Alex

Alex is the storyline hero of Street Fighter 3, a true street fighter who wants to avenge his mentor’s defeat at the hands of Gill. Alex’s smash-mouth wrestling style signified a shift away from the traditional martial arts of earlier characters.

Play Style: Inflicting big bursts of damage off of grabs and lunging attacks.

Pros: Alex is the main character of SF3, dammit! If R. Mika can be discussed, then surely Alex can.

Cons: He isn't any more popular than the remaining SF3 characters.

Odds: 7-1. Now that most of the hardcore favorites are in SSF4, Alex can finally get his time in the sun.

Elena

Elena is the only capoeria fighting in Street Fighter and the only character who exclusively uses kick attacks. And isn’t it odd that SSF4 has two stages set in Africa but no fighters from the continent?

Play Style: Mix-up game based on overhead attacks, normal throws, and knockdowns.

Pros: Elena has a unique play style. She could be powerful in SSF4 thanks to her wake-up games and Focus Attack-breaking normals and target combos.

Cons: She might not be used much since people playing her have to guess often, and her attacks sometimes don't work the way you would like them to.

Odds: 7-1. Out of the remaining women not in Street Fighter 4, Elena makes the most sense.

Hugo

Another Final Fight alum, Hugo was a recurring enemy who was transformed into an Andre the Giant homage for the Street Fighter 3 games.

Play Style: Brutal power and 360 throws. He's even stronger than Zangief and T. Hawk.

Pros: Ono mentioned Hugo as a possible new character and could be packaged with Rolento.

Cons: Street Fighter 4 doesn’t need another giant grappler, and big, slow Hugo wouldn't like fireballs.

Odds: 15-1. Hugo isn't the most exciting prospect, but at least we'd see more goofy cartoon reactions from his opponents when he squashed them.

Urien

Street Fighter 3's Urien was originally created as a non-broken version of final boss Gill. He is now the last competitively popular character from 3rd Strike not in SSF4.

Play Style: Poking, juggle combos and unblockable setups using his Aegis Reflector super combo.

Pros: He could finally bridge the storylines between SF3 and SF4, if you're into that.

Cons: His Aegis Reflector wouldn't work the same way it did in 3rd Strike due to how SSF4's super meter and engine are different.

Odds: 30-1. Short of including a new special as a replacement for Aegis Reflector, Urien probably wouldn't meet expectactions.

Q

Q wasn't a great character in 3rd Strike, but several Japanese players have made a name for themselves using this mysterious masked man.

Play Style: Brutal damage with close-range combos.

Pros: Q would be a treat for the arcade edition's intended audience: hardcore Japanese arcade warriors who have played Street Fighter for years.

Cons: Q, along with Oro and Necro, is considered a “freak” character who turned people away from the SF3 games.

Odds: 30-1. As Q himself would say, "...."

Poison

Final Fight’s Poison would have been another generic beat-'em-up enemy if Capcom didn’t take a confusing stance on the character's gender (Poison is a crossdressing male in Japan and a post-op transsexual in America). Poison reappeared as Hugo’s manager in SF3, which raises the question: Can Poison fight, too?

Play Style: Poison's only playable appearances have been in the terrible Final Fight Revenge and the never-released Capcom Fighting All-Stars, so she doesn't have a set play style.

Pros: Poison would be a new character to the Street Fighter series, and it’d be great to see at least one new character.

Cons: How can someone who took less than one combo to KO in Final Fight stand up to the likes of Ryu and Sagat? At least Sodom and Rolento were bosses and Hugo was an elite mook.

Odds: 75-1. Like a current-gen sequel to Chrono Trigger, Posion seems like a fan request that will never see the light of day.

A New Challenger?

The point of my first article was that a brand-new character would be more fun and less contentious than reviving a character who wouldn't meet expectations.

Pros: So far, SF4 has done a great job of making characters that are unique both in design and gameplay. Even if some characters aren’t the best, they’re still useful and fit in with the rest of the cast.

Cons: It’s easier to bring back an old character than to create a new one. SSF4's Juri went through numerous designs before Capcom settled on her final look, and no one thought that Street Fighter would ever have a Turkish oil wrestler like Hakan.

Odds: 25-1. Let's see one more one more for the road, Capcom.