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Poison is a video game character from the Final Fight series, created by Akiman for Capcom. Introduced in the first Final Fight along with similar character Roxy she is popular enough with the Capcom staff to appear in many other artworks as cameos, and is one of the few characters from the series to move onto lesser but present story involvements in the main Street Fighter series.

Beyond the Final Fight series, Poison has appeared as a cameo character alongside Street Fighter III character Hugo in his subsequent appearances. She was planned to appear in Capcom Fighting All Stars, but the game was canceled. She was also slated to appeared in Final Fight Streetwise, but much like Sodom, was cut from the final game. However, voice samples for Poison/Roxy still exist in Streetwise's data files, and can be heard via several PlayStation sound ripping tools such as PSound.

History

Poison's first appearance is in Final Fight as a minor enemy and part of the game's main villain group Mad Gear. She tended to be one of Capcom's most controversial characters. The game had a penchant for palette swaps, and the character Roxy was hers. In initial game design both characters were biologically female. However, Capcom of Japan received a phone call from a Nintendo rep opposing violence against women, so the developers changed them into pre-op transsexuals (more specifically stated as "newhalves"), but without changing the in-game sprites. This is stated in the game's Japanese instruction manual for the character's backstory., and reflected in the very male "knockout moans" characters make as they are defeated. However, American playtesters failed to realize they were actually male until a representative of Capcom Japan informed them of such. Despite this, Nintendo felt that the female enemies should be censored, and they were replaced with generic characters Billy and Sid (while Poison and Roxy both have at least some backstory, these two have none and exist solely as filler characters).

Capcom of USA's help resulted in further confusion as to whether the characters were male or female, presenting Poison in a very feminine tone in Final Fight Revenge. Capcom Japan compounded this in All About Capcom by proposing the possibility that Poison had a sex change and was now entirely female; later they stated she in fact was still a newhalf. This was confirmed thanks to Capcom Classics Collection character bios, though now Roxy was stated as completely female. Capcom has yet to state otherwise for Roxy since.

In 2007, Poison's gender was finally officially stated in Electronic Gaming Monthly, when Yoshinori Ono was asked about the matter in an article covering Street Fighter 4. "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." As a result of this statement, she is now officially female for one region and male for another. This may in part reflect on Capcom USA's handling of the character.

The character's design is based on the band Poison, coinciding with many other villains in Final Fight who were based on musical bands such as Sodom or Abigail. The band was notable for their members dressing up as females and many of them having bits of similar attire to Poison's own. Despite the similarities, Capcom has not stated what the influences behind the character were.

Poison has some notoriety as one of the few LGBT characters in the Street Fighter canon, the other confirmed character being Eagle, though in Eagle's case he is a tribute to Freddie Mercury, who was himself bisexual. Poison in game regards herself as totally female, flirting with opposing characters, wearing a highly revealing outfit, and engaging in near-erotic behavior as seen in Final Fight Revenge when fighting. Her voice is currently completely feminine also, which is not uncommon for some transsexuals, but only adds to the confusion of whether she is male or female.

Fictional biography

Final Fight

As stated her first appearance was as a common enemy opposing the protagonists in their search for Jessica. Her backstory for the game states she grew up an orphan in Los Angeles, and later in life became a street thug for the original Mad Gear gang. Her look-alike character Roxy grew up in the same orphanage as her, and looked up to Poison. Despite Poison's gender, given her female body she dresses akin to a transvestite, a practice Roxy has been stated to not approve of, yet regardless dressed in a similar fashion. In game, Poison and Roxy are fast characters, and attack in an acrobatic fashion. To note, Roxy was at the time of Final Fight the only palette swap character with a backstory: Two.P and El Gado did not gain one until later games.

Street Fighter III series/SVC Chaos: SNK vs. Capcom

The character disappeared from the SF storylines until showing up in Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact, going fully legitimate and managing fellow Final Fight veteran Hugo Andore. In this appearance, she is merely a cameo character for Hugo's intros, taunt and winposes, though played a key role in his storyline and helping Hugo make a name for himself in professional wrestling. Hugo's character bio states the two of them are pretty good friends despite their constant quarrels. Many subsequent storylines in SF3 and their appearance in SVC Chaos: SNK vs. Capcom revolve around either finding a tag team partner for Hugo or planning to start their own wrestling organization (the Huge Wrestling Association) due to Hugo being unable to find decent competition because of his immense strength. The canonical successes of these ventures has never been confirmed, though Hugo is stated to be considered "legendary" by Kyle Travers in Final Fight Streetwise.

