shocking finds in dumpster dives!

do you like watching tetrabitgaming? this article may be for you. like any good game, street fighter has a shitton of cut content and concept stuff, why don't we look at them today? yes, all of them. you're in for the long haul.

street fighter

the game that did nothing except be the missing link between pre-SF2 fighting games and SF2 itself and also carry over like 6 characters from it for the coming games. first of all, two major differences: originally, ryu wasn't even going to be the protagonist or even the star of the show-joe, the random ass american oppotent in the game [one of two, he's the white one and the guy in the title screen punching that wall open] was, because the original creator of street fighter wanted a tough american as his protagonist. that same man went on to make his own fighting game series after the fact with his dream being realized. decades later his U.S.-born baby [and a busty japanese woman] is now in what came of his creation at capcom. remember to follow your dreams, everyone. the second major difference was that ryu didn't even wear a white gi originally, but rather a cyan one. oh yeah tidbit that's not really lost but is just kinda there that i found while compiling: did you know that we could've been in a timeline where hadoukens were called psycho fires? a literal fucking game before the guy whose every move had 'psycho' as a prefix was born? yeah thank god they didn't keep the localized move names going forward. also ken was originally going to be literally a direct recolor of ryu and he would've worn slippers and a headband too.

also, for a time, before ken there was a guy named 'yuu'.

shown above: blueyu and what ken wears as his bedroom attire.

street fighter 2

from missing link to the next stage of evolution, here's the second game. it's also the game with a fuckton of cut character concepts compared to SF1 because they were planning to make it not only have a larger playable roster, but also have each one of them be actually appealling. that's only after they decided to make the first concept it's own game [final fight]. now, if you couldn't believe that we almost were a timeline where hadoukens are psycho power now apparently, how about the idea of SF2 not starring ryu at all? and instead starred a man who was bullied for having a scowl? or how about the idea of us having a horrific racist charicature instead of the lovely blanka, man of the jungle and goodest of boys? or maybe even chun-li basically having love deluxe from jojo? or a movie star character who was added far after SF2 was a thing but in this moment was basically johnny cage? or literally the fucking tiger mask wrestler from that one anime? bizarre, isn't it? there's far more, like concept art for vega depicting a guy wearing a shirt whose contents had to get removed in archival collection games because it was apparently referencing something copyrighted but ended up being adopted by the community into a new character of his own thanks to super best friends and is why he's suddenly in shovel knight for some reason, the little that got into the actual game was basically just a giant chain obscuring your vision in ken's stage and a trashcan in chun-li's stage. despite basically coming out as a perfect game out the box, it didn't come without some scuffs in text, what with your sheng longs and your balrog talking about his bloodied fistses and your bison announcing that he'll dismember a motherfuckers and your chun-li saying that she wants all women to bow to hers. when will we have shitty japanese-to-english translations in games again? that was awesome.

street fighter alpha

what's better than 2? 0. or 1/2, actually, this trio of games doesn't have much on it's belt-but there's some bits to look at still. since i have some capcom secret files books, i can actually provide a nugget for this-such as sakura kasugano's surprising amount of different concepts. one depicts her in a flowy dress, one as a biker, one as a chef, and the other as...ryu if he was a postal worker.

the other one is smaller-rainbow mika, ironically the one with junk in her trunk. she only has one thing that deviates from her normal look since it seems that her design was ironed out from the start-a chunkier, bubbly looking mika.

shown above: god, sorry for the quality.

street fighter 3

and what's better than 1/2? a 3 set of 3s. since SF3 was set up to be a brand new game with few returning characters but with a giant roster of new faces, capcom had to get working, and their definition of working for this instance was throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck. with gill almost being literally a normal nude man with a leaf covering his crotch ala adam and with them intending to add a direct rip from baoh, and with a splash of almost having a incredibly hairy french aristocrat as the final boss instead of a two-tone pillar man, and a garnish of a literal fucking raptor and makoto having more cut designs than god having names. but ms. chesto of the chesto family won't compare to the next entry...

