Guy



Guy is a video game character who first appeared in the 1989 beat-em-up Final Fight released for the arcades who later appears in the Street Fighter Alpha series. Guy is a red-clad ninpō master of Japanese descent who has been taught the fictional Bushin form of ninjutsu.

History
Guy is one of three playable characters, along with Cody and Haggar, in the original arcade version of Final Fight, released for the arcades by Capcom in 1989. Each of the three fighters featured their own unique characteristics, with Guy being the fastest of the three due to his ninjutsu skills. One of his most unique techniques in the game is the "Off-the-Wall Kick", a technique which allows Guy to bounce off the wall with a jump kick. Due to space constraint, Guy was initially omitted from the Super NES port of the game, with Cody and Haggar being the only playable character in that version. Capcom later produced a second Super NES version titled Final Fight Guy, which replaced Cody's character with that of Guy, with the in-game explanation given that Cody was away training under Guy's master in Japan. Later versions of the game such as Final Fight CD for Sega CD and Final Fight One for the Game Boy Advance would include all three characters. Capcom also produced an NES game titled Mighty Final Fight, a parody of the original Final Fight which features all three characters. In the backstory of the original Final Fight, Guy is established to be the 39th successor of the Bushin-style Ninpo.

Capcom later released Final Fight 2 in 1993, a sequel created specifically for the Super NES. In this installment, Guy's sensei, Genryusai and his daughter (Guy's fiancee), are kidnapped by the new incarnation of Mad Gear. In the game's story, Guy is off on a training mission and is unable to rescue his fiancee and master. Instead, the game features Guy's sister-in-law, Maki, who has also been trained in the same fighting style, and Carlos Miyamoto, a South American swordsman. Guy only makes an appearance in the end of the game, although the game does feature power-up icons shaped after his character.

When Capcom produced the original Street Fighter Alpha in 1995, Guy would be one of two Final Fight characters to be included in the game along with the game's second stage boss Sodom. In this game, Guy's character design was altered slightly, with his ninja boots replaced by sneaker, although his fighting style mimics that of his Final Fight counterpart. Guy and Sodom would be joined by Rolento in 1996's Street Fighter Alpha 2 and by Cody in 1998's Street Fighter Alpha 3, followed by Maki's appearance in the portable versions of Alpha 3. Guy's new design would be used in the second Final Fight sequel for the Super NES, Final Fight 3 in 1995, where he teams up once again with Haggar to save Metro City from the Skull Cross gang.

In the Alpha games, Guy's Bushin predecessor is revealed to be a man named Zeku, who would appear in Guy's ending in Street Fighter Alpha 2 to test Guy for his successorship. Zeku's presence in the game contradicts Final Fight 2, which identifies Genryusai as Guy's sensei, as designers of the Alpha games did not take into account the Super NES Final Fight sequels when developing the games. When Maki was reintroduced in Capcom vs. SNK 2, Capcom provided the explanation that Maki belongs to the original clan that formed the Bushin style and that Genryusai was Zeku's master, who in turned trained Guy and Maki.

During the same year Alpha 3 was released in the arcades, Guy was featured in the American-produced Final Fight Revenge, a fighting game for the arcades and Sega Saturn featuring the original Final Fight cast.

A second American-produced Final Fight sequel was released in 2005 titled Final Fight: Streetwise, which reimagines Guy's character was as an Asian crime lord in the Japan Town district of Metro City.