Poison from Final Fight

I’m not a video game expert, but I spent many hours of my teenage playing games as Mortal Kombat, Streets of Rage, Street Fighter II and Final Fight, but I never, never imagined something like that…

She, he or something else?

Poison Kiss is a fictional character in the Final Fight and Street Fighter series of video games. Created by Akira Yasuda for Capcom, Poison first appeared in the original Final Fight alongside a similar character, Roxy, later appearing in Capcom-produced games, media and merchandise related to the Street Fighter franchise. She is voiced by Atsuko Tanaka since the Street Fighter III series, and Masae Yumi in SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos.

Originally conceived as a female thug in Final Fight and part of the game’s antagonist group, Mad Gear, concerns during the game’s development about reactions from North American audiences to fighting women, resulted in the character being re-imagined as a futanari (Japanese word for hermaphroditism, which is also used in a broader sense for androgyny). However, that was not considered satisfactory and both Poison and her palette swap Roxy were replaced by the male characters “Billy” and “Sid”, and have been for every subsequent North American port of the title on Nintendo consoles and handhelds.

After the Final Fight series Poison later appeared alongside wrestler Hugo, acting as his manager, with her schemes revolving around finding a tag team partner for him or developing their own wrestling organization. Poison was also to appear in both Capcom Fighting All-Stars and Final Fight: Streetwise; however, the former was canceled, and she was omitted from the latter as development progressed. Following those aborted attempts, she ended up appearing as a playable character on Street Fighter X Tekken. She was also added as a playable character to Ultra Street Fighter IV.

The character’s status as potentially a trans woman, consciously left ambiguous by the developers, has remained a topic of frequent debate by both fans and media alike. Source for the text: Wikipedia.

Well, in Poison’s page on Capcom Database on Wikia, you’ll read:

“Poison is infamous because of the uncertainty regarding her gender, as there has been constant debate whether she is technically male or female on several fronts.”

If you do not believe, watch this curious and funny video and discover the awful truth about Poison (subtitled in Portuguese):

Despite all controversy, she/he always looked extremely sexy and hot to me, with her/his about 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm) tall and measurements as 34-25-35 (88-66-89 cm). And if Poison is a man, she is certainly the most gorgeous man in the game universe. Game Over.