Rolento

"To challenge me is to challenge my army."

- Rolento

Rolento F. Schugerg (ロレント・F・シュゲルグ), more commonly referred by his first name, is a video game character from both the Final Fight and Street Fighter series. Like Sodom before him, he first appeared as a boss character in the first Final Fight, but later evolved into a playable fighter in Street Fighter Alpha 2.

Rolento wears a very militant outfit with weapon belts (where he keeps his grenades) going over his shoulders and a red beret on his head. He has a red scarf under his worn yellow outfit and fights with a green staff. This is a change from how he originally appeared in Final Fight, in which he wore an olive green uniform, and wielded a brown staff.

Final Fight Series
Rolento made his first appearance as fourth stage's boss in the original Final Fight. According to his original backstory, Rolento is a former member of the special forces unit, the Red Berets, explaining his military appearance and skills. He was put in charge of the gang's secret armory-producing plants in Metro City's industrial area and has great influence. He fights using a baton and his special techniques include a wall kick and his throw. When he's low on energy, he relies on throwing grenades instead. When defeated, instead of fading away like most enemies in the game, he blows himself up with his own grenades. After being defeated by Guy, he gained a scar on his face caused by a shuriken thrown by Guy.

The Industrial Area stage, and by extension Rolento, was excluded in the SNES version of Final Fight (and its revised rerelease, Final Fight Guy) due to space constraint. Because of this, the developers of the SNES sequel, Final Fight 2, saw fit to include him in the following game to compensate his previous omission. In Final Fight 2, he is the boss of the fifth stage, Italy. His general appearance and fighting style remained unchanged from the previous game and he is the only returning enemy characer besides the Andore from the original game. As an in-joke, the Game Boy Advance version named Final Fight One (Which included all of the stages and the Alpha sprites of Guy and Cody as bonuses) had an interaction with Alpha Cody and Rolento where Cody says that he "Doesn't remember going to this path" as a reference to the Industrial Stage's omission in the SNES version of Final Fight.

Street Fighter Alpha 2
Rolento was the third Final Fight character made playable in the Street Fighter Alpha series. He first appears in Street Fighter Alpha 2, following the first game's inclusion of Guy and Sodom, although he previously made a cameo appearance in Sodom's ending in the original game. He fights using many of the same techniques he uses in Final Fight. In the game's storyline, he is no longer content with being a lackey for Mad Gear gang, but sought to create his own utopian nation. He fights Sodom, who tries to convince him to rejoin Mad Gear. Rolento refuses, saying he has no need for them anymore. Sodom brands him an "arrogant moron" and instead challenges him to a fight. Rolento then has an encounter with Guy. Rolento realises Guy still remembers him as his "leader". Guy insults Rolento, saying he hasn't learned his lesson and that he hates slow learners. Rolento makes one last threat, saying he will have to rebuild his empire on Guy's face. In the end, he makes his move and attempts to start his new nation in Metro City, driving a tank through the business district. Mayor Mike Haggar is called to stop him.

Street Fighter Alpha 3
In Street Fighter Alpha 3, Rolento, remembering Cody as a powerful fighter from the past, searched for him to try to recruit him into his army. When he eventually found Cody in a prison uniform and handcuffs, Rolento became disheartened about his defeat at the hands of Guy when he was a member of the Mad Gear Gang. He wanted the hero from back in the day, not a loner convict, even though Cody had refused to join anyway. He also sees Sodom and defeated him once more, who then claims the military man had indeed lost sight of what Mad Gear stood for. Eventually, he stumbles upon M. Bison's Psycho Drive after stealing weapons from Shadaloo for his army. He learns the Psycho Drive brainwashes people, and decides against using it. He can't have a utopia if people can't make their own decisions. Sodom, who had tracked Rolento down despite their earlier arguments, hears him proclaim this and realizes that Rolento did not lose sight of Mad Gear's ideals after all. They make up and decide to work together to use those values to make a great Utopian nation.

Later appearances
After Alpha 3, Rolento then made an appearance in the American-developed Final Fight spin-off Final Fight Revenge. His playing style is similar to one he has in the Alpha and even his storyline is the same (the game takes place between the events of Alpha 2 and Alpha 3). Although not playable within the EX series, it is said that he is the cause of D.Dark's psychotic breakdown. Rolento's most recent playable appearance was in the crossover game Capcom vs. SNK 2.

Yoshinori Ono, producer for Street Fighter IV, has admitted that he liked Rolento's playing style, but he couldn't get into the final game because they needed the Final Fight license from Capcom USA. Oddly, when Super Street Fighter IV came about, two Final Fight characters joined the roster, neither of which were Rolento.

On September 13th, 2011, Rolento was revealed as a playable character in the upcoming Street Fighter X Tekken.

Allies
El Gado and Holly Wood are the primary foot soldiers in Rolento's "army", both trained by Rolento himself. Both El Gado and Holly Wood are knife-wielding enemies who wear military outfits, known for their agile movement which they forged by dancing, and have a special technique known as the "Jumping Knife Attack". These two also appeared in the Street Fighter Alpha games as part of his special techniques and win poses.

El Gado has a prominent role as a playable character in Final Fight Revenge, in which it is revealed that he infiltrated Mad Gear to get revenge on Rolento, who was responsible for the deaths of his family. In the end, Rolento bargains with him (apparently successfully, given he's still alive later on in Capcom's canon) and calls him "E.G." at this point, which may be his nickname. He's typically stronger than Holly Wood, and sports a beard, wearing a dark green outfit, although in Final Fight, he is shown wearing a greenish-yellow outfit. He is of Hispanic origin, and his fighting style is Souo-katsuken (Double Scorpion Tail technique).

Holly Wood is named "namely" after his singing and dancing talents, and never enters a battle without his knives. Another version of him appears in Final Fight to throw molotov cocktails at the opponent, though he's much weaker in this state and wears red instead of the usual orange attire.

Trivia

 * Rolento's appearance appears to be heavily inspired by Colonel, a character in the famous manga and anime series, Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star in America).
 * His appearence & personality is also very similar to Bayman from the Dead or Alive series and Heidern from the King of Fighters series.
 * His theme in Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold bears a similarity with Slash Man's stage theme in Megaman 7.
 * Yoshinori Ono had originally expressed interest in adding Rolento as one of the 10 new fighters in Super Street Fighter 4. However, he did not end up making it to the final roster for unknown reasons. Rolento eventually made it into Street Fighter X Tekken on September 13th 2011.
 * A character with similar appearance who uses similar tactics, Jack Krauser, appears in Resident Evil 4, another Capcom property.
 * Due to the majority of his attacks being named after the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam, Rolento might have been a veteran in the Vietnam War.
 * Rolento is said to have played a big part in Doctrine Dark's story in the EX series, as he is the reason that Doctrine Dark was driven mad. However despite this, Rolento is not playable, nor does he make any non-playable appearances in the entire series what so ever.
 * Rolento's actual name was stated to be "Laurence" when he was in the concept stages or first becoming a character, but when the American Capcom design team sent the character to the Japanese team for creation, they had trouble pronouncing the name and thus, "Laurence" became "Rolento."

Stage Theme
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