Poison, the latest addition to Street Fighter X Tekken roster (and other Capcom fitting games), is often the centerpiece of many conversations. Why, you ask? Well, let’s just say it’s a bender… a gender bender. For years, Poison has confused many gamers as to exactly what he/she is. Some say she’s a she, and others say she’s a he. So, as you can imagine, it’s very confusing.
Who is Poison?
Originally, Poison hit the scene in Capcom’s fight 2D brawler, Final Fight, and was a punching bag for our fearless trio of Cody, Guy, and Haggar. All was well when the title was released in Japan for the Super Nintendo, as the country at the time didn’t have any issues having a female mix things up with a male.
However, upon hitting North America, it was deemed that hitting a woman was wrong. This is when things started getting dicey, and several changes were put in place for the North American version of Final Fight on the Super Nintendo.
It was bad news in the States to have a female being beaten down (or putting a beat down) in fighting games at that time. As such, Poison and her palette swap, Roxey, were replaced with the characters “Billy” and “Sid.” as seen below. However, the only difference between the characters was that the male characters had different hair, gained some muscle on their arms, and wore pants. They acted the same, and that’s when things started getting weird, as people who knew of the Japanese version of Final Fight started questioning things.
But since then, things have changed, and it is common to see females such as Chun-Li, Cammy, Mia, King, and Mary Blue, to name a few, being featured in fighting games. With this being the norm now, Poison saw a return to “her” former self. But did Poison really become a she again?
According to Yoshinori Ono, producer of Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter x Tekken, who spoke on this a year or so ago;
“In North America, Poison is officially a post-op transsexual. But in Japan, she simply tucks her business away in order to look like a girl.
So, in the words of Admiral Ackbar…..
But it gets a bit thicker as Ono goes back and forth over this matter. One moment, he claims Poison is a post-op, then later says he’s leaving it up to the fans.
So I suppose, for now, you either side with what Ono said, or you decide for yourself.