Street Fighter IV’s Abel is a brawny and burly character, but apparently that wasn’t the original vision for him. At first, Abel was supposed to be a scrawny French judo master that looked like a girl. Andriasang translated Capcom battle planner Taisaku Okada from the Street Fighter IV blog:
With Abel, we wanted to make someone representative of ‘the weak can beat the strong,’ and so he was originally a small judo character who could be mistaken for a girl.
I know a lot of SFIV players that dig Abel, but I have to wonder if they’d still be into the character if he were a puny girlie man.
That guy in the picture can pass to be a girl…
Sure! You don't think so?
wait, that picture is supposed to be a guy?
Yup yup. Almost reminds me of Zidane from FFIX.
Ah Japan, and their sexually ambiguous game characters……
Thank goodness they went with a new design. Wonder if the girly man would have been as cheap as the Abel they went with.
@blakseed Good to see see you here! It's always nice to have peeps from the old gang.
As far as gameplay goes, for some reason I would accept a girlie-man as a cheap character over a big burly dude being cheap.
Thanks Ray. You have a pretty cool site here. Great to see you doing your own thing man.
@blakseed I'm giving it a shot for a bit. Hopefully things keep progressing. The first few days have already exceeded my expectations and it's all thanks to the readers I met at TheFeed. I hope you stick around!