USgamer Community Question: Who's Your Favorite Fighting Game Character?

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Over the years, we've seen hundreds of different fighting game heroes and villains, from well-known comic characters to unique creations like the Skullgirls. But which one is your stand-by character?

While you ponder your favorite method of delivering a beatdown, here are Team USG's top picks for having a brawl.

Jeremy Parish, Editor-in-Chief

Well, this makes me totally unoriginal (Jaz has already written up his entry), but my answer can only be the first lady of fighting games, Chun Li. I mean, there are other fun characters, but she's the one I can always go back to and have the slimmest possibility of winning a fight with.

When Street Fighter II came home on Super NES, I experimented with all the characters to get a sense of which ones I liked best. Ultimately, it boiled down to Chun Li. Not because she's a woman, but not in spite of that fact, either; she was the fastest and most nimble of the eight World Warriors, yet she didn't lack for power — her Lightning Kick hit hard, and it created a pretty effective barrier against anyone who didn't wield projectiles, too. I played as Chun Li so much I was eventually able to beat the game on maximum difficulty, despite the fact that at that level of play the CPU's approach to M. Bison is basically "cheat relentlessly and without regard for anything resembling fairness or fun."

The fact that Chun Li also happened to be a pretty lady with a terrific, albeit terrifying, pair of legs did not hurt in the least, in the estimation of my teenage self.

Now that I think about it, Chun Li may have been the point at which I realized I generally find female characters a lot more interesting and a lot more sympathetic than male characters. Up until then, the games I'd played didn't really give me a choice about who I played as; but with Street Fighter and its eight warriors, I could choose. Chun Li initially worked for me because her jumping skills gave her amazing coverage of the arena (the ability to wall-jump off the edge of the screen, even if it meant you were springing off of thin air, made her the game's best fighter all on its own); but eventually I realized that she was more appealing as a character, too.

All the big beefy dudes she fought against seemed like your typical male power fantasy fulfillment (well, except Dhalsim), but Chun Li represented something else: A way to fight back against the cliché of rugged, macho dudes always winning the day. It's not interesting or fun when someone who looks like Zangief beats up on someone who looks like Chun Li. But when she turns the tables? Hell yeah. That's awesome.

I guess basically what I'm saying is that Chun Li was the perfect revenge fantasy avatar for a short, slight young man who had a lousy time of it in gym class.

Jaz Rignall, Editor-at-Large

My choice just happens to be the very first Street Fighter II character I ever played. I saw the machine for the first time at an arcade trade show in London in 1991. I was fairly familiar with the game's predecessor, having played it in the arcades some three years prior. That original machine had some crazy, giant-sized rubber buttons that you'd physically punch to deliver an on-screen blow. It didn't work very well, and I'd written the game off as a novelty.

However, this new machine was different. Instead of big rubbery buttons, it had two rows of three, and it didn't take long to figure out how it worked. And once I did, I was absolutely hooked. This was hands-down, without doubt the best fighting game I'd ever played - and one of the best games I'd played period. I ended up sampling all the characters, but the one I liked the most was She of the Most Thunderous Thighs in Video Gaming - the iconic Chun Li. I just loved the way she played, and thought her moves were really cool.

And so began my love affair with the character that still endures today. Whenever I have a pickup game with anyone, Chun Li is still my go-to character. Even though Street Fighter has evolved over the years, I still find my playstyle works best with Ms Spinning Bird Kick.

Yatta!

Kat Bailey, Senior Editor

Since everyone else is rolling with Street Fighter II, I'll pick a character from the fighting game that dominated my Dreamcast for a very long time: Soul Calibur.

I had a number of characters that I really liked—Kilik, Mitsurugi, and Siegfried among them—but my main was Sophitia: The blonde Greek wielding a heroic sword and shield. Part of it was that she was my favorite female character of the bunch, but the other part was that I liked the way she could dictate the pace of a match, punish whiffed attacked viciously with a stab to the gut, and flow elegantly from one move to the next.

Of all the fighting games I've played, I've always appreciated Soul Calibur the most for the way that it fostered deep competitive battles without relying heavily on complex inputs and combo timing. Sophitia was the embodiment of that approach to fighting game design—a character with a tactical style who could be wielded by players with a wide variety of skill levels.

Or, you know, you could just do her uppercut slash attack over and over again. After all, it works pretty well against the computer.

It's a pity that Bandai Namco ran Soul Calibur into the ground with its roster of increasingly silly cameos (Darth Vader!) and unbalanced gameplay, because Soul Calibur still strikes me as the perfect counterpart to highly technical fighters like Street Fighter. In any case, Sophitia will always hold a special place in my heart.

Bob Mackey, Senior Writer

I don't play a lot of fighting games—outside of Smash Bros., I think Mortal Kombat III has the honor of being the last one I sank the most time into. That said, my choice might be boring and predictable, but it's still incredibly practical: Ryu and Ken (take your pick).

It's not back-stories, designs, or theme music that makes these almost-clones my favorite fighting characters, though. Ryu and Ken simply offer a degree of familiarity that other Street Fighter characters lack. With these two, I know how to throw a fireball, pull off a dragon punch, and do that spin-kicky thing. I've never been great at charge moves, or anything more complex than what Ryu and Ken have to offer, so I always stick with them—and if I'm playing any other fighting game, I usually roll with the characters whose moves match up with these two the most. Just call me Mr. Quarter-Circle.

I wish I had more to add, but really, fighting games are a pretty huge gap in my knowledge. So, if you ever see me at an arcade in the wild, rest assured that you can probably kick my butt faster than you can say "shoryuken."

Mike Williams, Associate Editor

I've played a lot of fighting games. I'm by no means competitive level, but I know them, I understand them. There's a host of favorites I could've gone with, from Garou's Rock Howard or Dong Hwan, Street Fighter Alpha's Rose, Marvel vs Capcom's Strider, Street Fighter III's Makoto, or many more. In the end though, only one fighting game character truly holds onto my heart. Only one character has remained true and pure for me since their first appearance.

Enter the Voldo. Voldo is the Soul series combatant from Italy, but Voldo is more than a simple country. Voldo is the result of asking "What is the meaning of life?" and assuming the only answer is "fear, revulsion, death, and a bit of sex." Voldo is a blind, deaf, and mute assassin who wields dual katars with the grace of a ballet dancer. Voldo has been in every Soul series title, but has never spoken a line dialogue. That's the magic of Voldo.

You see, while normal people care about things like appearance and the ideal of beauty, Voldo is blind, and so Voldo loves all equally. As we fumble with communications in the real world, the mute Voldo realizes the only true language is that of the body; Voldo twists, contorts, and thrusts to make you feel welcome in the arena. Voldo cannot hear, but like Beethoven can feel the vibrations during a fight; to Voldo, honest combat is the most beautiful symphony of all. Voldo is an albino, so race is a foreign concept. Simple pronouns like "he" are too constraining to a master like Voldo. Voldo is love. Voldo is life. Voldo is. Voldo.

I know Voldo. I know how to make his body twist into a bridge. I know how to thrust his magnificent codpiece in my opponent's direction. I know how to make him kneel and shimmy across the battlefield. And I love every single one of his Soul Calibur costumes, which have only gotten more extravagant over time. So come and embrace the Voldo.