street fighter 4

a chunk of the reason why the fighting game genre is still alive, and the game where only the women look decent. it was capcom's job to rescue this dying breed, and with the help of seth killian who they honored by naming the villain in the game after him [yes it wasn't the biblical seth, who was actually in the cain and abel story that abel was named after, to assure you about this decision they did almost name the villain cain], they have decided not to repeat the same mistakes they did in SF3 where they *adjusts glasses, looks closer at script* made the game almost entirely original new characters to try and breathe fresh air into the series, they only made 7.

starting with seth rogen's final form he shall take on when he smokes enough weed, seth was going to look less like a man with a yin yang ball crammed into their abdomen and more of some weird interstellar entity. if you ask me, they look like what these light up electronic toys look like in the dark. does this specific seth version play butterfly by smile.dk? i hope this seth does.

meanwhile, their brother abel, who was never able to get into the 2024 paris olympics because he was rejected last minute because his throws could kill people outright, was originally going to be a androgynous young martial artist. this was instantly changed because they wanted a stupidly large blonde westerner as the new protagonist again. does this series have a history of trying to replace ryu with a blonde western man? yes. yes ever since the start.

oh rufus. oh dear sweet rufus. rufus is probably the most infamous character in street fighter if not one of, and his conception story definitely contributes to that. see, capcom wanted to appeal to the west with atleast two characters, and a theme they stuck on for that was snakes. the first to go was crimson viper, who doesn't have anything from what i've seen so i assume they ironed her out from the start, but the second was someone named 'king cobra'.

he was gonna be this boxer type fella, would've been the third in street fighter, and everyone was in love with this design. the thing is, the way capcom goes about creating characters for street fighter is they do the art and then hire voice actors, but they don't ever show the voice actors what the character looks like or how they're supposed to behave-they're literally given a script and a metaphorical blindfold. so, what specifically happend with cobra is that while capcom was ironing out his design, the voice actor had no idea what was happening, so when someone came to him halfway through the recording [or after he was done, i forget], they said that they finished his design, so they showed him a drawing of what king cobra ended up being-rufus. he then had to redo his entire work to fit that new character. he was distraught. and so were the rest of us.

moving on from that tragedy, here's something monumental: capcom decided to make their second south korean taekwando fighter on record for their first update of SF4 [the first was in some obscure fuck off PC game from 2008], and this time-they were intending to make it not only a girl, but something to tie in with seth. they then instantly burnt through 100 designs and we ended up with juri han, the only non-SF2 character to never leave street fighter rosters from that point forward because she was a instant hit with blooming foot fetishists and mean girl likers.

shown above: this is a mere sample that they were willing to share.

as for hakan, the only turkish character ever, they were also trying to perfect exactly what he's going to look like, from a demonic turkish oil ghoul to a cartoon character.

they were also intending to make...deejay's extended family.

they were also intending to add a stupidly large eskimo,

and they were going to add a green man.

and they wanted to make everyone a robot, not just 2.

this is not even where it stops, though. because street fighter 4 was going to be a entirely different game altogether once upon a time. back in 2006, a pitch was made to capcom by backbone entertainment to make a street fighter game that was gonna be the first 3D game in the series to not look like paper figures being thrown at each other, but also have a adventure mode set in the events of SF2 for those who didn't want to play a fighting game. it was named 'street fighter 4 flashback', it was gonna be about a grouchy logan-style ryu reciting his past to a older sakura, and it was gonna have a mechanic that lets the player undo mistakes-a idea that i think would work better in the adventure mode than in the actual fighting game part. it was also gonna have UDON art, because UDON was huge at the time since they literally JUST RECENTLY started making stuff for street fighter at the time. simply put, have you ever wanted koei to make a street fighter dynasty warriors spin-off? this is basically half that.

shown above: oh right, they had a design document too!

this is also the first game to have costumes! yes! this will exceed my comic book article in density! here's things that never saw the light of day!

abel in shear!

ryu in tighty whities!

the most coolest shit ever!

ken if he wanted to cosplay japanese eric andre!

this is almost a tekken character!

a accurate violent ken!

they done surgery on cobra!

chun-li croft!

why were we robbed of this!

the new mayor of metro city!

why were we robbed of this 2!

why were we robbed of this 3!

another almost tekken design!

also singlehandedly the coolest shit ever!

