The Street Fighter Anniversary Tribute: Ryu – The First “Shoto” and Street Fighter’s Main protagonist

The Ryu we know today and the one from the first Street Fighter game don’t have a lot in common anymore. It is hard to imagine even that the serious but usually calm and gentle badass Ryu who defeated villains like M.Bison in the past was once a rather goofy redhead who fights wearing slippers. His visual design was changed drastically in all sequels including the Street Fighter Alpha games.

His special moves we all know today like that Hadoken , the Tatsumaki and the Shoryuken were part of his moveset already in the classic Street Fighter from 1987. It looks like a fourth special move was once planned, the “Fire Kick” but in the end Ryu and Ken never got to use it during the whole Street Fighter series. It was the “Dragon-Uppercut”  that gave him the final victory blow over Sagat (the host and boss character of the first World Warrior Tournament) and left a big scar on his chest.

His special move set that included a projectile, an anti-air and an advanced kick move was later called Shotokan or just “Shoto”. You can find at least one character with similar moves in every 2d gameplay  fighting game now. Some examples outside Street Fighter are Morigan from Darkstalkers or Captain America in the Marvel fighting games by Capcom.

 

by Sir Wolfgang

by Modernerd

 

About the Artists:

 

Wolfgang Jon Lehmann from the USA is one of the artists I myself invited to the Street Fighter Tribute in December 2016. I saw his series of Street Fighter characters he drew and thought “Damn, this guy puts out one excellent SF fan art after another one..I need to have him on board for our upcoming SF Art Jam!” He described it as a real challenge to draw Ryu in his classic design but as you can see it turned out damn well in the end. 
Beside Street Fighter stuff he draws all kinds of fan art as well as original characters too. I recommend to have a look at his deviantART gallery, especially if you like the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Manga/Anime.
 

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Alfred “Modernerd” Manzano from the USA is a dedicated fighting game player since many years and participated in multiple of our art collaborations already. He drew Marshall Law for our Tekken 2 Tribute back in 2012 and also the probably most detailed illustration ever for Mokap from Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance when we did a project similar to our Street Fighter one for the MK series between 2011-2013.

He is a Freelance Digital Artist residing in the Bay Area, CA. and can be contacted through dA, FB and Pinterest among other channels.

 

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