what do you do when you want to give your game life? why, you give it the most crunchiest lines. you know the line at this point, ''street fighter was no exception''. ever since the start, the series had voice acting-from me being unable to find who did the win quote lines from SF1 to today where it's just .wav files with no worry. but there's a little more to this-that's why i'm even dedicating a article to this. regardless of the short intro,
contrary to popular belief, the voice actors for this game were almost entirely just capcom employees. but that doesn't mean it's not INTERESTING to look at: see, chun-li doesn't just have eri nakamura-she's moreso 3 people altogether for example. and the announcer is two people-a foreigner by the name of ''mr. gol'' and another by the name of ''mr. scott''. a few sprite artists voiced some characters, and they got away with all of this jumbling because it was the 90's and high quality audio in games didn't exist yet.
however, 3 years later, these sprites were about to become flesh and bone...but not before they're made ink in the animated movie! for once, the SF2 cast not only had voices again but real names attatched [beyond chun-li, that pesky girl having it to herself], though weirdly the english VAs used pseudonyms. i don't even know why, maybe you don't wanna be on a anime movie about a video game. i have to stress that fei-long is bryan cranston in this film, but steve blum was T. hawk, deejay was done by beau bilingslea, E. honda was voiced by richard epcar, M. bison's tom wyner [may he rest in peace] and vega, against all odds, is richard cansino/hayworth, the guy from ruroni kenshin's english dub. ...and on the japanese side we got alucard as balrog [jouji nakata], professor oak as blanka [unsho ishizuka], and fuck you fei-long's VA is a MMA fighter [masakatsu funaki]. the fleshing and boning process however of the world warriors consisted of making guile belgian [jean claude van damme], casting a man dying from stage 4 cancer at the time [raul julia, him being in that addams family film should ring a bell to you], kylie minogue as kylie minocammy, bryon mann who should be known for more than being just ryu in this film, yeah fuck it hire a native american for sagat and not the actual native american character [wes studi], and kenya sawada as captain sawada, who is kenya sawada with a title and also the prime example of decisions made by american branches of japanese gaming companies back in the 90's. and i gleaned all of this from wikipedia! it's not cheating to use it, right? but from it i also learnt that they cut out the 'bison coming back' scene out of deferrence for raul julia but ended up keeping it in DVD releases and such so like...are we mourning him or are we saying ''fuck you'' to him?
continuing onto-
-, ryu finds himself being milluki zoldyck from hunter x hunter [katashi ishizuka, he did him for some other street fighter stuff in the 90's], ken is marik ishtar from yu-gi-oh [tetsuya iwanaga], and chun-li is inexplicibaly asuka langley from neon genesis evangelion [yuko miyamura]. bison also wasn't always perfect cell, though [nori wakamoto], but street fighter alpha 3's joyous narrator's name is greg irwin.
also, the street fighter cartoon has bison be voiced by richard newman. this probably means something to transformers fans but what it means to me is that bison shares the same VA as the canadian stereotype in punch out wii. dhalsim is also optimus primal if you didn't know that [garry chalk] and akuma's megatron [david kaye, though only in season 2]
as we move to the 2000's, the world warriors get ANOTHER overhaul to their voices-one that we'll be seeing more often. from hiroki takashi, to fumiko orikasa, to kenta miyake, and holy shit the actual nori wakamoto we got to him. same thing happend on the english side-kyle herbert, laura bailey, peter beckman, and gerald C. rivers respectively. it's like a guessing game or something! this kept up 'til the 2020's where wakamoto stepped down for taiten kusunoki because of a curse that plagues older voice actors: they just can't do it forever. also, did you know that juri's VA is also a voice provider for a vocaloid voicebank? no shitting!
there's also that verizon-exclusive [this is a jab] street fighter ressurrection miniseries with christian howard, mike moh, alain moussi, natascha hopkins, katrina durden, amy olivia bell, and silvio simac. that's all of the cast effectively because it was that short.
with all of this in mind, i geniuenely wonder what that sony street fighter film would end up having. probably celebrities who aren't VAs, but still-it's fun to imagine.