THE most singlehandedly cool shit ever!

what the fuck!

the most stupidest shit ever!

capcom stop dropping these fucking designs oh my god!

this would've been geniuenely interesting if you didn't punch holes in her scarf!

gen on the go!

how the fuck is she gonna fight if she's gonna drop all of that!

i WANTED heavily sponsored sportswear adon, capcom!

thankfully, that's the end of it. alot was going into the game that was gonna save a niche genre, okay?

street fighter 5

the game where they threw darts blindfolded at a wall to see what characters they can make hot and how much they can get away with doing so. compared to SF4, capcom was gonna go big with this one, so let's see what was in the kitchen together!

once upon a time, in the distant year of 2013, immediately after SF4 was done, capcom thought to themselves: what if we just used unreal engine from now on? they, with the help of polygon studios iirc, decided to quickly make a test to see if that would even stick, thus creating this photo that you've probably seen before of a shirtless keanu reeves doing battle with a cut MGR boss character.

shown above: i wonder what M. bison's theme would sound like if he was actually a metal gear revengance villain, though.

this is...alot to take in. aside the hyperrealistic look, it seems to be a reboot for street fighter altogether, with ryu being set back to still battling with the satsui no hado as seen by the orange ring on his chest, and i don't even know what's going on with bison. i also do recall there being a story going with this? but i couldn't find that anywhere. my personal opinions however is, controversially, i kinda wish they did this as a seperate thing that's still within street fighter. risk it and make a edgy reboot of street fighter, capcom. you did it with bionic commando and DMC and you missed this opportunity by being smart and intuitive. my guilty pleasure needs it.

shown above: sorry for the tiny ass pics, these are from TCRF. idk where they sourced it though

there's also some concept art from this book called 'a visionary tale'. but there's very little pics of it online-which means a monetary purchase. but after the swift scrapping of this idea, capcom got to the actual work.

where the fuck do i even begin with this game? alright so, let's get something out of the way first: kage was going to look like this instead of a brown ryu with cat ears.

wicked, yeah? now here's a bunch of cut characters. i'll let the horse speak for itself.

they also wanted to make everyone zombies, in parallel to them wanting to make everyone a robot last game.

there's even concept art for that stupid april fools game they did that i covered before.

and look! they even covered a bunch of alt costumes that were cut.

they were also juggling ideas for what to do with the characters, too! did you know that kolin was almost a prostitute? that's a thing you'd only find in the 'how to make capcom fighting characters' book.

filling some of the gaps left behind by capcom's SFV site, i am showing images again instead of trusting you to click on random links. seth had a shitton of designs prior to us getting the one we got, the earliest one of them being not even seth at all-more just a gen apprentice.

there was a bit of a more sethy one. though.

the rest of the actual seth ones varied between a victorian woman to something more closer to the one we got.

note: i couldn't find the other seth concept art i found because i could've sworn i had it somewhere, but i failed to find it. so have lanky kong seth instead

shown above: i wish eventhubs had a search function.

and as for the others, like laura, F.A.N.G., rashid, and necalli? well, see for yourself.

there's also these few pages of some workshopped looks for some of the other characters-particularly chun-li, karin, and birdie-the birdie one being from that 'a visionary tale' book i mentioned earlier.

that's not all, though! as fucking gunkokoko from reddit decided to do the work i was gonna do later down the line and scan some of the 'how to make capcom fighting characters' book 5 years ago. give it up for gunkokoko from reddit!

https://imgur.com/a/FcacENG#FrNOZqx note: this does have a 18+ warning on it, tread carefully

shown above: while there's some stuff already shown in this article, trust me, there's some new content here.

a few more droplets would be mostly to do with ed himself...and a few friends. alexle rose, hoodie nash, and a whole shitton of ed. shit, did you know that the escaped experiments that ended up being part of neo shadaloo were cut characters that ended up being canonized?

that would be it...for now. i'd do a street fighter 6 section next, but i'd rather wait until the game's over and done with so i don't constantly update this for every new character that comes up in the horizon.