It’s a strange day in Street Fighter land for sure. As part of Capcom USA’s odd lore choices for Street Fighter in the 90s, Ryu is technically 50.
Of course, back then, Capcom had to give them Ryu and Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior’s other combatants birth dates close to this one so they could be twenty to thirty year olds in the games. It does them no good now to still be the main characters twenty years on.
To put this in context, if we followed the info in the SNES manual, Chun Li is 46, Ken is 49, Guile is 53, and Zangief is staggeringly old at 58. Of course, having gone past impossible crossovers and already getting aged in Street Fighter 3, Capcom decided to push the narrative clock back and bring us back to an earlier time in the Street Fighter timeline for SF 4. Yes, technically speaking, all the SF 4 games are set in the past. Weird, isn’t it?
Whatever you think his age is, Ryu’s still popular enough to get new toys made of himself, and today, newcomer CAPO is seeking crowdfunding to get a new NECA / SOTA style articulated action figure of Ryu made. If this pushes through, it will be the first in a line of new officially licensed Street Fighter toys.
I always liked those NECA and SOTA toys, especially SOTA for their amazing accuracy to the Alpha series artstyle, and if you feel the same you may want to back this project as well. You can get to it and fund it via the widget below.