Final Fight Revenge

Final Fight Revenge occurs chronologically story-wise before her appearance in Street Fighter 3 (and subsequently Final Fight 2), directly after the fall of the first Mad Gear and the fallout from Belger's demise. In this game, Poison appears as one of the selectable fighters (see Gameplay, below). Her background story in the game revolved around her her worried about her past crimes (namely, beating other people up) getting her arrested and thrown in jail. Former Mad Gear member, Edi. E was arresting many of her former cohorts from the gang so he could get promoted. To escape it, she framed Cody for her crimes, causing him to be sent to prison and setting up his storyline for his Street Fighter Alpha 3 appearance. Poison's own ending states she had feelings for Cody and visits him, but knew he'd always love Jessica, Mayor Haggar's daughter.

There has been some confusion to some gamers as to if the character is meant to be female or not in this game, given Poison is expressed in a completely feminine manner. However as of yet this game and the events that occurred in it has not been disproven to be part of Street Fighter canon or otherwise retconned out. As the game is the work of Capcom USA, concerning Ono's cited statement about her this may reflect that FFR Poison is entirely female at this point for this game.

Final Fight Streetwise

Concept artwork in the promotional comic book shows a character dubbed as Poison, though she uses Roxy's colors. Poison much like Sodom was cut from the final game, though unused voice samples exist for both characters.

While Hugo appears in Streetwise as one of the pit fighters, but nothing in game mentions where Poison is. All About Capcom states that she lives with her cat in an apartment facing the back streets of Metro City, leaving the possibility of this being her whereabouts during Streetwise.

Other appearances

Poison was set to appear in Capcom Fighting All-Stars, though little is known about this game at all, and even less about Poison's intended role as a playable character in it. Videos show that her fighting style was an almost exact replica of that used in Final Fight Revenge. Beyond this appearance, Poison has also appeared on cards for SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash and the game's Nintendo DS sequel, as well as cameoing in Street Fighter Alpha 2 and 3 in backgrounds.

A parody of the original Final Fight, Mighty Final Fight featured super deformed characters, including one called "Poison Kiss". This Poison is actually stated to be the younger sister of the original, and a corrupt cop. Poison Kiss is mentioned by name in Poison's card profile in SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters DS, stated here also as being her sister. However nothing in Poison's original bio mentions siblings (closest to such at all being fellow-orphan Roxy), nor is one mentioned in her later appearances besides the card game.

An immovable model is being made for the 2008 Capcom Girls Collection line of figurines by Mitsumasa Yoshizawa. The design is based around her traditional Final Fight attire and 1/6th scale according to material for it (standing nearly 11" 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.

Design

Poison is shown to be a Caucasian female with long pink, somewhat rugged, hair. She wears a black cap, blue cutoff shorts, red high heels and a tanktop cut just below her breasts. In one version of Final Fight, this tanktop was extended due to her gethit animation showing quite a bit of what was beneath in the original game, and her shorts were lengthened as well. She wears several armbands around her right arm and neck, and has chains and a pair of handcuffs suspended off her shorts. Final Fight Revenge shows her also possessing a whip, though no version of the character's artwork has been shown with such an accessory. In Final Fight Revenge and some artworks, her hair is shown to be purple instead.

Poison's alternate outfit for Capcom Fighting All Stars was somewhat along similar lines but different. Made of shiny, silvery material it consisted of boots that extended halfway up her thighs and a combined sleeveless shirt/short skirt with plunging cleavage. Gloves and a small hairband were also added, as well as a belt, with the handcuffs hanging off of it. Her arm straps were removed, though the strap around her neck remained.

In the official concept art section of the promotional comic for Final Fight Streetwise, a character labeled as Poison is shown with red hair, a red micro skirt showing a hint of underwear, jacket, button-up white shirt showing some of her abdomen, black high-heeled boots, gold belt, and a wool cap. However, the color scheme actually fits Roxy instead, whose appearance was much like Poison's own in Final Fight, save that she sports red/orange hair and red shorts. Further concept art later released by artist Trent Kaniuga show three alternative designs: one being the classic look, another being a white button-up shirt with red pants, high heels and short hair, and the third keeping the high heels and pants, but adding shades, returning her hair to full length and swapping the shirt for a jacket with deep cleavage. All four designs for Streetwise keep the color scheme and belt/handcuffs. As a name isn't shown under any of the art and Kaniuga never stated if it was one or the other at the time of posting or since, no further information is available regarding either character in terms of Streetwise beyond speculation.

