Poison

"I'm not just hotter than you, I also just kicked your ass!"

- Poison (Street Fighter X Tekken)

"Let's have some fun... (楽しめそうだねえ)"

- Poison (Street Fighter IV series)

Poison (ポイズン) is a playable character in the Street Fighter series, and one of many that originated from the Final Fight games created by Akira Yasuda. Introduced in the first Final Fight, she has appeared in later artworks and games in a cameo role, eventually making her first playable appearance in Street Fighter X Tekken.

She is the friend and manager of Hugo; before her career as a manager kicked off, both were well known as members of the group called Mad Gear.

Poison was voiced by Atsuko Tanaka in the Street Fighter III series, and Masae Yumi in SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos.

Appearance
Poison has long pink/purple hair and wears a black peak cap with a chain-link design, a skimpy white midriff-revealing tank top, and a pair of skimpy denim "Daisy Dukes" cut-off shorts and high heels. She also has a chain around her waist, a studded black collar on her neck, and a pair of hand-cuffs hanging from the chain around her waist. Since Final Fight Revenge, she usually carries a riding crop that she uses as a weapon.

There is also a palette-swap of Poison called Roxy. Roxy is identical to Poison, though she has reddish-orange hair instead of pink, and has lower health. Roxy was from the same orphanage that Poison grew up at, according to Capcom Classics Collection, which also mentions that she looks up to Poison.

Concept
Posion was named after the late '80s glam-metal band Poison, known for their effeminate dress sense and use of make up, by an unnamed female employee at Capcom. She was designed by Akira Yasuda to contrast against the bigger characters in the game and move about randomly.

Final Fight
During the kidnapping of Mayor Mike Haggar's daughter Jessica, Poison was a member of the Mad Gear Gang. Not much is known about her participation in the events, however, beyond the fact that she fought the heroes.

Ultra Street Fighter IV
After the collapse of Mad Gear, she becomes a wrestling manager. However, her charges are lackluster and attendance at events was poor. When she realizes that her wrestlers are failing to interest the crowd and overhears the marks talking about how they'd rather watch "the main event" (presumably referring to the S.I.N. tournament which has flyers around the place), she enters the ring herself and pummels two of her employees. She decides to go to the tournament to scout some new talent.

After the tournament, she meets up with her former comrade Hugo. She offers to manage him, and although he is reluctant at first, he eventually accepts.

In Poison's ending, she somehow manages to convince Cody, Guy, Hugo and Rolento to form a KISS-style rock band with her, the "Mad Gears", with Ryu and Ken performing Hadoken pyrotechnics above the stage.

Street Fighter III series
Poison appears alongside Hugo in Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact and its sequel Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike as his manager. She embarks with Hugo to find him a tag-team partner, making several cameos during his match intro and win animations. The duo manage to find a temporary partner in Ryu, and later she and Hugo found the HWA, a wrestling stable which includes many World Warriors, however temporarily.

Other Appearances
Beyond the Final Fight series, Poison was planned to appear in the cancelled Capcom Fighting All-Stars; though not playable in the beta test of the game, promotional material released by Capcom for the title shows that she would have retained one of her moves from Final Fight Revenge, the Poison Kiss.

She was also slated to appear in Final Fight: Streetwise, but was cut from the final game, along with Sodom.

Street Fighter Alpha series
Poison makes a few cameos in stages in the Street Fighter Alpha games.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3
Poison makes a cameo appearance in the Metro City stage of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and its update. She appears on the back of a trashed car in black attire, and also appearing near Hugo in the artwork of the stage.

Gameplay and fighting style
Poison's fighting style utilizes a mix of acrobatic pro-wrestling moves and street fighting abilities. In the original Final Fight, Poison and Roxy both utilized standing and acrobatic flip kicks to attack the player. As one of the fighters in Final Fight Revenge, her moveset was expanded heavily, and she was armed with a whip. The whip is used primarily in her Cat Claw and Thunder Whip attacks, and can be used to steal a weapon from the opponent. Additionally, her handcuffs can be thrown as a horizontal projectile move to immobilize the opponent for a short time.

In the Street Fighter series, Poison's overall style revolves around a fierce projectile zoning game in a similar fashion to Guile's, while mixing it up with powerful overhead attacks. Poison can potentially create cross-up situations that can leave opponents reeling; however, her 'dependance' on overhead attacks put her directly in front of the opponent, allowing her overall strategy to be thwarted by grappling opponents such as Hugo and Zangief. Despite lacking in terms of defensive game, Poison's setups are solid, easy to execute, and she can be a tough opponent to counter.

In Street Fighter X Tekken and Ultra Street Fighter IV, Poison's techniques include the anti-air Kissed by a Goddess; the Aeolus Edge, a projectile designed for zoning; the Whip of Love, a multi-hitting move similar to the Rekkaken; and the Love Me Tender, an axe kick with a follow-up throw based on her attack from the original Final Fight.

