In the film Freaky Friday, mum Jamie Lee Curtis and daughter Lindsay Lohan trigger endless hilarity (we might be exaggerating a bit) by accidentally swapping personalities. Their bodies remain as before, but everything else about them is switched. Now imagine the same thing happening with legendary Street Fighter characters Vega and M Bison.
Or, rather than imagine, watch. Because ahead of Street Fighter 5’s release in February, PC modders have already worked out how to transfer skins between characters. The most notable result is a pre-fight exchange where a newly macho Vega invites his opponent to “bow down to my Psycho Crusher”, to which a now super-camp Bison responds, “let my beauty intoxicate you”. And so the match unfolds, each unleashing the other’s customary moves.
Even more bizarre is the famously lithe Dhalsim – who, like Ryu, is newly bearded for the latest instalment – adopting the power moves of Zangief. At 0:15 of the video below he even nails the Russki wrestler’s famous spinning piledriver on Chun Li.
Bizarre as these mix-’ems appear, they’re not a new concept for the series, which has a bustling PC community devoted to playing around with conventions. Solid Snake (opens in new tab), Iron Man (opens in new tab) in Hulkbuster armour and Link from Zelda (opens in new tab) are among the characters ‘added’ to Ultra Street Fighter 4 in this way.
Even more Street Fighter 5 mods, such as Ken x Nash and Karin x Chun, are available to view on this devoted Youtube channel (opens in new tab).
Street Fighter 5 is released for PS4, Xbox One and PC on 16 February.
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