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The Capcom Cartoon Crossover You Never Knew About

I don't have any useful skills to offer society, but I'm pretty good at finding small glimpses of merit in awful things. That's why I'm pretty forgiving towards bad cartoon adaptations of popular video game series. For instance, I kind of liked the Street Fighter cartoon series. Parts of it were just foul, but there were small examples of effort. The 1995 movie did shameful things to the Street Fighter story continuity, which the cartoon struggled to repair with some success. Guile's failed marriage haunted him (interestingly, not a theme you found often in '90s era cash-in cartoons), Ken was a rich boy who didn't get along with his father, Dhalsim returned to mysticism and meditation, and Cammy defected to Bison and did strange things with him when the lights went out.

But even my patience wears thin sometimes. I will gladly hand out gold stars to game cartoons that try, but I'll turn my back on an episode when it's obvious the writers said, “Hey guys, let's just come up with any crazy shit and go to a hockey game.” I had always figured the Street Fighter cartoon episode “The Warrior King” was such an example of writer apathy/drunkenness/depression. The episode involved a king from another planet who pops by Earth to pick up an orb that grants powers to its user. Bison gets a hold of the orb, and uses it to blackmail world leaders. Chun-Li falls in love with King Axl Rose, who must eventually return home to his regret and hers, etc.

For years, the episode left me irritated. Street Fighter has sumo wrestlers, green mutants, ninjas, crazy haircuts. If you need to supplement the story by bringing in characters from Dimension X, you're not a very good writer.

But I discovered recently that my irritation was misplaced. “The Warrior King” was not an instance of a junior writer using Street Fighter as an outlet for his Heavy Metal fanfiction. It was a Capcom crossover.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.