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Capcom designed a realistic Street Fighter V Ryu and it looked amazing

Michael Martin
'Hot' Ryu as seen in Street Fighter V
‘Hot’ Ryu as seen in Street Fighter V (Capcom)

Street Fighter V could have looked a lot more realistic if things had worked out different.

Capcom hosted an “Art Direction in Fighting Games” presentation at the Game Developer’s Conference this week, Patrick Miller — former Rising Thunder community manager and current Riot Games game designer — livetweeted the presentation, hosted by Street Fighter V art director Toshikyuki Kamei, and one slide in particular stood out.

You’d think this Ryu design — complete with scars, bandages, longer hair, and a beard — came straight out of a Tekken game. He looks far better than the meme-worthy bearded “Hot Ryu” Street Fighter V costume.

'Hot' Ryu costume from Street Fighter V
‘Hot’ Ryu costume from Street Fighter V (Capcom)

Unfortunately, Capcom couldn’t marry the more realistic 3D design to Street Fighter V’s gameplay, so it went with the more traditional cartoony graphics we’re accustomed to.

While they didn’t go into detail about the realistic art attempt, Capcom talked plenty about its approach to Street Fighter V’s art design, focusing on two main points: making the art “easy to follow and understand” and “create personality with artistic accents.”

Esports played a big role in Street Fighter V’s development, so it’s no surprise to see “global esports competition, sharing emotions, and easily readable matches” as core concepts considered for the game’s art design.

There was a lot of technical talk in the presentation, but one other thing stood out in Miller’s series of tweets:

Apparently, Capcom wanted to explain Street Fighter V’s Critical Arts in a single phrase. Thus, you could say Rashid and Laura’s Critical Arts was inspired by Aladdin’s Genie or Sonic the Hedgehog, respectively. Yeah, I can see that.

Sadly, we likely won’t see a realistic version of Street Fighter like the one the shown at GDC. Tekken x Street Fighter has been scrapped and that’s a shame. Maybe Bandai Namco could convince Capcom to let Bad Ass Ryu make an appearance in Tekken 7 since his nemesis Akuma is in the game.


Michael Martin absolutely wants to play a Street Fighter game with “Bad Ass” Ryu. Follow him on Twitter @Bizarro_Mike.