Gameplay

Like many fighters in Final Fight Revenge, her actual fighting style is a bit unorthodox, though her moves mainly revolve around rising uppercuts with her whip or immobilizing the opponent. Her whip is used primarily in her Cat Claw and Thunder Whip attacks (which are akin to shoryuken/shinryūken styled attacks, respectively), but is also able to be used in a solo attack to steal a weapon from the opponent. Along with her whip, her handcuffs can be thrown in as a horizontal projectile move to immobilize the opponent. A few of her basic attacks will be altered if the player is armed with a knife, stick, sword or chainsaw.

One of her moves is the hyper attack Poison Kiss. In it, Poison blows 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 in Revenge results in Poison doing a pole dance for her winpose, with her whip serving as the pole.

From what little is known through screenshots and gameplay videos of Capcom Fighting All-Stars, her gameplay there would have been extremely similar to that of FFR (sans the weapons of course), notably the Poison Kiss attack.

Personality and relationships

Her biography in All About Capcom states she enjoys actual fighting (using it as a means to stay in shape), and later appearances featured her flirting with her opponents or outright trying to seduce them, as shown in her Poison Kiss attack. However Poison is shown to have a softer side when she feels sorry for Cody after his incarceration, visiting him in jail.. By the time of Street Fighter 3 and SvC: Chaos, she has Hugo do the fighting for both of them, taking position as manager instead of combatant.

She knows Cody, but in-game dialogue revealse she also knows both Jessica and Haggar personally on some level. She and Haggar quite obviously do not get along with each other at CFAS's time period, taking jabs at each other in their pre-fight dialogue, though this may have changed by the time she starts managing Hugo, as Haggar is one of the possibilities to wrestle Hugo after he manages to find another tag-team partner.

She was in love with Cody, though the relationship has not been referenced again since Revenge, and Cody is shown to have a relationship with another woman by Streetwise's time. Hugo and Poison are not involved in any relationship beyond good friends in the canon storyline: no evidence exists anywhere in to suggest otherwise. It is unknown if Hugo knows if Poison is a newhalf, or even cares.

There is artwork for Street Fighter Alpha of her standing beside Sodom (who is sweating and fanning himself off) though no explanation is given for this beyond they are both members of Mad Gear at the time.

External links

• WikiKnowledge.net’s entry for Poison Previously hosted by Wikibooks

References

1. ^ ALL ABOUT カプコン対戦格闘ゲーム 1987-2000 (All About Capcom Head-To-Head Fighting Game 1987-2000), ISBN 4-88554-676-1
2. Final Fight CD, 1993, Japanese instruction manual
3. Game Over (1993 book), by David Sheff
4. Electronic Gaming Monthly, Dec 2007, pg. 68
5. Final Fight Revenge fight voices, notably pre-fight and winpose
6. Hugo's SF3:3 ending, courtesy of VGMuseum
7. Bio for Edi. E in Final Fight Revenge
8. ^ Final Fight Revenge ending for Poison
9. Concept art montage from Final Fight Streetwise by Trent Kaniuga Retrieved on 2008-04-12
10. ストリートファイターファンサイト『レッドサイクロン』
11. In-game card bio
12. McWhertor, Michael (10-09-2007). "Short Shorts Watch: Final Fight's Poison Brings Daisy Dukes To Collector Shelves". Kotaku. Retrieved 2007-10-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
13. Prepainted 1/7 Final Fight Poison - Reflect (Colored) Anime PVC, Figures, and Models Hobbyfan.com - Bring Anime To Your Doorsteps - 1-510-655-0888
14. Hardcore Gaming 101: Final Fight, Final Fight Revenge subsection
15. Promotional artwork for Capcom Fighting All-Stars
16. Hardcore Gaming 101: Final Fight, The Story of Poison subsection Retrieved on 2008-04-12
17. ^ Capcom Fighting All-Stars promotional screenshots and beta test information
18. Possible ending for SF3:2I

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