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- "I'm not just hotter than you, I also just kicked your ass!"
- —Poison (Street Fighter X Tekken)
Poison (ポイズン Poizun?) is the friend and manager of Hugo. Before her career as a manager kicked off, she was well known as one of the more recognizable members of the group called Mad Gear.
Poison's name may be derived from a glam-metal band, also named Poison, that was popular in the late 1980s, and were known for their effeminate dress sense and use of make up.
Story
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 defeats 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 gangmate Hugo. She offers to manage him and although he is reluctant at first, he eventually accepts.
In Poison's own 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. The canon status of this ending is extremely dubious but not impossible.
Street Fighter III
Poison embarks with Hugo to find him a tag-team partner, finding a temporary one in Ryu. Later, she and Hugo found the HWA, a wrestling stable which includes many World Warriors, however temporarily.
Appearances
Poison is a character who originated from the Final Fight video game series, created by Akira Yasuda for Capcom. Introduced in the first Final Fight, she has appeared in later artworks and games in a cameo role, and is one of the few characters from the series to move on to a minor role in the main Street Fighter series. She was voiced by Atsuko Tanaka in the Street Fighter III series, and Masae Yumi in SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos.
Beyond the Final Fight series, Poison has appeared alongside Hugo in Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact and its sequel Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike as his manager. She was planned to appear in Capcom Fighting All-Stars, but the game was canceled. She was also slated to appear in Final Fight: Streetwise, but, along with Sodom, was cut from the final game. Poison is also a playable character in Street Fighter X Tekken and canonically will be in Ultra Street Fighter IV.
Poison has been featured in various promotional Street Fighter related artworks, as early as Street Fighter II. Additionally, she has been used as a cameo character three times in the Street Fighter Alpha series. In terms of merchandise, an immovable model was being 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.
Poison has long pink/purple hair and wears a black peak cap with a chain-link design, a skimpy white mid-riff revealing tank top and a pair of skimpy denim cut-off shorts (Daisy Dukes) 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 round her waist. Since Final Fight Revenge, she has nearly always been seen to carry a riding crop, which she uses as a weapon.
Roxy
In the original Final Fight, there is also a palette-swap of Poison called Roxy. Roxy is identical to Poison except for having reddish-orange hair instead of pink, and having lower health. Roxy was from the same orphanage that Poison grew, according to Capcom Classics Collection. Also according to Capcom Classics Collection, it mentions how Roxy looks up to Poison but "doesn't dig the whole cross dressing thing". This may indicate that unlike Poison, Roxy may very well be female.
Gameplay
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 (which are comparable to Shoryuken/Shinryuken styled attacks, respectively), 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.
One particular attack, Poison Kiss, has her blow a large heart-shaped kiss at the opponent that travels in a sine wave path. If it connects, a quick peep show of Poison in several erotic poses is displayed, and afterwards the opponent is shown stunned with hearts dancing over their head. Defeating an opponent with this attack results in Poison doing a pole dance for her win pose, with her whip serving as the pole. Though not playable in the beta test of Capcom Fighting All-Stars, promotional material released by Capcom for the title shows that this move would have been retained for her gameplay. In Ultra Street Fighter IV, this move returns as Poison's second Ultra Combo, this time as a command grab, and doesn't have Poison performing many erotic poses, except at the beginning of the move.
As of Street Fighter X Tekken, Poison has a unique moveset of her own that mixes agile Pro Wrestling techniques, and her own streetfighting abilities. Poison's standard throws includes a multi-hitting slap and a Frankensteiner, Aeolus Edge and Kissed by a Goddess is the names of her Fireball and Shoryuken like moves, Whip of love is a multi hitting whip attack and is done in similar fashion to Fei Long's Rekka's. Her famous flip kick from the original Final Fight games appears as a special called Love me Tender, after the flipping axe kick, Poison can follow this move up with a reverse Frankensteiner (Poison-Rana). Poison's Super Art is called Love Storm and its starts with her charging a large version of Aeolus Edge, once it hits she flips into the air and lands with a hard hitting axe kick that stuns the opponent in a prone position, afterwards she repeatedly smacks the opponent with her horse whip and delivers a final blow that knocks them into the air. Poison also retained her signature backflip from the original game.
History and Gender Controversy
Poison's first appearance in Final Fight featured her and a palette swap character named Roxy as recurring minor enemies for the player to fight. Named after the band 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. According to Yoshinori Ono, initially she was envisaged as just a woman.[2] However this changed early on as according to the original concept art and Japanese game manuals, Poison was a "newhalf" (Japanese term meaning a woman with a penis) although Roxy was not.[3] However, when the game was released in Western markets, worry over whether violence against women would be considered taboo meant that the characters were replaced with Billy and Sid. More recent re-releases of Final Fight, like Final Fight: Double Impact, have dispensed with Billy and Sid and use the original characters.
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 transgender characterization, while addressing Roxy as a natural female who dislikes Poison's cross-dressing.[3]
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's 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,[citation needed] and then later deciding that it's best to leave it up to the fans after all.[citation needed]
In early developments of Street Fighter X Tekken, footage was shown of Ryu and Chun-Li's win quotes to Poison. Ryu said, "Your looks really can be deceiving. I'll be careful not to fall into your trap." Chun-Li then said, "You're not very lady-like at all! I felt like I was fighting against a guy...". 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 dialogue, stating that it was really offensive 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 the song "The Man in the Mirror".
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 first canon debut in Ultra Street Fighter IV.
- In the UDON comics, Cody remarks that Poison 'is not much of a lady' (probably referring to her dubious sex), to which Poison responds with fury.
- 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) . She and Poison's previous actress, Lani Minella, have also both been the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog character Rouge the Bat.
- Poison, in a black attire, makes a small appearence in both Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and its update in the Metro City stage on the back of a trashed car, while also appearing nearby a cameo of Andore in the artwork of the stage.
- Out of all the Final Fight characters in Ultra Street Fighter IV, Poison was the only one to not have a theme tied to that series; hers is completely original.
Stage theme
Gallery
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Sprites
References
| Street Fighter IV Characters | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Original | Abel · Akuma · Balrog · Blanka · Chun-Li · C. Viper · Dhalsim · E. Honda El Fuerte · Guile · Ken · M. Bison · Rufus · Ryu · Sagat · Vega · Zangief | |||
| Console | Cammy · Dan · Fei Long · Gen · Gouken · Rose · Seth · Sakura | |||
| Super | Adon · Cody · Dee Jay · Dudley · Guy · Hakan · Ibuki · Juri · Makoto · T. Hawk | |||
| Arcade Edition | Evil Ryu · Oni · Yang · Yun | |||
| Ultra | Decapre · Elena · Hugo · Poison · Rolento | |||
| Street Fighter X Tekken Characters | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core Roster | Abel · Akuma · Balrog · Cammy · Chun-Li · Dhalsim · Guile · Hugo · Ibuki · Juri Ken · M. Bison · Poison · Rufus · Rolento · Ryu · Sagat · Vega · Zangief | |||
| Downloadable | Blanka · Cody · Dudley · Elena · Guy · Sakura | |||