystique and Juri. Why would I not add them?

I should also specify what each of the street fighter titles means. Basically, they have to originate from those titles, so Alpha 2 is going to be obvious who I choose, but others, complete mystery.

Let's start with Street Fighter 1:

[comicgeek2003]

Demoted to Dragon

The former Big Bad now works as the new Big Bad's right hand man/woman.

Generally, when a Big Bad is defeated is replaced by a new one, but when the previous one is still there, one of the things the former antagonist can do is work for the new one as his right hand man.

Demoted big bads will frequently become the Starscream, especially if the only reason they were demoted was because the other big bad happened to have an advantage and the alternative would mean certain death.

Although, some Dragons will do the opposite: they will happily accept the new position, be actually loyal to the new main antagonist and have a trustworthy relationship, often because the Dragon will realize that he works better and more efficiently by working for someone else, and the Dragon may actually become a much bigger threat than when he was the main villain thanks to the help and resources of the new one.

Examples:

Transformers The Movie (1986): Megatron, the main antagonist of the first two seasons of the cartoon, is left for dead by Starscream in the void of space, only to be found by Unicron. Unicron turns him into his slave, reformatting Megatron into Galvatron and ordering him to destroy the Autobot Matrix of Leadership.

All Dogs Go To Heaven: Scarface was the main antagonist of the original movie, but in the sequel movie he played lackey to Red and to Belladona in the series.

X-Men Apocalypse: Magneto is NOT the leader of the supervillain team; this time around, he plays second fiddle to Apocalypse.

My Hero Academia: After Shigaraki defeated Re-Destro the leader of the Meta Liberation Army, he becomes a subordinate of his when they form the Paranormal Liberation Front and declare war on the Heroes.

Gravity Falls: Gideon was the Big Bad in the season 1, but he becames Bill Cipher's enforcer in the season 2 finale after Bill fulfills his plans ands brings about the "Weirdmaggedon".

Teen Titans (2003): Slade is demoted to Trigon's henchmen when the latter tries to take over the world. An unusual case where the former big bad is actually MORE of a threat to the heroes when he's serving as someone else's henchman, because Trigon gave him a truckload of powers in the bargain.

Stitch: In the third season of the anime, the previous big bad Hämsterveil partners up with a new villain named Delia. However, considering that Delia often tortures him when he fails her and that she creates an experiment that is more powerful than Stitch, it's clear that Hämsterviel is no longer the main antagonist this go around.

Street Fighter: In the original Street Fighter, Sagat was the final boss, but in the sequel Street Fighter II, he's simply the last fighter the player must face before M. Bison.

Pirates of the Caribbean At The World's End: The previous film's big bad Davy Jones is demoted to being a henchmen for Cutler Beckett. Justified by Beckett possessing the heart of Davy Jones, and therefore being quite capable of having Jones killed and replaced if he doesn't obey Beckett's orders.

[thedestinysunknown]

Street Fighter EX 2 - Ryu:

"We are back in the world of Street Fighter. I've already talked about Street Fighter EX before, so now it's time to talk about the sequel. Most characters have returned from the previous games, but there's some exciting new ones. First, we have our protagonist, Ryu. My first experience with this game was in the 90s. I used to collect PS1 demo discs, and this game was in one of them. You could only play as Ryu or Sagat. Either way, Ryu is the perfect combination of speed and strenght. Definitely a solid rendition of this character."

PS: the gameplay used for this gifset is not mine. The original video belongs to the user: 6 BOTÕES, on Youtube.

[gaymer-hag-stan]

On the 12th of June, thirty one years ago, "Street Fighter II': Champion Edition" was released for the PC Engine in Japan.

"Champion Edition" is an updated version of the original "Street Fighter II," featuring new character balance adjustments, the ability for players to select the same character in a match, and the addition of the four previously non-playable boss characters: Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison. This version helped solidify the game's popularity and influence in the fighting game genre.

[sunkern-plus]

good messages from street fighter i’ve learned:

-most people (READ: MOST PEOPLE) can redeem themselves if they try; if all they want to do is hurt people though, they’re usually not gonna try to redeem themselves. examples: poison and juri were originally bad guys (though poison was only one in a looser sense out of circumstance) until poison quit mad gear through her own volition to turn her life around, and juri seems to be on the road to redemption. however, characters who DON’T want to redeem themselves, like m bison, are DEFINITELY not on the way to a redemption arc.