Super/Ultra Combos
Some of Poison's more powerful moves are borrowed and redesigned from her appearance in Final Fight Revenge. Her Thunder Whip appears as a Super Combo, where she performs a series of Shoryureppa-style whip attacks. Her first Ultra Combo is the Love Storm, first appearing as her Super Art in Street Fighter X Tekken; she performs a powerful Aeolus Edge, and follows a successful hit with a Love Me Tender that brings her foe to their knees before she whips them repeatedly. Her second Ultra Combo is the Poison Kiss, another move from Final Fight Revenge; the move is a command grab however, unlike in Revenge whereas Poison cast a vision spell of her sexy poses on the opponents to stun them, Poison slaps the foe and then kicks them forcefully in the groin.

Controversy


Poison and Roxy were originally planned to be natural females, but were changed during development to transsexual females, due to the suggestion that "hitting women was considered rude" in America and the concern that feminist groups would sue, as revealed by Yasuda in 1993's "All About Capcom Head to Head Fighting Games". When the game was ported onto the SNES years later, the issue was avoided altogether by replacing Poison and Roxy with two male thugs named Billy and Sid in the American release.

A later appearance by Poison as playable character in Final Fight Revenge, an American-produced 3D fighting game spinoff of Final Fight, portrayed the character in a highly feminine manner and had her romantically interested in Cody. Commentary about her ending in the game in All About Capcom suggested that the character might have gotten a sex change. The Final Fight-related character profiles featured in the 2005 compilation Capcom Classics Collection acknowledges Poison's transsexual characterization, although it confuses transsexuals with transvestites, addressing Roxy as a natural female who dislikes Poison's cross-dressing.

The discrepancy regarding Poison has been addressed more than once in interviews with former and current Capcom employees. Final Fight developer and Arika founder Akira Nishitani stated he supposed the character could be male, but added it was up to the viewer to decide. Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono, when asked in an interview about the matter, stated "Let's set the record straight: in North America, Poison is officially a post-op transsexual. But in Japan, she simply tucks her business away to look female." He later emphasized it again when asked about what female characters could be included in the game Street Fighter IV, stating that it would be too confusing to include her due to the region-specific gender. Since then, however, he has changed his mind twice, first making her a definite post-op for better ease of localization and consistency with past official statements, and then later deciding that it's best to leave it up to the fans after all.

In early developments of Street Fighter X Tekken, footage was shown of Ryu and Chun-Li's win quotes to Poison (i.e. "Your looks really can be deceiving. I'll be careful not to fall into your trap" and "You're not very lady-like at all! I felt like I was fighting against a guy..." respectively). Other characters were later revealed to have quotes along the same lines, some even worse, including Kuma outright saying Poison smells like a man and doubting she's in any way a woman. Sometime after the footage was shown, a prominent LGBT rights group contacted Capcom about the dialog, stating that it was highly offensive, ignorant and insensitive towards trans individuals. Capcom agreed to change the quotes, leaving only Yoshimitsu's remark about her being a "freshly-recruited kunoichi", Craig Marduk's more vague comment that he doesn't sweat the small stuff and only cares that she's attractive, and Poison's mirror match quote where she tries to recall a song, "The something-or-other in the mirror", referencing Michael Jackson's "The Man in the Mirror."

Related Notes

 * In the UDON comics, Cody remarks that Poison 'is not much of a lady', to which Poison responds with fury.


 * In Ultra Street Fighter IV, Decapre's win quote against Poison is: "Numerous irregularities. Data acquisition suspended", which may refer to her gender.

Trivia

 * Poison is the only Street Fighter character in Street Fighter X Tekken to have not appeared as a playable character in previous Street Fighter games until her main series debut in Ultra Street Fighter IV.
 * Karen Strassman, Poison's current voice actress, also voices Alexia Ashford in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. She also voices Kitana and Mileena in Mortal Kombat (2011 game), as well as Rosa from Final Fantasy IV. She and Poison's previous actress, Lani Minella, have also both been the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog character Rouge the Bat.
 * Out of all the Final Fight characters in the Street Fighter IV series, Poison is the only one to not have a theme tied to that series. However, the Final Fight "Continue" theme is inserted at the end of her theme, much in the same vein as Hugo's "Bottoms Up" theme from Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact, which appears at the end of Hugo's Ultra Street Fighter IV theme.
 * A model figure was made for the 2008 Capcom Girls Collection line of figurines by Mitsumasa Yoshizawa, using her Final Fight attire and at 1/6th height, standing nearly 11 inches tall. A similar model was released by REFLECT later on, identical to the previous figurine, except with her giving a thumbs down gesture and darker colors.
 * She's the only character (excluding Elena and Remy for some reasons) in Street Fighter III not have a native voice actor.