So far, Capcom has revealed a lot of old favorites, from Ryu and Chun-Li to the, uh, provocative Rainbow Miki, that will be returning in Street Fighter V, but they haven’t shown off too many completely new characters. The only original character we’ve seen so far is the very wacky Necali, a “wild, animalistic” fighter with giant, seemingly sentient dreadlocks. Has Capcom finally run out of ethnic stereotypes to exploit and just started making random stuff up? Well, not necessarily.
Capcom has just announced an all-new Middle Eastern fighter named Rashid. If you guessed that Rashid has wind-based whirling dervish moves, then shame on you, but yeah, you’re totally right. Surprisingly, Rashid is the first Middle Eastern fighter to appear in the core Street Fighter series (female Middle Eastern fighter Pullum Purna appeared in the 3D Street Fighter EX spin-off series).
Capcom has promised Street Fighter V will launch with 16-characters, four of which will have never been seen before, so there’s still two more all-new characters to come. What kind of characters would you folks like to see in the next Street Fighter? They still don’t have a proper Canadian lumberjack character. I’d also say we also need a thinly veiled Ronda Rousey caricature, but I guess Cammy is already a pretty good representation.