Capcom has released artwork of the earliest concept designs for the playable characters on Street Fighter 3's roster. While Street Fighter 3 is well-received and regarded as one of the greatest fighting games of all time nowadays, back then, its reception was much more tepid and ended up being a commercial failure for Capcom. Some reasons why Street Fighter 3 bombed at launch, include 2D sprites being less appealing than the 3D revolution of the late 1990s, a more methodical approach to the fighting game genre, and most polarizing of all - the cast of characters.Originally during its development, Capcom didn't plan for the game to be the next numbered entry until plans pivoted and forced it to change. Street Fighter 3's roster wasn't even going to originally include Ryu or Ken until late in its development. The other cast of characters however includes relatively normal street fighters like Yang or Dudley, while also including some weird characters such as Necro, Q, and Gill that stand out in comparison. Some of the early concept art for Street Fighter 3 indicates that things could have leaned in this direction more.According to a rough translation, some of these sketches are the earliest designs for Street Fighter 3, drawn by veteran Capcom artist Akiman, who was responsible for the design and promotional work of the game. These sketches were shared in celebration of Street Fighter's 35th anniversary, with a number of odd and eclectic characters that didn't end up making the cut into the final game.
There are fifteen of these characters, which all vary in terms of design and species. This includes one fighter that is just a velociraptor to another one of that is a giant robot. The first image in particular contains the aforementioned dinosaur, along with a messy-haired man who bares a resemblance to Cody from Final Fight. The third sketch shows a naked man in a Greek-style statue, which is likely what Gill would evolve into in the final release of Street Fighter 3.
Other characters include a disheveled man, a big hairy-looking monster, a mad scientist, a fighter that had bat wings, a normal-looking average-salary man, and even a straight-up giant robot. It's likely we'll never see these character designs come up again in the next Street Fighter, especially with the freaks of Street Fighter 3 being a contentious topic. However, it's a neat look into what Capcom's art team was designing that never made it past the cutting room floor.
Street Fighter 3: Third Strike is playable via the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Source: EventHubs