Udon Entertainment publishes a lot of artbooks and comics featuring Capcom characters, especially ones from the Street Fighter series.  I was lucky enough to get a review copy of one of their newest artbooks, the Street Fighter World Warrior Encyclopedia: Arcade Edition!  It features information and artwork of every character in the series!  So let’s take a look at it!  Plus a surprise bonus!

Here’s a picture of the front of the book.  It’s a very nice, full color, hardcover book.

And here’s the back of the book.  The back is a bit misleading because when I first saw it, I thought, “Is that all the characters in this book?”  Oh no, no, no.  Pretty much EVERYONE is in here!

So every character is in this book in alphabetical order.  The first page has some info about the character, backstory, moves, what games they were in, etc.  And the next page has a full page color art of that character.  Some characters, like Ken and Ryu, get four pages instead of two.  There’s a surprising amount of Final Fight characters here as well!  We’ll look at a couple of pages that have my favorite Street Fighter characters.

When I was a teen and Street Fighter 2 was big in arcades, I was horrible at it, but my friend was very good and I could never beat him.  But when Super Street Fighter 2 came out, it introduced four new characters, one of them being Cammy.  When we first played it, I picked her because I liked her hat.  And I actually won against my friend while playing as her!  Granted, I’m sure it’s because he wasn’t used to dealing with a new character yet.  But hey, just let me have my victory, OK?  So from then on, I decided Cammy would be my favorite character.

Another character I like is Dan.  He’s silly and one of the first examples of a ‘joke character.’  He wears a pink gi and his puny fireball ‘hadoken’ attack only goes a few inches in front of him, and he taunts a lot.  And he also loses a lot.

The last few pages of the book feature characters that aren’t necessarily in the games, but are related to the main characters in some way or another.  And that’s pretty much the book.  If you’re a Street Fighter fan, I recommend picking this up before it sells out.  The art is so good it kind of makes me want to look at getting other Udon books, too!

Bonus: Free Comic Book Day Street Fighter #100: Ryu Vs. Chun-Li

Packed in the box with the artbook, Udon threw in this comic book so I’ll review it, too.  It says it’s for Free Comic Book Day.  So how did they handle that this year with COVID and all?  My brother said that comic shops would handle it in different ways, but the Internet didn’t give a clear answer either.  At any rate, this was probably the only Free Comic Book Day issue I would’ve been interested in, so I’m glad they threw it in there.

So the comic is about a party that Ken throws and invites a lot of Street Fighters (but not Cammy, didn’t see her anyway).  But then some trouble happens and Ryu and Chun-Li fight for a bit.  It probably starts the next story arc of the comic, but the end of this issue wraps up nicely and they keep partying.  It’s a good freebie if you can get it, I suppose.  Age-wise I’d say both books are best for teens because some of the female characters wear revealing outfits.  But if you’re OK with your kids playing the games, they’ll be OK with the books, too.  Next year for Free Comic Book Day, they should do Cammy vs. Dan!

So who are your favorite Street Fighter characters?  Let me know in the comments section.  My favorites are Cammy, Dan, Chun-Li, Juni, Juli, Laura, R. Mika, and Lucia.  And that’s all for now!  Later!  –Cary

Tags: Misc