Fighting games are filled with some of the most definitive and iconic character designs in all of video gaming. Many fighting game characters have designs that allow players to quickly glean what a character is capable of, such as a character wielding a bow or gun specializing in ranged attacks, or an enormous brut being a close-quarters menace.
While characters like Ryu, Guile, and Chun-Li of Street Fighter and Scorpion and Sub-Zero of Mortal Kombat are among some of the most recognizable characters in video games, there are many characters who were less fortunate in their designs. Whether they’re misleading or just plain hideous, there are characters that players would prefer to forget about. So, today, we’re going to examine the ten worst character designs from across fighting game history!
10 Dr. Bosconovitch (Tekken 3)
The Tekken franchise offers up a diverse roster that features characters that use real forms of martial arts, as well as goofier inclusions such as robots, and even a velociraptor. Despite the large range of characters, the series has featured more questionable roster members in the past, as well.
One such character is Dr. Boscononvitch. First appearing in Tekken 3, Doctor Bosconovitch is an elderly scientist with no fighting background who’s fighting style is made up of randomly flailing his limbs. While this is as hilarious as one would expect, it feels quite out of place in a game like Tekken.
9 Bedman (Guilty Gear Xrd)
Design and style contribute quite a bit to our perception of some fighting game characters, and the quirky design of this Guilty Gear fighter has lead to a ton of attention from fans. However, Bedman of Guilty Gear Xrd is the antithesis of this sentiment, and is a character who is mounted to a mechanical robot bed, fighting every round while completely unconscious. We’d argue that this is taking things just a bit too far.
8 Necrid (Soul Calibur II)
In console versions of Soul Calibur II, the game included a character designed by an acclaimed guest artist Todd McFarlane, the creator of Spawn. While McFarlane’s involvement in the creation of a new Soul Calibur character had a great deal of potential, the result, Necrid, was far from stellar.
A being mutated and warped by Inferno, Necrid is a monstrous, green-skinned fighter who wields energy constructs in battle. To say that Necrid is out of place in Soul Calibur‘s roster of samurai and knights would be an enormous understatement.
7 Sylvie (The King Of Fighters XIV)
When it comes to the design of a fighting game character, less is often more. Iconography is often rooted in simplicity, and this can be seen through the designs of many of the most time-tested fighting game character designs, from Sub-Zero to Zangief.
With this in mind, Sylvie from The King of Fighters XIV is one of the most garishly over-complicated designs in the entirety of the genre. With a dress comprised of a pastel rainbow, a polka-dot bow, stripes, and numerous giant eyeballs she’s far beyond gaudy.
6 Mokap (Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance)
Appearing in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Mokap is a secret character who was nothing more than a guy in a motion-capture suit. In a series of otherworldly beings and masters of martial arts, a normal human being in a motion capture suit is perhaps the least exciting option that a player could choose to use. While Mokap may initially appear to be an Easter egg that was removed from the story, he is indeed canon, existing as a friend of Johnny Cage.
5 Rufus (Street Fighter IV)
Rufus is in the running for the worst-looking Street Fighter character of all time. Rufus is the perfect example of how to not make an overweight fighting game character. From his outfit to his hair, Rufus is incredibly unflattering to behold, taking the spot of Ken’s rival and treating him as a joke.
This is quite unfortunate, as, while Rufus is a Rushdown character who is much faster than his design would suggest, his design is a strictly worse alternative to the character of Bob from Tekken. While both characters are quite speedy despite their weight, Bob’s simplistic and endearing design are standing the test of time, while Rufus’s blatantly repulsive design hasn’t been seen since Street Fighter IV.
4 Meat (Mortal Kombat 4)
Mortal Kombat is often regarded for its excessive violence and gore, featuring grisly fatalities in every entry. This means that within each entry are a significant amount of visual gore assets that can be used for each character’s fatalities.
The laziest entry of this list, Meat from Mortal Kombat 4 is a human being with no skin. That’s it. As gross as it seems, Meat’s inclusion was little more than the developers deciding to take a skinless body that is used when a character was subjected to a fatality that removed their skin.
3 Abigail (Street Fighter V)
Street Fighter V‘s Abigail originally appeared as a boss in 1989’s Final Fight. In Final Fight, Abigail was a stronger boss variation of the Andore enemies, which were based on the pro wrestler Andre the Giant.
However, when Abigail was included in Street Fighter V, he received a terrible redesign that grew the character to a massive scale and provided him with an automotive motif, even putting tires around his biceps. With unsettling proportions and a face that can… well, speak for itself, no character design of Street Fighter V was as poorly received as Abigail.
2 Leopaldon (Guilty Gear Isuka)
While the Guilty Gear series is often noted for it’s sleek and flashy character designs, Leopaldon is perhaps one of the most egregious character designs in not just the genre of fighting games, but in the gaming medium as a whole. A being that rides alongside his dog inside of the mouth of a large abomination known as a gear, Leopaldon’s massive sprite takes up half the screen, and it’s often hard for players to figure out exactly what they’re looking at when the character is on screen.
Only appearing in Guilty Gear Isuka, Leopaldon is one of the only characters of Isuka to never appear in another game.
1 Mega Man (Street Fighter X Tekken)
While Capcom’s Mega Man is one of the most widely celebrated characters of the 8-bit era, his appearance in Street Fighter X Tekken is perhaps the most abhorrent character designs in the history of video games. Rather than utilizing the character’s iconic design, the character was used as a joke, bringing back his notoriously terrible depiction from the American box art of Mega Man for the NES.
Overweight, middle-aged, and never depicted in a positive light, this iteration of the character is so universally panned that it’s been universally dubbed “Bad Box Art Mega Man.”
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