Miscellany Vol. IV: Abigail, Tekken 7 and Hidden Codes
Volume IV of the Miscellany brings seven more curiosities from the Street Fighter world and its neighbours, with a lot of attention on Final Fight and on crossovers.
Abigail and the hair metal connection
Abigail first showed up as the fifth-stage boss of Final Fight, set in the Bay Area. He became a fighter you can actually play in July 2017, when he arrived as downloadable content for Street Fighter V. At roughly 244 cm (8 feet) and 265 kg (584 lbs) he is among the largest figures in the whole roster, and the latest official figures place him alongside Gill rather than below Hugo.
His name has a musical origin. Abigail is a 1987 album by the Danish band King Diamond, and the character’s face paint echoes that of the band’s frontman, whose real name is Kim Bendix Petersen.
Other enemies named after bands
Abigail is not alone. Many Final Fight thugs seem to carry names from 1980s rock and metal:
- Poison shares a name with the American band formed in 1983.
- Axl and Slash clearly point to Axl Rose and the guitarist Slash of Guns N’ Roses, and Axl even copies the bandana and long hair.
- Roxy may refer to the English art-rock group Roxy Music, and Sodom is also a German thrash metal band that began in 1981. Both links are guesses.
- Damnd could allude to the 1970s punk group The Damned.
- Sid, who replaces Roxy in the Super Nintendo port, may be a nod to Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols.
Sakura in the bathhouse
In Marvel Vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, the Honda’s Bathhouse stage has a second area that opens when you smash the wall on the right. It moves the brawl into the women’s side of the baths. In the tub on the right you can spot Sakura together with her friend Kei, who looks embarrassed by Sakura’s keenness to watch the fight. A comparable bath scene appears in the Street Fighter Alpha: Generations anime.
Akuma joins Tekken
Tekken 7: Fated Retribution, an updated release of the arcade game that arrived in July 2016, makes Akuma a playable fighter. That was the first time a Street Fighter character crossed into Namco’s Tekken series. He is more than a guest, because the story depends on him. Kazumi Mishima asked Akuma to kill her husband Heihachi and son Kazuya in return for saving his life once. Akuma appears to finish Heihachi, who later turns out to have faked his death, and the match against Kazuya, who is pushed into his devil form, is left unresolved when the game ends.
A Ryu lookalike in Avatar
In the fifteenth episode of the first season of Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, titled “Bato of the Water Tribe”, a character who strongly resembles Ryu sits in a tavern scene. The bounty hunter June arm-wrestles him and wins easily. The same figure comes back in the third-season episode “Sozin’s Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King”, where June ends a bar fight by throwing him over a table.
Ultra Street Fighter II and Shin Akuma
A new revision of Street Fighter II arrived on the Nintendo Switch in spring or summer 2017, the first in nine years and twenty-six years after World Warrior. Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers offers a colour edit mode, a switch between original sprites and Udon’s HD Remix art, and nineteen selectable fighters once Evil Ryu and Violent Ken are counted. There is a twentieth, Shin Akuma, hidden in arcade mode only (not in online play). To unlock him:
- Highlight Ryu and cancel on colour 1.
- Highlight Ken and cancel on colour 9.
- Highlight Sagat and cancel on colour 8.
- Highlight M. Bison and cancel on colour 7.
- Put the cursor on Random and press L and R together.
Secrets in Street Fighter X Mega Man
The fan-made but Capcom-published Street Fighter X Mega Man (2012) hides several extras.
- Yang was planned for the cast but lost his place to Chun-Li. His Sei’ei Enbu move can still be used by Mega Man: hold Jump and Shoot on the title screen for six seconds until a chime sounds, then press Shoot and Weapon Switch 1 during play to create three shadow copies of Mega Man.
- The same title-screen step lets you throw a Hadoken without beating Ryu, using a quarter-circle forward and Shoot.
- To get a helmet-less Mega Man, highlight Ryu on the level select, hold Shoot and press right, right, right, left. The portrait changes if it worked.
- To replace every music track with Guile’s theme, hold Jump on the pause screen and press up, down, down, down. It suits everything, after all.