-you’re not obligated to forgive the people who traumatized you, but you have to stop obsessing over your trauma or else it’ll stunt your growth and you’ll never grow as a person. this is shown through characters like chun li, dan, and juri in various aspects; chun li hasn’t forgiven m bison for murdering her father, sure, but she has moved past it and stopped dwelling it, becoming a better person and stronger person through her focus on li fen and the other orphans she teaches. dan has a hard time letting go of grudges, so understandably he hasn’t let go of his grudge against sagat for killing his father, but his positivity keeps him from melting completely. he’s kind of an in-between of chun li and juri (which is why a dan and juri dynamic would ALSO be good), where he still has the grudge to some extent but his positivity and willingness to see the good in EVERYONE, even sagat to some extent, allows him to grow stronger bit by bit, though he hasn’t reached his full potential because he’s still stuck on his grudges. juri, however, isn’t battle-wise unable to grow, because her feng-shui engine artificially makes her fighting abilities stronger, but emotionally she is stunted by the trauma of m bison murdering her family and ripping her eye out (or a doll, i don’t know which). a lot of winquotes imply that emotionally, she is still in the same mental state she was as a child because she wasn’t able to grow and thus is obsessed with her trauma and doesn’t want to move past it, which is why emotionally she is so sadistic and wants to cause people harm, because she doesn’t want to see other people happy because she isn’t happy.

i have more but this is long enough

[glapplebloom]

An old idea I had but never did...

The Sprite Royal Rumble is extremely difficult to do, but it is fun to see it finally complete and the final video. I've been doing it for 20 years and while this year likely won't have a legit one, I figured why not talk about one I originally planned to have but couldn't because of outside forces: the Sega Sprite Royal Rumble. I was planning to do this, but ultimately had to cancel it. I sadly do not remember why. But here are some of the details of what was going to happen if I did it.

1 - Commentators

The commentators I usually use are Sagat and Koto. Sagat is an experienced fighter so he can talk about specific strategies and what the fighters could likely be thinking. Koto being the more excitable one that can lead to setups for Sagat while making fun commentary on the fight. With the Sega Sprite Royal Rumble, everyone was going to be Sega related and that would also be the Commentators. To replace Sagat would be Professor Asobin. He was the original Sega Mascot as he would give you hints and advice for early Sega SG-1000 Games. And in the Sega Hard Girls series, he was the teacher with knowledge of various Sega Games. So he would be an expert of the fighters entered. As for Koto's replacement, my idea was Mr. Bones from the Saturn game of the same name. While not as excitable as Koto, his cool nature could be pretty fun to write in comparison. Also Hatsune Miku would have been the ring announcer.

2 - Competitors

This was going to be a 30 person rumble representing so many systems, eras and games from Sega's history. I did not include Atlas due to being a recent purchase. That and I was limited to what sprites I could use. If I do this today, I would definitely try to commission custom sprites to be made. Either way, I looked into 135 Sega Games and Franchises and picked among them. But for the competitors I decided to have, they are as follows...

Akira Yuki (Virtua Fighter/Project X Zone Sprites)

Aladdin (Sega Exclusive Game)

Alex Kid (Custom Sprites)

Alis Landale (Phantasy Star/Custom Sprites)

Alisa (Alisia Dragoon)

Princess Kurumi (Sega Nina/Custom Sprites)

Axel Stone (Streets of Rage)

Beat (Jet Set Radio/Custom Sprites)

Billy Hatcher

Casey (Kid Chameleon)

Chakan (Chakan the Forever Man)

Chuck D Head (Decap Attack)

Joe (Feel the Magic: XY/XX - Custom Sprites)

Ecco the Dolphin (He was going to have robotic legs attached)

Gilius Thunderhead (Golden Axe)

Headdy (Dynamite Headdy)

Joe Musashi (Shinobi)

Micheal Jackson (Moonwalker)

Nights

The Ooze (Custom Sprites)

Pulseman

Raptor (Jurassic Park)

Ristar

Sakura Shinguji (Sakura Taisen/Project X Zone Sprites)

Sketch Turner (Comix Zone)

Sonic the Hedgehog (Modgen Sprites)

Feel the Rabbit (Pre-Sonic Design/Got permission from a Fangame to use their sprites)

Sparkster (Rocket Knight/Using SNES Sprites)

Toejam (Toejam and Earl)

Vectorman

3 - Who was going to win?

According to my notes, after randomly choosing their numbers and who wins, I had it that Akira Yuki would win after entering at Number 9. The runner up would have been Michael Jackson at Number 8. 

4 - Would you do this in the future and what would change?

I do want to do this in the future. I just need to have a good excuse to do so. A big difference I would say is I would include Atlas into this mix. It would still be 30, but I think 5 per generation would be better for a mix. My idea..

Pre-Genesis (Master System and the Games before that)

Genesis (Games representing the Genesis Era)

The Last Legs (Saturn and Dreamcast reps here)

The Arcade (Sega's arcade games)

Entering 3rd Party (Like the early generations of Sega content)

Modern Era (I would say the games from the last 10 years, including Atlas)

Maybe I'll do this for a future Sega anniversary. Speaking of anniversary, what if I did a Sprite Royal Rumble for my Anniversary?

[nosetoons]

A drawing of Sagat from Street Fighter, which is really a remake of this:

The tiny head shouting "RYU!" is Sagat's Mii counterpart in my Tomodachi Life island. "RYU!" is his angry catchphrase. He's also best friends with Mooncake in Final Space so that was part of why I redid it.

Commission sheet: