Capcom originally meant to make a Street Fighter 5 announcement at this weekend’s Evo 2019 fighting game tournament. However, a recent leak has forced its hand, making the company officially revealed that Street Fighter 5 new characters E. Honda, Lucia, and Poison are coming on August 4.
The original leak came from a video that was inadvertently posted on the game’s Steam store page. Capcom initially took the video down, but copies of it had already spread on social media. With this in mind, company decided to just go with it and officially announce the characters, stating that the team simply got “a little too excited” for Evo. Additionally, the announcement also confirmed that a summer character bundle with all three characters would be coming the day after.
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While Capcom decided to simply roll with the punches, not everyone is happy. Series producer Yoshinori Ono tweeted that he “got upset because something unexpected happened,” in reference to the leak. In his follow up tweet, he stated that the characters would be playable after Street Fighter 5‘s finals at Evo. This seems to indicate that the original plan was to announce them there, and to surprise everyone with the announcement that the characters would be available immediately. The leak spoiled that surprise.
Longtime gamers should be familiar with the first of the three characters revealed. E. Honda represented the last original Street Fighter 2 veteran who had yet to make it into Street Fighter 5. The reveal finally fixes that, which should please series fans.
Lucia on the other hand may be a bit more obscure. She comes from 1995’s Final Fight 3 for the Super Nintendo. Final Fight shares its universe with Street Fighter after all, and she’s just the latest character from the latter to cross over.
Poison, another Final Fight character, first made the transition to Street Fighter as a non-playable character accompanying Hugo in Street Fighter 3. She finally made her playable debut in last-generation’s Street Fighter x Tekken and Ultra Street Fighter 4. Of course, she may be more familiar to fans for being one of the first trans characters in video games.
In addition to these three, Capcom is also adding a new stage to Street Fighter 5. Called the “Honda Sento,” the new stage recreates E. Honda’s classic bathhouse stage from Street Fighter 2. The summer character bundle will not include the stage, however.
