Bang's Blogs: M. Bison vs Rugal Bernstein



(Kaiser)

(Riley)

(Sharaku Jr.)

(blessedaura)

(TrexGamer)

(Tario)

(Cryotechnics)

(Kaiser v2)

(T0m)

“It isn’t that the evil thing wins—it never will—but that it doesn’t die.” - John Steinbeck

M. Bison, the Undying Lord of Street Fighter.

Rugal Bernstein, the Unending Calamity of The King of Fighters.

In today’s blog, we will be pitting two of fighting game’s biggest megalomaniatic crime bosses against each other in a battle for dominance over the world! Will M. Bison crush Rugal under his heel, or will he grovel at the knees of the Nightmare? Bow beneath the mighty in this DEATH BATTLE!


Before We Start…

For Bison, we will be factoring in every mainline Street Fighter title released up until Street Fighter 6, plus supplementary material related to them such as the Street Fighter Alpha Manga and Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind as examples. We will also be factoring in the Udon comics, but not the crossovers like the Street Fighter vs Darkstalkers comics for obvious reasons. There are also a few manga in consideration, such as Sakura Ganbaru! or Ryu Final, which either are canon or have direct influence found in the games. Additionally, we will be adding feats from games within the Street Fighter universe, like Rival Schools or Final Fight. We even found a few Street Fighter III manhua that we decided to throw in here just ‘cuz.

For Rugal, we will likewise be using every mainline entry in The King of Fighters. The Destiny webseries will also be considered as a retelling of the events of KOF ‘94, and whose story was reviewed by SNK. The same goes for the newer KOF manga like A New Beginning or the Shingo isekai, which were also reviewed and even have some influence over the direction of the games. Additional spinoffs such as The King of Fighters: Kyo and SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy will also be on the table. We will also be factoring in the various KOF manhua, excluding the ones made for crossovers like NeoGeo Battle Coliseum or SVC Chaos. Finally, much like Street Fighter, we will be looking into series that share continuity with KOF, such as Samurai Shodown or The Last Blade.

As for Capcom vs. SNK, its canonicity is dubious at best, as the arguments from both Street Fighter 6 and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves would only apply to the original Fatal Fury timeline, one Rugal doesn’t exist in, meaning Capcom vs. SNK itself being canon is dubious. Besides, if we did use it, Rugal would just canonically win anyways, and that’s no fun.


Background


M. Bison

"Bow down before my Psycho Power!”

Once, there was merely a young martial artist. Born in a country unknown, he strived for power and had ambitions big enough to alter history itself. Training under a master, he simply wanted to be the best when it comes to fighting. He wielded a truly magnificent power, Soul Power, a special ability that can make physical might and mental fortitude into tangible weapons. However, he passed down his knowledge of Soul Power into his disciple, a woman simply named Rose. Things were peaceful for a while, wonderful, and even beautiful, but this young man’s ambitions slowly began to grow. They grew larger and larger, until one day, his ambitions for power grew too large. One faithful day, the young man murdered his master for the title of strongest around. For Rose, this day was the worst day of her life, but for the young man? It was only Tuesday. Afterwards, he discarded the pitiful Soul Power and now armed with the chaotic Psycho Power, he would go down in history as a demon amongst men, with ambitions to conquer the Earth, all with a simple yet bonechilling name - M. Bison.

Forming the tyrannical syndicate known as “Shadaloo”, he recruited some deadly fighters to his cause such as the bullheaded boxer, Balrog, the noble killer, Vega, the mountain of a man, Sagat, his own financial advisor simply known as JP, and his horse he named Rocinante. Together with his organization, M. Bison would strive for what else, but world domination because of course he would. After murdering his master, he’d travel the globe, fighting all who peeked his interest until one day, he heard about the so-called “Assassin’s Fist” technique and tracked down Gouken, heir to the Ansatsuken. Expecting this, Gouken fought M. Bison, but refused to use his powerful techniques like the Hadoken or the Shoryuken which resulted in Gouken’s defeat. Angered by this, M. Bison cursed the old man for not showing him the real power of the Ansatuken, taking note that his two students, Ryu and Ken, seem much more willing to show him the Ansatuken’s might in the future.

Soon, the years dragged on as M. Bison continued to be the master behind Shadaloo and continued to try and take over the world, but his plans would always go up in flames due to those blasted “Street Fighters” (if the cartoon is to be believed). He’d make a few enemies here and there like Ryu, Chun Li, Juri, and pretty much everyone else in the world, make a few clone bodies for himself like Cammy, Seth and Juni, get killed by Akuma…wait what? Yeah, so Akuma snuck behind M. Bison and performed the legendary Shun Goku Satsu, killing him… but don’t worry, Bison got better. No really, his Psycho Powers makes him stupidly hard to permanently kill. He'd supposedly been killed multiple times but he always came back more determined for global conquest than ever…until one day, he never got back up.

After mocking Ryu’s pitiful power compared to his Psycho Power, Ryu and M. Bison have a final clash, and with one last Hadoken, M. Bison starts to fade away, being consumed by Ryu’s Power of Nothingness as he just laughed, Shadaloo’s HQ crumbling alongside its master…but of course somehow, M. Bison had returned. But now, he had no organization, no fancy clothing, not even a name or memories to go by, all he had was his Psycho Power and thirst for conquest, following his Psycho Power as it urges him to defeat stronger and stronger foes to satiate its hunger. So, when M. Bison burns away everyone and everything you know and love with a devious cackle, remember that to him, it’s like you never even existed to begin with.

Rugal Bernstein

"Was that all of your power?"

In the year 1994, invitations were sent out to the world’s greatest martial artists; fighters from all walks of life were hand-picked to join a tournament to see whose skills and power would reign supreme: The King of Fighters. Teams of three would form to compete against one another to claim glory, until only one is left standing.. that is, until they can triumph over the mysterious host who sent the invitations out to begin with, only known by his initial, “R.”

This would be Rugal Bernstein, arms dealer extraordinaire and feared in the underworld for not just his cunning and ruthlessness, but the combat prowess to back it all up. In his youth, he was attacked by the wicked priest Leopald Goenitz, a herald for the destroyer deity called the Yamata-no-Orochi; Rugal was brutally beaten and lost an eye for his troubles, but his tenacity and survival piqued Goenitz’s interest, and this led Rugal to be infused by a portion of Orochi’s power. With this, his criminal empire grew; all those who opposed him would find themselves not just brutally beaten to death, but their bodies encased in liquid metal - trapped as statues to serve as a testament of his strength.

Rugal would later confront the champions of his tournament: Team Japan, composed of Kyo Kusanagi, Benimaru Nikaido and Goro Daimon. Their battle tested the limits of all involved, ending with Rugal’s defeat; unwilling to accept defeat at their hand, he would self-destruct his airship in an attempt to take his opponents down with him. While they would escape in time, Rugal would seemingly perish… had it not been for the power of Orochi coursing through his veins. Seeking revenge, Rugal would brainwash Kyo’s father Saisyu and enact another King of Fighters tournament the following year, now more willing to unleash more of his strength to deal with his opposition.

With Team Japan triumphing once more, Rugal challenged them to yet another battle. Upon failing yet again, he attempted to channel more of the Orochi power for another wind… but this would prove to be his downfall; as his body was unable to withstand more energy, Rugal would be consumed by Orochi entirely - dying in a massive explosion that left no trace behind. HIs reign of terror would cease, but his legacy lived on: the King of Fighters tournament became a recurring tournament, often hosted by other nefarious characters with their own goals as well. Even his children Adelheid and Rose would have their chances at running their own tournaments, albeit not to the same malevolent intent as their own father.

The defeat of the dark entity called Verse in the 14th King of Fighters tournament would see many deceased combatants of past entries return from the dead to take on a whole new world of challengers, Rugal included. With yet another chance to establish his empire, he is ready to dive back into battle and enact his cruel vengeance on the world once more…


Experience & Skill


M. Bison

Calling M. Bison anything less than a master at fighting would be a foolish claim, for he is an incredibly skilled and deadly fighter who's been trained for a majority of his life. It got to the point where Ryu considered him one of the greatest martial artists to ever live and even Akuma recognized him as a worthy opponent. Even before he got Psycho Power which he used to develop his personal fighting style, he was skilled enough to gain an apprentice of his own. And while it may seem like he gets his henchmen to do the dirty work for him, he’s more than happy to personally connect your face to the pavement beneath his boots.

As the founder and commander of Shadaloo’s several bases around the world, M. Bison has gained control over all the other criminal organizations, having access to advanced technology such as Juri’s Feng Shui Engine, extensive military resources, and had the fingers in every type of both legal and illegal activities, including drug trafficking, arms manufacturing, human experiments and controlling the high ranks of the US military. He has also correctly predicted a number of events that would unfold over the years, having manipulated Seth to make sure everything went according to his plan, Necalli’s arrival and defeat by Ryu’s hands, and even his own demise, always managing to cheat death with a number of backup plans in case he’s foiled.

Despite his defeats in games like Alpha 3 implying otherwise, Bison’s own skills has led him to have quite the repertoire of victories in his fighting record. He’s defeated and given quite a tough time to seasoned fighters like Charlie, Juri or Fei Long, has easily dispatched of Seth, a bio-warrior who has taken the martial arts of many warriors around the world after seeing them once, and is also said to have a much greater skill than even his former subordinate Sagat, the King of Muay Thai who became the representative of his country and dethroned the previous Muay Thai king when he was 15. Though speaking of Ryu, nothing gets as frequent as his battles with the Students of the school of Ansatsuken, both Ryu and Ken have the skill to win plenty of fighting tournaments, defeat 20 muay thai fighters and even beat fighters like Karin, who has trained in all sorts of martial arts. And yet, Bison has been able to defeat or handle both at the same time.

Rugal Bernstein

Rugal is a master at many different fighting styles and martial arts, most of which he’s learned from other fighters via observation, as implied after defeating the Art of Fighting Team. These include the likes of the Hakkyokuseiken and the styles used by the House of Strolheim, which Rugal particularly favors alongside a Gesamtkunst composite. Such abilities originate from the likes of Geese and Krauser, with moves such as Reppuken and Kaiser Wave respectively. Manhuas extend Rugal’s past in fighting even further, as we know Rugal had been fighting since he was a newborn (yes really), fending off every disaster from wars, natural disasters, and animals that came his way before taking on many fighters across the world and stealing their abilities.

With these moves in mind, Rugal’s approach to fighting is using his pure physical strength to counter and punish his opponents, capitalizing on the opportunity of when they make a mistake and gain the exact opening he wants. One strategy that he employs in question is to boast against his opponents to enrage them so that he can see all of their moves, then copy them right back. He is also a renowned crime lord and arms dealer, who once controlled the world’s black market by supplying weapons and drugs, with his involvement in various global conflicts having placed him on Interpol’s radar and can manipulate future events like when he learned of his future death. It is said that Rugal could single-handedly wipe out 100 guerillas by himself, which is supported by him having massacred 50 elite members of Heidern’s former mercenary unit as a testament to his strength, and he has used that very same strength to defeat many warriors around the world to turn them into his own personal statues as proof of his victories.

For someone who mostly schemes from behind the scenes, Rugal kicked his fair share of ass in the KOF roster. He’s beat all of the KOF 94 Fatal Fury team while holding back, once beat experienced fighters like Saisyu and Heidern simultaneously in just one move, and even fought other figures of the criminal underworld like Geese Howard, who he predictably claimed victory over, or his less disappointing half brother Krauser, who Rugal not only battled for 100 rounds straight but also eventually surpassed him by copying his own moves against him.


Equipment


M. Bison

Psycho Drive

A machine created by Shadaloo used to help Bison store negative energy derived from fear and hatred along with the strength of fighters should they be caught in it, which can be converted into Psycho Power for Bison to amp himself with even at a distance. It can also help Bison regenerate from wounds and to brainwash people, though if the machine is used too much, it can prove to be detrimental to Bison’s mental health and even cause him to straight up explode and die if the machine is directly destroyed.

Shadaloo Satellite

A satellite that Shadaloo has orbiting the planet. When used in tandem with the Psycho Drive, it is capable of firing beams of psychic energy with enough power to destroy entire cities, warships and can further amplify it through a magnifying glass on the satellite.

Bison Dummy

If Bison is feeling especially scummy, he can summon a near exact replica of himself that can briefly fight and act for him to distract his opponent and get his opening, kind of like a fleshy Doombot.

Rocinante

H O R S E

Rocinante is Bison’s personal steed as shown in Street Fighter 6. Found on the brink of death in South America, the horse was found and recovered by Bison and renamed “Rocinante” (the same name as Don Quixote’s horse in the 1605 novel). The neat thing about this steed is that Bison literally brought it back to life with Psycho Power and it survived through willpower alone. Yes, THE HORSE IS INFUSED WITH PSYCHO POWER! DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS THE HUMAN MIND IS NOT PREPARED FOR!

Unfortunately we never see its capabilities, sadge.

Truck

At the end of the Street Fighter 2 anime movie, Bison took this truck from who the hell knows where for a little Psycho Drive to go on a road rage.

Bison Bucks

In the Street Fighter movie. M. Bison has become such a global powerhouse that he now is the proud investor of his very own currency and will pay his servants with these bucks. They have a transfer rate of 5 UK Pounds (£).


Rugal Bernstein

Cybernetic Eye

After having his right eye torn out by a certain Hakkeshu of the Winds, Rugal replaced it with a cybernetic one. It’s more than just a simple replacement, however. It is capable of firing small bursts of energy or even massive, sweeping lasers. Most surprising of all though, Rugal’s own cybernetic eye can even induce, yes, hallucinations like some sort of crazy Genjutsu. He can expand the red light of his eye to show you a one hundred percent accurate future of your death by showing your fear of it while you remain there standing like a sitting duck, so if you match gazes with Rugal, watch out.

Metal Arm

After the Black Noah blew up in Rugal’s first outing, he replaced his arm with a prosthetic metal arm which he can channel electricity through to shock his foes.

Self-Destruction Switch

Any time Rugal loses a fight in his headquarters, whether it be a flying airship, a missile base, or a submarine in the depths of the ocean, he always has a way to send everybody in the nearby vicinity up in flames. What a sore loser.

Black Noah

Weighing up to 70,000 tons, the Black Noah is a massive ship and aircraft carrier that acts as Rugal’s own personal, private, Bond villain style lair, which he presumably uses to carry out many of his illegal activities on the black market. While it has been destroyed several times in the past, they typically contain things like security cameras and many computer screens to superveil any kind of activity, and since Rugal’s a calculating bastard who’s always one step beyond, he has built in many traps inside it should an unwanted visitor show up. Including sleeping gas, metal doors that he can close anywhere, a labyrinth with a squared pattern with paths that randomly close themselves, and rooms that can repel energies that fighters use such as Ki or Psycho Power.

Black Crystals

The Black Crystal is a nerve device that both Rugal and Geese Howard stole from the US military for their own nefarious purposes and contains the power of the Orochi. It has the capability to absorb and contain the energies of a target before shooting a special radiation into their body, greatly increasing the human potential of a person within a short period of time at the cost of their sanity, being in effect until they tire out and die. While Rugal hasn’t used the crystal at its fullest, he has kept a shard of the crystal that he stabbed into himself to combine the Black Crystal with his Orochi Blood and further increase his own potential with no risk of the side effects.

Perhaps the crystal’s other greatest capability is its ability to brainwash others into following the commands of Rugal, either done via strapping victims to the device or through portable devices that Rugal placed on the ventilation system of the Black Noah which contain pieces of the crystal itself. Either way, any foe can be turned into a mindless servant if Rugal wants to seal their consciousness within it, and speak of consciousness. Since the device gives the power of the Orochi to those affected, it contains a powerful spiritual defense that will protect against abilities like Athena’s Psycho Power; either via blocking her psychic vision or directly attacking her in those same psychic visions.

Rodem

Rugal’s pet panther who accompanies him in his intro animations as well as appearing in the background of his stage and can assist Rugal himself should he be in a bind. Nothing else more to add, it’s a fucking panther you know what it can do. (also, Babel II reference)

Cigar

On the occasion that he feels like proposing a deal to someone in the black market, Rugal sometimes packs cigars. There’s nothing special about it…. Which is what I would have said if Rugal hadn’t shown his cigarette flicking skills to be strong enough to deflect attacks from K9999.


Abilities


M. Bison

Psycho / Soul Power

M. Bison’s bread and butter, Psycho Power is the superior and more chaotic version of Soul Power, a force which is based around using spiritual and mental energy to create matter around oneself. He uses it to enhance his physical stats like strength, speed, and durability to beyond superhuman levels and uses it for most of his strongest moves like his Psycho Crusher or Psycho Shot. He can also wield it as an energy to attack without lifting a single finger or protect himself with forcefields, reflect ki based projectiles, create portals for surprise attacks and even outright electrocute them with Psycho Power. Additionally, it can instill such a high amount of fear into Bison’s opponents that they cannot remain rational, even at the slightest similarity or mention of Psycho Power, as well as make his foes feel “intoxicated".

According to Bison himself, Psycho Power feeds off negative emotions like anger, hatred, and fear of others, including the negative emotions of the foe Bison is currently facing. He can not only provoke them to gain more power but M. Bison’s own raw rage can even fuel and enhance it to greater results. Psycho Power, while not inherently evil, can allow someone to surpass their normal limits, very similar to the likes of the previously mentioned Soul Power and even the Satsui No Hado. By surpassing limits, we mean that it basically breaks the rules of reality. After all, Psycho Power is what lets M. Bison do out of this world stuff such as…

Teleportation

Psycho Power allows M. Bison to teleport in the blink of an eye. He’s gotten so proficient at it that he can easily teleport quite a lot around mid fight to pull off some nasty combos and get the jump on the unlucky soul who made him mildly annoyed a few seconds prior.

Telekinesis

Psycho Power unsurprisingly lets M. Bison becomes a very powerful psychic, being able to kick your ass literally without even needing to lift a finger. He’s used his newfound psychokinetic abilities to do anything from lifting and sending his foes flying to outright crushing them via enhancing gravity and even stopping bullets mid air.

Mind Control

With Psycho Power, you can’t trust M. Bison with anything, not even your own mind. He can use Psycho Power’s hypnotism to control the minds of any peon who dares stand against him, influencing their emotions to fall into his game by messing with their memories, using their relationships against them or infusing them with enough Psycho Power to turn them into mindless loyal servants that will obey his every order and send out to fight. This is how he was able to create his own line of Shadaloo Dolls and bend the minds of other Shadaloo servants like Balrog and Vega.

It should be noted that Bison’s brainwash depends on the person being used on as the effectiveness of his mind control also varies on how much Psycho Power they have been infused with. Those who have a strong will, for example, are able to temporarily fight against it and even overrule it outright if they’re called out by someone, are shown a reminder of their past or they’re threatened to be killed by Bison himself. However, others like Juli have shown utmost loyalty to Bison or in the worst of cases, been turned into hollow husks from constant Psycho Power experimentation.

Also, it’s worth noting that a decent amount of Bison’s instances of mind control usage are specifically done with machines that are not readily available to him and done so after him defeating his enemies, though he has shown to use it with his own Psycho Power on rare occasions.

Possession

When Bison sees no need for his current body anymore due to the strain that his own power places, he can possess any lowly being and take over their body by sending his own soul as Psycho Power. It can let him cheat death over and over and over so long as even a single trace of his spirit remains. In fact, one of the reasons Bison had a variety of dolls like Cammy, Juni, and Juli was because they were potential bodies he could possess should the situation have come to that. Ever since then, he has made up various backup bodies identical to his original one that are more powerful than the last, at least until he could find a suitable vessel for his body to suit his incredible power.

Even when Ryu destroyed him with the Power of Nothingness, Bison’s spirit has been able to return to his same destroyed body in a matter of just a few years, albeit with no memories. This is because even after his death, Psycho Power is still ever present around the world and has a semblance of Bison’s will as shown by how characters related to Bison’s Psycho Power like Falke or Ed have previously struggled in their minds against Bison’s attempts to eat away at their minds, though with their strong mind and capabilities they were able to hold him off.

Illusions

An ability from its pure counterpart Soul Power. Users can fool the mind of others by creating physical tangible illusionary clones or even putting others in illusionary worlds where they can’t fight back. In the EX games, Bison has shown similar abilities by creating physical clones of himself. With this, it should be fair to assume that Bison could perform the same as Psycho Power is just Soul Power used with evil intent.

Energy Absorption

…you’re not gonna believe us on this one. In one of the two existing Street Fighter III manhuas, Bison is capable of specifically absorbing ki from his opponent so long as they fondle his balls. No, we’re not kidding. And for some reason, this isn’t even the only documented instance of ball fondling in this specific manhua.

Sharaku: This is the worst thing I had to research for this blog. I want to tear my eyes out.

T0m: This is also the worst thing I translated.

Door: This is the worst thing I had to bear witness to. What the fuck.

Kaiser: This is far from the worst thing in this manhua :^)

Cryo: This is funny as fuck why are y’all complaining lmao (he doesn’t know)

Trex: I should sue you all for physical and emotional damage- wait tf you mean this ain’t the worst thing in this???

Yuix: This is kinda hot I’m gonna be for real- I’m paying some good Bison Bucks for this.

Aura: Bison clearly wins the freak off

Tario: Bison lowkey packing

Kuma: We’re getting Top 1 fighting game blog award for this one guys

T0m: Bison can also drain energy normally in SFIV Omega, but that would be nowhere near as funny would it?

Bang: Nice

Toxin: I hope that M Bison wins his next Death Battle episode through ball fondling now

Fire Manipulation

In that same terrible dogshit Street Fighter III manhua we were just talking about (with the ball fondling), Bison uses fire. A lot. For some reason, his power is in fact mostly portrayed as incredibly potent flames. Flames that are hot enough to melt entire factories and be compared to lava… you can probably guess how much oversight Capcom had on this manhua.

Sharaku: You’re so lucky I read this fucking thing so you didn’t have to.

Healing (Debatable)

With Psycho Power, Bison has, on very rare occasions, transferred that power into someone or something to regain its strength, like what M. Bison did to his now trusty H O R S E, Rocinante. Now, whether or not Bison can do this to himself to regain his own health or power is highly questionable, but it felt important to bring up.

Moveset

Resistances


Rugal Bernstein

Ki

Like many of the other fighters, Rugal’s own combat mastery and extreme plagiarism has led him to use his Ki, an energy that is shaped from the Earth’s nature. Due to having copied moves of the Hakkyokusseiken school like the Reppuken, it’s likely he can do this. He can wield it around any part of his body to imbue his attacks, shoot projectiles from his arms or legs, release an overwhelming pressure of wind to push others and even cover his entire body in a flaming aura to clash against other foes. Should he ever run low on energy, or in this case a super meter, he can charge his energy from within with a method known as “Power Up Psyche”.

Power Copying

Rather infamously, Rugal was initially intended to be able to copy the powers and fighting styles of the opponents he fought after seeing them just once. However, due to hardware and gameplay limitations present in the Neo-Geo console, this idea was scrapped in terms of gameplay purposes (rightfully so, as Rugal is already a total bastard to fight). However, shades of this remain in-game. Several win quotes in KOF ‘94 have him directly copy styles from the Kyokugen Team, and he has special moves from Athena Asamiya, Geese Howard and Wolfgang Krauser, implying his superiority. Fun fact, Krauser himself has shown similar copying in some of the OVA films.

If that wasn’t enough, his reappearance in the series KOF Destiny takes this even further, as he can copy moves he’s seen just once. He was able to copy physical moves like Terry’s Crack Shoot, cutting wave projectiles like Heidern’s Cross Cutter and even the holy flames of the Kusanagi Clan, something that’s normally thought to be impossible as only those of the Kusanagi blood can wield the flame and necessary mastery is needed to wield it. By this era, even normal moves from Kyo were stated to be capable of getting rid of darkness and incinerating demons with its purifying flames, and have shown to seal or nullify powers like those of the Orochi.

Even the manhuas add onto Rugal’s incredible copying skills. He can absorb other’s martial arts by getting a grasp over them, giving him the power of their secret arts and every movement they’ve done like performing such moves as Krauser’s blitz ball. It should be noted that his copying in this continuity only works if the foe is at a lower/comparable strength to Rugal himself, like when Goenitz was able to completely negate his own copying due to him being much stronger, however Rugal later trained to a point that he could surpass the Hakkesshu and not just choke out Orochi that he couldn’t escape, but absorb all of his friggin power for himself, meaning that he should be capable of performing the same powers that Orochi has shown. All this is to say that Rugal’s plagiarism knows no bounds.

Electric Restraints

From both hands, Rugal can release rings of electricity that restrain his foes, he can shoot up to multiple of these or even control them telekinetically. Though if Rugal is attacked in the midst of this, the restraint will quickly dissipate.

Energy Absorption and Redirection

Rugal’s impressive Ki control has allowed him to absorb any energy based attacks for himself or outright nullify attacks like the Kusanagi flame to the point of being able to crush them in his hand, even condensing attacks like dozens of lightning bolts thrown at him into balls of energy to throw them back at his opponent… and this time, we mean the other kinds of balls. Similarly, other fighters affected by the power of the Black Crystals have been able to redirect ki attacks back into their opponent.

Memory Manipulation

With just a grasp, Rugal can drain away all of your memories down to the last drop should he want to be in any of your secrets. Thanks to draining Shingo’s memories, he has gained insight into the events of future games that Rugal hadn’t been present like KOF 96 and 97 down to the last minute detail, like the power levels of fighters or the moves they performed.

Power of the Great Universe

Exclusive to the manhua verse, the Power of the Great Universe is a general term used for the powers that are born from both the potential capacity and mental powers of the human brain instead of physical energy. While incredibly destructive under the wrong hands… This power isn’t inherently evil, and is instead decided by both the personality and the destiny of the person in question; when used, it allows one to manifest the “form” of both their destiny and mind into reality. They can take any shape from flames, future prediction powers, lightspeed punches or even outright reality warping.

But for Rugal, his power of the great universe is certainly one of the greatest, all thanks to his unyielding hunger for well… power. He can use his own wrath to go way past his initial limits and increase his power by a ridiculous amount to overpower his opponents, the increase is typically indicated by a little percentage in panels that can range from 200% to 500%/600% or a friggin 1000%. This ability is known as Infinite Wrath or Infinitely Strong Wrath.

Orochi Power

After surviving an attack by Goenitz, Rugal was granted power from Orochi. Many of Rugal’s attacks are drawn from Orochi, as denoted by the menacing skull that erupts on impact. Orochi and their followers draw their power directly from the elements of Gaia itself.

Fear Inducement

Those who have the power of Orochi, like Rugal, induce a powerful pressure around them that causes even battle hardened warriors like Heidern to shit bricks and even stop them in their tracks. Said fear is said to be "darkness" itself, the thing all humans fear primordially and continue to hate, that warps the surrounding area as if time and space. This aura grows in intensity the more one gets closer or if Rugal amps it further by… jumpscaring his opponent.

Sharaku: Originally this was gonna be another bullet point but then I drew this so y’know.

Regeneration

Perhaps one of the most consistent traits of the Orochi energy is the ability to regenerate. In the games, Orochi himself shows the ability to regenerate his skin after clawing it. However, extended media elaborates further on this ability as other users of the power of Orochi could heal having their leg or arms broken, twisting their broken neck back into place, heal their neck being cut, regenerate holes in their stomach or most impressively, regenerate from full-body destruction. Both Orochi and important individuals to his plans, such as Iori Yagami, have demonstrated this ability.

However while it might not seem like it at first due to Rugal’s death in KOF 95 being full body destruction, the manhua continuity shows an improved healing factor after having fully absorbed the power of Orochi, which let him survive having most of his limbs and body being pulverized, with the exception for his head... So, not quite full body regen, but still good nonetheless.

Brainwashing

After his escape in KOF 94, Rugal managed to resurrect and brainwash the father of Kyo Kusanagi, Saisyu, into his own personal servant with the power of Orochi. And while the method isn’t exactly known in the games, Rugal’s methods to mess with minds are expressed more bluntly in manhuas, where Rugal managed to turn a then cavewoman Vice into a loyal servant by removing 20 years worth of memories from her after a single grab. And this isn’t new to those with the Orochi power like the Hakkeshu, as Goenitz had been shown to mind control people to his side.

Moveset

Resistances


Forms


M. Bison

Final Bison

Alternatively also known as Bison II or Shin Vega/Bison, Final Bison represents an M. Bison that utilizes all the Psycho Power that he can muster upon re-entering his body after defeat. It can be inferred that this is him at the height of his power. This form is best known as the one fought as the final boss of Street Fighter Alpha 3, and in EX3, where he moves, acts faster and gets new moves like duplicating himself or that annoying as hell Ultimate Psycho Crusher. He gets so strong that you need all four of your fighters to beat him. That’s ultimate power if I’ve ever seen it.

Phantom Bison

This is the form that M. Bison takes when his body is destroyed. Although his physical body is gone, his consciousness lives on in this incorporeal form and he can even potentially keep on fighting in this form as shown by his fight with Charlie in A Shadow Falls.

Rugal Bernstein

Omega Rugal

This version of Rugal is him utilizing more of Orochi’s power, following his defeat to Team Japan in 1994. In KOF ‘95, his hair grew spiky and flared up, but in recent incarnations, it seems to just be his normal hairstyle. His speed has seemingly been increased to the point of zooming as demonstrated in his Vanishing Rush attack, and can use Orochi’s power to create large pillars of red energy and drain people’s life force by stabbing them with an energy-infused hand. In KOF XV, Rugal is shown wearing armor on both his shoulders and arms, reminiscent of his brief look during his boss fight in KOF 2002: Unlimited Match.

In the Manhua continuity, Rugal can bring out this form by doing a complicated ritual that lets him unite with Orochi by fusing their blood together. It should be noted however that this transformation requires an extensive ritual by using the souls of the Hakkesshu and the help of Iori, making it questionable if Rugal can even access the form by his own means. Regardless, as Omega Rugal, he gains the ability to warp and manipulate space, but at the risk of Orochi taking over his body over time.


Feats


M. Bison

Overall

Power

Speed

Durability

Rugal Bernstein

Overall
  • Became one of the most iconic fighting game bosses of all time
  • Amassed a collection of worthy fighters after beating them, turning them into his statues
  • Survived on his own in the wilderness for years, working his way up the totem pole by fighting stronger and stronger people
  • Fought tooth and nail for the right to survive, eventually conquering the very Heavens that wanted him dead since his very birth
  • Defeated numerous experienced fighters like Heidern, Geese Howard, Wolfgang Krauser, and Saisyu Kusanagi twice, even managing to brainwash the latter after their second battle
  • Defeated Akuma that one time
  • Has the biggest chest size in KOF
  • Traumatized thousands of Latinoamericans

Power

Speed

Durability

Scaling


M. Bison

Ryu and Ken

Considering his many bouts with the Ansatsuken students across entries like the Alpha games, Street Fighter V, UDON or the Street Fighter 2 animated movie. It’s no surprise that Bison should be able to compare to them given he’s proven quite a tough opponent to both of them and has defeated them on occasions, even necessitating a team up from Ryu and Ken to catch up to him and defeat him.

Ryu:

Ken Masters:

Akuma (Debatable)

It wouldn’t be a Street Fighter blog without the Hardest Working Man on the Planet. While some of you might be wondering what he’s even doing here, especially considering his very first appearance has him instantly wreck Bison, there are arguments for potential downscaling from Akuma. As we’ve said before, Bison has been able to consistently give Ryu a run for his money, and Ryu has fought against Akuma on numerous occasions, and he’s been shown to legitimately challenge the warrior. Just for completionist’s sake, we decided to add Akuma’s feats here just in case.

Not Oni, though. No way in hell can Bison scale to that.

Gill

Similar logic to Akuma, Gill is the final boss of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. While he and Bison have never met or fought each other directly, it is implied that Alex (the main protag of 3rd Strike) canonically beats Gill at the end of the story through rival battle dialogue and his 2nd Impact ending. In Alex’s ending in 3rd Strike, Ryu shows up and beats his ass fairly easily. With this in mind; because Ryu beat someone who allegedly beat Gill, and Bison should be comparable to Ryu in most areas, it’s only fair to assume Bison would be able to scale or at minimum downscale to Gill and feats performed by him.

The Four Heavenly Kings

Of course! Who else better to scale to M. Bison than his right-hand men? His three enforcers who help make up the Four Heavenly Kings should all be comparable to each other, either through fighting the same foes or simply by sharing a status. Sagat in particular has given Ryu a run for his money just as much as Bison has, so scaling all three to each other’s accomplishments is a no-brainer, especially given Bison is (or, rather, was) their leader and is said to have a much greater fighting ability than Sagat already.

Balrog:

Vega:

Sagat:

Misc. Street Fighters

And here is the miscellaneous category that comprises 80% of the playable roster. Bison has fought against and done pretty well against a vast majority of the cast, especially with his showings in more story-focused games like Street Fighter V. Usually, it takes the likes of the Shotos or more mystical characters like Rose to put him away for good (and even then, he’s still one tough son of a bitch). Therefore, anybody else comparable to and below Ryu and the like should be easy for Bison to scale to.

Street Fighter EX Characters

Considering Bison IS literally the final boss across all the Street Fighter EX games and is depicted as a big threat from the little we know of the plot given you need all of your characters to defeat him. It shouldn’t be surprising for him to scale to some of Arika’s cool OCs like Skullomania or Cracker Jack, especially when we consider that other Street Fighters like Ken or Rolento have beaten characters like Allen Snyder and Doctrine Dark according to manuals. Heck, we even know that Darun Mister was the guy who Zangief gave his special chess piece to in Street Fighter V.

Rival Schools Characters

Surprisingly, the fact that Rival Schools takes place within the world of Street Fighter has been kind of overlooked for a lot of blogs. It’s easy to forget, but Sakura Kasugano herself made an appearance in the first game in the arcades and PlayStation. Later on, one of the series’ most well-known characters, Akira Kazama, made her appearance in Street Fighter V, all but confirming the series’ canonicity to each other. Hell, there’s even a playable flashback calling back to the original game where Akira spars with Sakura. Given every character within Rival Schools is generally comparable to each other, any feats they perform should scale to the likes of the Street Fighter cast.

Mike Haggar

Well, well, well. It was high time Haggar, the pipe-wielding former mayor of Metro City who is mysteriously not in Street Fighter 6, made his appearance. While it might seem weird at first considering how people strangely consider him a high tier that no one scales to, many people across the Street Fighter roster have kept up with his companions like Guy and Maki who have fought alongside him across the Final Fight trilogy, and even have defeated the same enemies as they have like Hugo or Rolento.


Rugal Bernstein


Team Sacred Treasures

Ah, the original protagonist squad. Given Rugal has often faced both Kyo and Iori in various media, and Chizuru should be on par with them, scaling to them should be self-explanatory. Additionally, with Rugal making a comeback from the grave in The King of Fighters XV, with the fact the team has become much stronger than the last time they crossed paths with the crime lord, and along with the fact he shows that he hasn’t skipped a beat in terms of being a force to be reckoned with, he should be able to scale to their later stuff as well, along with anyone they’ve faced since his initial departure in the Orochi saga.

In the manhuas, Rugal just directly fights them a lot even on his third return in the KOF 2002 manhua, with Kyo and Iori even being scared of his monstrous power growth.

Orochi & The Hakkesshu

This one may get people to raise some eyebrows, but there actually is precedent for Rugal being on par with many of the Hakkeshu. This might sound wrong, given Rugal had been portrayed as a joke to people like Goenitz before. But ironically enough, games such as KOF Sky Stage have Rugal and the Hakkeshu as bosses after being resurrected by Orochi, and they show no trouble putting up good fights against the playable fighters, even though it's been a good amount of time since their death.

Ironically enough, this is actually consistent with the mainline series and how it treats resurrections as well. Despite the fact that they’ve been dead for a good while, the Orochi Team and Goenitz show no signs of being narratively weaker in strength at all. Bear in mind, they’ve done no on-or-off-screen training prior to returning to the KOF tournament. In fact, the Orochi Team is doing the exact opposite, just lounging around and playing their music mere days before the tournament. And, we know for a fact that previous year’s antagonist teams have been able to match and exceed the power of Orochi and NESTS, and characters themselves are constantly training to grow stronger in-between games.

In KOF XV, Rugal himself gets special treatment alongside Goenitz as one of the challenge bosses, complete with a new super that lets him walk through even the strongest super attacks without flinching or taking damage at all. And back in KOF Sky Stage (which is frighteningly consistent with the lore of the mainline games, more on that later), it’s stated that Orochi’s resurrection this time requires far more power than previous ones. Thus, you can make a legitimate argument that resurrection in the KOF series actually causes characters to grow stronger in power. If Mature and Vice can keep sticking around despite having stayed as spirits since KOF ‘96, it’s not a stretch to argue Rugal can keep up with their level.

Even all the way back in KOF ‘95, Rugal was easily able to stomp and brainwash Saisyu Kusanagi, who is the strongest fighter in the clan’s history ever seen up until that point. This would very much include the likes of the Kusanagi who sealed away Orochi in the first place. That is as direct scaling as it gets. Not to mention that Team Sacred Treasures directly beat Orochi so badly he could barely stand in 97.

Oh, and in the manhuas, Rugal just beats Orochi outright and shows up later in 2002 to put up an insanely good fight against high tiers like K9999, K’ and even the Hakkesshu themselves, blatantly scaling him to the best of the best that the Hakkeshu has to offer.

Amplified Specters

Now this one may also be a bit questionable at first, but it’s fairly easy to explain. If you recall from Geese vs Heihachi, you remember that Geese was able to defeat Verse. What wasn’t mentioned is that he not only beat Verse without getting hit, but he was able to fully overpower and drain Verse of all their power. Add onto the fact Shun’ei later beat Geese while he held Verse’s power, and Rugal being on par with Shun’ei and the rest of the KOF cast come his return should make him scaling pretty clear cut. Casual reminder that KOF: A New Beginning was specifically supervised by SNK and many of its events can hold influence over the games.

Otoma=Raga

Otoma=Raga is the big final boss of the latest installment in the King of Fighters series, with probably some of the craziest displays of power within a boss fight. So how does Rugal scale? Well, it’s all thanks to the fact that Benimaru is canonically one of the three to defeat her, seeing as how he is a part of this version of Team Hero. Given the fact Rugal would definitely upscale from Benimaru, he would definitely be on par with or potentially stronger than Raga.

Misc. KOF Characters

Due to Rugal’s weird prior hobby of turning many fighters around the world he’s beaten as statues and reputation as a strong fighter who hasn’t been beaten up until KOF ‘94, it’s not surprising that he’d contend or be above many of KOF’s mighty fighters like Heidern and Saisyu. In alternate continuities, he beat each member of the Fatal Fury team one by one, defeated his own subordinates like Brian who gave fighters like Benimaru or Andy a tough time and has been able to beat figures of the underworld like Geese Howard or the Dark Emperor, Krauser.

Ikari Team (& Metal Slug)

Psycho Soldier Team

Fatal Fury and Outlaw Teams (& Misc. Fatal Fury characters)

Art of Fighting Team

Team G.A.W.

K’ Team and NESTS characters

Korea Justice Team

Japan Team

Team American Sports

Team Ash & Those From The Past

King of Fighters: Maximum Impact Characters

The Maximum Impact series has often been overlooked when it comes to powerscaling. While they are on the more obscure side, even for the niche that is SNK, there are legitimate in-game feats substantiated by various extra material that the entire cast can scale to just via gameplay, and Iori has faced fighters like Soiree in the Another Day OVA without his actual flame powers. Not a bad showing at all! Let’s hope SNK can re-release these 3D fighters that serve as good time capsules of the early 2000’s (also because Regulation A is actually pretty fuckin’ good).

Samurai Shodown Characters

This should be rather self explanatory on how Rugal should scale. Haohmaru, Nakoruru, and Darli Dagger have directly appeared in The King of Fighters XV, with Nakoruru appearing in The King of Fighters XIV as well as a major player in the story. It’s explained that they have come here via traveling through time, which is a fairly common occurrence in the Samurai Shodown series, as Nakoruru has displayed time travel within the series proper. Additional material, such as The King of Fighters: A New Beginning shows that the KOF characters have no trouble keeping pace with the summoned spirits of the Samurai Shodown cast. Maximum Impact 2 just… has Hattori Hanzo appear as a playable character. Nakoruru can also keep pace with the rest of the fighters in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, which is considered canon. SNK seems to treat them on the same level as the modern fighters, as there’s no visible narrative difference between their power levels. So, Rugal being able to scale to them and their roster of characters should be fine. Additionally, we know a good amount of canonical winners against many of the bosses in the series, with the majority of them being Haohmaru or people who are comparable to him. So yeah, pretty much justifies itself.

Last Blade Characters

Now this may be a new one. Last Blade is a rather (unfairly) overlooked part of SNK’s library of fighting games, but luckily one of their fighters, Hibiki Takane, was able to escape the realms of obscurity and guest star in the newest Samurai Shodown game after getting displaced in time via Shizuka Gozen calling her forth. Not only does her appearance finally tie the Last Blade games into the greater KOF verse, but another character, Zantetsu, is the ancestor of another SNK character: Eiji Kisaragi, from the Art of Fighting series. With these in mind, it shouldn’t be too far fetched for the cast of KOF to scale to the cast of Last Blade, and vice versa.


Weaknesses


M. Bison

Bison’s desire to grow stronger has limits, mainly due to the strain that Psycho Power takes on his host body. If he exerts himself too much, Psycho Power will cause his body to degrade over time and devour his body whole if he makes a single mistake. This led to the creation of multiple back-up bodies for him, which he is forced to inhabit if he wishes to maintain his corporeal form. Bison himself can also be extremely arrogant, and will often underestimate his opponents. Additionally, his own Psycho Power is subject to being nullified by abilities that can temporarily seal or outright purify it like the Power of Nothingness.


Rugal Bernstein

Like any great fighting game boss, Rugal is incredibly arrogant. He sees himself as so far above numerous other fighters that when he’s cornered, he enters an intense rage that’s easy to take advantage of. Massive sore loser that he is, he’s willing to take someone to the grave with him. Rugal’s usage of the Orochi Power is also somewhat flawed, as he can only tap into a certain portion of its energy. His regeneration is not up to snuff with Orochi itself. As depicted in the ending of KOF ‘95, using the Power too much can lead to his death via violent explosion. While he has come back to life as of KOF XV still empowered by Orochi, it is unknown if he is still subject to these same restrictions. Similarly, in alternate continuities like the KOF manhua one is capable of taking his Orochi powers away by draining the riot of blood out of him and destroying it, and transformations like Omega Rugal in these continuities risk possession by Orochi if he uses his abilities too much.


Before the Verdict…


What’s Up With These Manhuas?

Now, some of you with keen eyes might have noticed the fact that we’ve brought up various manhua for this blog. Indeed, in more obscure circles of versus debating, these manhua for both SNK and Street Fighter have been known to an extent for their crazy feats and insane swings in terms of storytelling. Hell, there’s even a few Resident Evil and Dino Crisis ones floating around there somewhere. Pretty sure Leon Kennedy becomes the god of the universe or something? Anyway, for this blog, we decided to take full-on deep dives into the manhua in order to see what we could find, and if we could determine how valid they are to use. Get ready to learn Chinese, buddy.

Let’s start out with SNK’s side, as it has more manhua to talk about. The main ones we looked at were the ones done by the same group of artists, such as Andy Seto and his understudies/successors. These manhuas existed from KOF ‘95 until KOF XII. There were also a few made for spin-offs such as The King of Fighters: Maximum Impact, NeoGeo Battle Coliseum and Buriki One, and even some prequel/bonus stories published about Kyo, Iori and Team Orochi, such as The King of Fighters R and The King of Fighters S. There’s a lot of these manhua done by the same group of people, which means they must’ve been doing something right in SNK’s eyes to keep the license for so long. But let’s get more granular.

Each of the manhua that occupy a canon entry in the KOF series tend to follow the plots of the games decently closely. Obviously, for a long running adaptation, they have to expand on or slightly alter various events in order to make for a serialized story. But in terms of structure, character introductions and specific plot beats, they’re pretty faithful. For example, the one made for KOF 2003 goes out of its way to include recreations of the Team Stories that the games always release as promotional material. KOF ‘98 and others like KOF 2001, KOF 2002 or KOF XII regularly contain recaps of the games in detail, even printing Team Stories from said games in the back of the books. And The King of Fighters R contains characters like Aoi & Souji Kusanagi, Kyo’s cousins who only appeared in the spinoff RPG The King of Fighters: Kyo. So, pretty solid backing already for use in terms of soft-compositing, since most people do the same for the more recent manga The King of Fighters: A New Beginning.

But what about the manhuas made for KOF ‘98 and KOF 2002? Those are non-canon dream match games that are meant to be just for fun and to refine gameplay, so what kind of story did they cook up for those? Well, those were areas that they could go a little crazier in. Interestingly, both follow up on KOF ‘97 and KOF 2001, acting as direct sequels to those stories that flow directly into them. Rugal is especially important in both 98 and 2002, providing their own answers for why he’s returned from the dead to reflect how he’s the final boss of the dream match games.

The KOF 98 manhua involves Rugal beefing with a time-traveling Shingo pulled right out of the battle of Orochi in 97 after Rugal learned of his future defeat in the KOF 94/95 tournaments and the events of later tournaments like the awakening of Orochi. Essentially, it’s a what-if turned canon in the manhua continuity where Rugal planned around his death while following the course of history. He had a clone created to act out in the KOF 95 tournament, then trained off screen to become stronger and sealed himself in a ki repelling room so that no one would track him, waiting until the right moment came for Orochi’s awakening. And 2002 has him get saved after his previous defeat in the 98 manhua by NESTS to cause havoc after the 2001 tournament falls through. It's honestly pretty neat to see them make sense of these dream match games. The manhuas in general have a pretty good sense of continuity between them as well, as the reason that Rose Bernstein has beef with K’ in KOF 2003 is because he beat Rugal in 2002.

But perhaps the best evidence in favor for them comes from a few interviews done with Andy Seto, one of the primary creators working on these manhuas. In them, he consistently reiterates that SNK gave him all the instructions for writing and drawing the manhuas, and as a result he had much less freedom. He even says he spent a lot of time talking with them about what to do, and wasn’t allowed to deviate too far from the original story. It helps that he’s a big fan of the games themselves. So, seemingly, someone at SNK was working constantly with the creators behind these manhuas. Ironically enough, this is somehow more involvement than Capcom has with the Udon Comics. Apparently, the people at Udon weren’t even aware that Street Fighter III took place after Street Fighter V. Go figure.

So, yeah. While they definitely aren’t primary canon, the SNK manhuas fit solidly in soft-composite territory as they were supervised incredibly closely by the original developers and fit in pretty closely to the original story presented with the games. While there are indeed differences and wilder feats for certain characters (why the FUCK is Team American Sports of all people so cracked in it?), we at least know for a fact that they were given the go-ahead by SNK. Great! Simple enough!

Now. Take everything you just read, throw it in the trash, and light it on fire. Those are the Street Fighter manhuas.

Unlike what we know about the KOF manhuas, the only thing we know about the Street Fighter ones is that they have the license from Capcom on the covers to publish their works. That’s it. In fact, it’s incredibly likely that Capcom didn’t supervise these at all. Why? Oh, I dunno… maybe because these manhuas are completely fucking insane?

These manhuas, especially the two existing (and separate) Street Fighter III ones, go off the rails right from the get-go. They don’t even bother to get some basic facts about the lore correct. This goes well past the Udon Comics changing a few things and differing characterization compared to the games. Beyond the comparatively tame things like Bison and many other characters (including the EX ones, oddly enough) showing up in the Street Fighter III era where they’re not supposed to, we have things like:

  • Ken’s wife Eliza being obliterated like Videl in a Gohan fanfic (TWICE)
  • Akuma is Ken's dad
  • Ken turning into a lion-man for a little bit
  • Famous jobber Sean having some kind of insane demonic power in BOTH Street Fighter III manhuas, menacing both Urien and Gill
  • Dan Hibiki fucking dies brutally and horribly
  • Gill wielding a two-colored sword that he never had
  • Ryu and M. Bison accidentally KILLING Chun-Li during a fated showdown
  • Akuma summoning Z-AKUMA from Cyberbots to act as a chi armor
  • Ken and Gill both leaping up into orbit to fight near the moon
  • Abandoning Street Fighter moves almost entirely to have the characters fight like a combination of DBZ and Fist of the North Star
  • All of the ball fondling (five known accounts of it)
  • Gill and Urien’s origin story is witnessing Akuma sexually assault their mother

I think you get the idea. While it’s undeniable that they had the license to publish Street Fighter manhua in China, judging by the stories on display from them, it’s very much obvious that Capcom had no say over what actually happened in them. And honestly, this is kinda consistent. Remember the Malibu Comics? Where Ken is scalped and it's mailed to Ryu? Capcom during this era kinda had a track record of letting the comic artists kinda do their own thing without any sort of supervision, for better or for worse. They’ve gotten better at this, but even nowadays, the Udon Comics still have a pretty notable amount of differences when compared to the games, both in terms of timeline and characterization especially for the Darkstalkers characters. In short, these Street Fighter manhua hold about as much water in a soft-composite as the Brazilian Mega Man comics do. That is to say, almost none at all.

Oh, and the Street Fighter II ones are unlicensed, making them completely unusable. They're also utter fucking nonsense. Go figure.

So, why the hell are they here, then? The official ones, anyway?

Simple. It’s funny.

Okay, for real. We wanted to cover these because literally nobody had ever done it. They’d been talked about before in some smaller circles, but nobody’s actually gone over them with a fine-tooth comb. So we figured we’d do this just to say we did it. But really, they don’t provide too much in terms of feats of strength or particularly special hax that the series doesn’t already have. In fact, that’s a good segway into the next topic…


The Southern Cross

You might have seen this image floating around with several claims attached to it. “Ken and Gill jump to the moon and fight hard enough to send shockwaves across the entire solar system”. While it sounds believable thanks to the insane nature of manhua adaptations… nothing about this actually checks out. In this section we’re gonna explain the context behind what happens in these scans and why you shouldn’t trust untranslated comic pages on the internet.

First off, what the hell is happening? In one of the two existing Street Fighter III Manhua, the plot revolves around a planetary alignment that happens every 1000 years, where 9 planets form a cross shape and their magnetic fields cause untold disasters on Earth. That does end up happening, and stuff starts going down on the planet. Meanwhile, Gill and Ken (the author really likes Ken) are fighting in a Japanese mountain where the focus point of the magnetic interference is located. This has absolutely nothing to do with them directly, they just happen to be there and the planetary alignment just happens by itself. The lightning lines you see are an artistic representation of the planet’s magnetic fields, and their fight still takes place entirely on Earth.

So, is that it? Well, no. After a bit, Gill’s sword (yeah he has a sword in this) just starts moving out to space. After it leaves Earth’s orbit, it absorbs the energy from the magnetic fields of the 9 aligned planets, and fires a large beam down at the Earth. The beam hits the mountain where Gill and Ken are fighting and blows it up, engulfing both in the process. Sounds insane, right? Well, yes, but in the grand scheme of things this feat is not really that impressive. Mainly due to how total stored magnetic field energy works and surface area. The stored energy of a planet’s magnetic field is far, far lower than their gravitational binding energy, with estimates for Earth’s own being far weaker than a lot of big meteor impacts, for example. Using the 9 shown planets’ stored magnetic energy, we were able to calculate the power output of the beam to 4.4678321e28 Joules, or 10.46 Exatons of TNT. Sounds crazy, but of course there’s always a catch: surface area. Since there is no direct scaling chain to the power output of the sword after absorbing the energy, you can’t really scale them to the full power of the beam. Physics dictates that energy is always distributed alongside the entire surface of a body. For this, we’re treating the shape of the beam like a cylinder. In context, the beam originates from the sword, and we know the sword is in outer space. For the height, we use a minimum of 100km for the Karman Line. For radius, it’s pretty simple. We’re shown the width of the beam compared to the mountain, which we’ll assume here to be 500 meters tall. In total, you can imagine the entire beam’s area is much, MUCH bigger than the area of two people, bringing the total energy absorbed by Gill and Ken to… the megaton range. Even if you want to say that the entire energy output of this beam that’s outside of the planet is located on on the circular area of its base, or evenly distributed across the area of the mountain, the energy absorbed by the two characters would still be far smaller than the energy output of the large country power output of Haggar’s feat in Final Fight Revenge.

In conclusion, this feat ended up being kind of a nothingburger. While a potential higher end is possible, it’s still irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. No, Ken and Gill do not create shockwaves across the solar system in a Manhua, and they scale nowhere to this level of power whatsoever.

Oh, and Bison isn't even in this manhua anyways.


Satellite Feats?

Both Street Fighter and The King of Fighters have pretty notorious feats involving satellite lasers. You might have noticed they have been rated pretty differently in this blog than in previous ones involving the series and even the Heihachi vs Geese Death Battle episode. In this section we’ll explain how they work and why they got the rating they did.

Street Fighter

Starting with the Psycho Drive. In Street Fighter Alpha 3, we’re introduced to this superweapon that gathers energy and fires it from a statue in the form of a beam, reaching a satellite in orbit that deflects it to the intended target. In Chun-Li’s ending, M. Bison is seen moving in tandem with the first stage of the beam as it goes up from the statue, flying right into it with his Psycho Crusher. While Bison explicitly saw it coming and still failed to react, other characters like Ken and Fei-Long are still capable of reacting to his Psycho Crusher, granting a (admittedly roundabout) way to scale in reaction speeds to the beam. In terms of AP, it’s also a little… complicated. While the beam directly one-shots Bison in Chun-Li’s ending, he is still capable of absorbing it to power himself in Eagle’s ending (before getting destroyed by it again for… reasons), and it uses Ryu’s energy for power in his own ending, a character who he scales to.

So we got scaling figured out, but what changes? Well, mainly the numbers themselves. If you take a look at the old calculations, they assume 1 second of timeframe for basically no reason. Taking a look at the video itself (Bison’s ending since it’s the one where the firing sequence is actually complete), the timeframe from the beam being fired to it hitting the satellite is closer to 2.4 seconds, which was used to make a more accurate calculation that lowers the original’s result significantly, bringing the speed from Mach 967 down to Mach 514. Speaking of, you might have noticed the calc also says “At most”. That’s because it is a highball, using a shot from the Street Fighter IV OVA instead of the game to gauge the distance between Earth and the satellite. While that’s obviously valid and reasonable, it’s important to note the game itself  portrays a much smaller distance thanks to the Earth’s curvature being portrayed as much smaller and less noticeable, which would change the result significantly if used for footage. This is only relevant thanks to a comparison you can make to KOF’s equivalent feat, which we’ll get to soon enough.

In terms of AP, the Psycho Drive remains mostly the same, in Alpha 3, it’s stated to be able destroy “the capital”, and it does destroy a city in Bison’s ending. While we don’t know what capital Charlie is referring to explicitly, context points to the Shadaloo base being in Thailand, which would strongly suggest the target city is Bangkok. We have different “Psycho Drives” in other media, mostly the UDON Comics and Street Fighter 5. In the latter, we’re shown a laser satellite in F.A.N.G.’s ending, which is supposedly used to destroy cities. In UDON, we’re shown a laser satellite that is used to destroy Easter Island and fire at a volcano in Shadaloo’s base. In any case, the best AP showings would be the high end destruction of Bangkok and the high end destruction of Easter Island, ranking at from a little over 1 gigaton to a little over 4 gigatons of TNT.

In both of the UDON cases, you might have noticed cloud swirls on the planet when these lasers are fired. Unfortunately, it is basically impossible to assign an AP value to that without making several unreasonable assumptions. First off, we have zero idea of what it’s actually doing to the clouds. Gathering them? No way to quantify the mass and the speeds at which they are being moved, as there would logically be several different speeds being applied at the same time. Spinning? We have zero idea of the speed at which they would be spinning, and circular motions imply several sections moving at completely different velocities which would greatly impact the result. On a more directly logical note, the laser is used to destroy cities and light up a volcano, it makes no sense for it to have country or continent busting power against clouds and zero showings above city wide destruction on its actual target. Plus it wasn’t even stated to be stronger than mankind’s combined nuclear arsenal power when it was first shown firing, making it even more inconsistent.

The King Of Fighters

In The King of Fighters 2000, we are introduced to the Zero Cannon, a satellite laser cannon that is used to aim at South Town to destroy it. In two endings, characters interact with its beams. In the Art of Fighting Team ending, Takuma moves and fires a Shinkou-Ken to deflect the beam, and in the Psycho Soldier Team ending, Bao absorbs the beam and fires it back, destroying the satellite. Let’s break this feat down.

Starting with AP. While the Heihachi vs Geese Q&A implied the feat is much lower than city level for reasons, we know that a direct blast is supposed to destroy the entire city according to Heidern. With this in mind, we were able to recalculate the energy necessary to destroy the entire city. Using solely the map of South Town from KOF 2000 (which is inconsistent with other depictions of the city’s map, but some sections are workable enough to calculate), the feat gets from 12 to 45 megatons, and using the map of the entire city from the new Fatal Fury game, it goes up to 266 megatons of TNT. This directly scales to characters like Takuma, who was able to directly overpower the blast, and Bao, who absorbed all of it and fired it back.

Speed is a little trickier. First off, determining the distance from Earth to the satellite is by no means consistent or easy. We can use the curvature of the planet shown in the scene itself, but curvature calcs for angles that small are not always the most reliable, as angle sizing is a mess in itself. Using a wider shot of the planet from an official poster, we can get the distance much higher. While it sounds weird since it’s not footage from the game itself, it would fall under the same logic of using the Street Fighter 4 OVA to gauge the distance between Earth and the Psycho Drive, meaning they’d cancel out. In terms of scaling, it was claimed in the Heihachi vs Geese Q&A that the number would generally be much lower since Takuma and Bao would have reacted to the beam from a much greater distance than one that would grant decent tandem movement. This is false on both ends.

Let’s start with Takuma. If you watch the scene closely you’ll see that Takuma directly moves in tandem with the beam as it is about to hit King. Not only that, he moves FASTER than the beam, and his Shikou-Ken comes out EVEN FASTER. Using the exact same logic that G1 did to calculate Fujitora and Doflamingo’s feat from One Piece, we can calculate his movement and Ki speed. First, the timeframe. There are two different interpretations to be made. After the beam is fired, it shows up above the city in above 1.3 seconds. However, it takes about 3 seconds for the beam to be directly above the characters. Using these two ends we can start. Using exclusively the distance portrayed in the game, Takuma’s movement would be ranging from Mach 511 to 1193 with 1.3 and 3 seconds as the timeframe, respectively, and his Ki speed would range from Mach 2920 to 6914. Using the poster for a high end distance, Takuma’s movement would be ranging from 0.023c to 0.029c with 1.3 and 3 seconds as the timeframe, respectively, and his Ki speed would range from 0.13 to 0.16c.

Moving to Bao, while it’s true that he had a headstart and started flying towards the beam before it fired, he has previously never shown movement speeds that would shorten the gap between the satellite and the Earth in any significant way. Using peak human movement speed for his flight, we can gather that the distance covered by him peaks at 74.4 meters high, way too low compared to several kilometers between the ground and the Zero Cannon. After he absorbs the beam, he shoots it out at astounding speeds, which should likely scale to the speed of his Psycho Power projectiles and therefore to the reactions of the entire cast. Using the in-game depiction of the distance between Earth and the satellite, the speed of Bao’s beam would range from Mach 893 to 0.01c depending on the timeframe. Using the poster for a high end distance, the speed of Bao’s beam would range from 0.04c to 0.53c.

Conclusion

The Psycho Drive can consistently be placed in the low gigaton range for AP, and at most gets Mach 517 for speed as Bison doesn’t do much to warrant tandem faster movement with it (and the speed calc is literally from a different scene). The Zero Cannon’s beam is capable of destruction in the megatons range. Regarding speed, the beam itself can be argued as slower than the Psycho Drive’s high end by using the onscreen depiction of the distance, but Takuma’s movement will match at the lowest possible interpretation, and his Ki speed will always be way faster. Using the same logic of scaling the distance based on different official media, both the beam itself and Takuma’s tandem movement and ki will always vastly outspeed the Psycho Drive. Meanwhile Bao’s beam will always be faster than the Psycho Drive no matter what.

TL;DR: The Psycho Drive is a far stronger feat, while the Zero Cannon is a far faster feat under most interpretations.


The Black Moons… ROUND 2!

This feat is pretty simple to explain. The Black Moons are a group of doomsday weapons that are designed to cause massive EMPs to power Bison with more Psycho Power. The supposed feat is a vision by Necalli showing the Black Moons move adjacent to Bison. This is interpreted as him literally moving them, but it clearly isn’t. Even ignoring that it’s a clearly metaphorical vision, Bison himself does not actually move at all in the scene in question and the supposed sizes of the Black Moons don’t actually match how big they could be realistically, as we literally see one of them in a stage inside a base, and several of them besides a rocket launched satellite in F.A.N.G.’s ending. Unless that rocket and satellite are supposed to be the size of Mars, the moons cannot be as big as previous calcs suggest they are. No one can physically scale to the Black Moons in any way and the feat doesn’t actually exist. Any other calcs for the Black Moons have no way to be applied to anyone’s physicals.

As for why they aren’t included in Bison’s arsenal is also very simple to explain. Each “Moon” requires a control key to be activated in a device at the Shadaloo Headquarters. In order to stop these plans from happening, the programmer of the Black Moons (who is also the friend of Rashid) distributed the control keys to different people. These include: Rashid, Alex, Chun-Li, Guile, Karin, Zangief, and Laura. F.A.N.G. managed to take Rashid’s piece in order to detonate the Black Moon’s EMP placed above New York. We’re hoping you can see the problem now. Bison has never shown to have any of the keys on his person in SFV’s story and can’t reasonably have access to the Black Moons without the use of outside help like lackeys such as F.A.N.G.

In short, no, Bison can not access or activate the Black Moons on his own without help and any feats calced for the Black Moons in particular can not scale to anyone. Even if they did, the results would be much lower than a lot of feats presented in this blog and does not impact the debate in any way.


What About Ingrid?

There’s one last loose end to cover on the Street Fighter side, and it’s a big one. Last year, it was revealed that Ingrid would soon be coming to Street Fighter 6, making her long-awaited debut in a modern fighting game. But who exactly is Ingrid in the first place? And why does she matter in this discussion? Well, Ingrid is a funny character to talk about, given her origins require a bit of context to understand fully if you’re unfamiliar with her character.

Initially, she was meant to be one of the three new original protagonists of a Capcom 3D crossover fighter, Capcom Fighting All-Stars, where she was a Code Holder out to stop a man named Death from blowing up Metro City. But that game ended up getting cancelled due to poor location tests. It ended up getting replaced with Capcom Fighting Evolution, what people largely consider to be the worst Capcom crossover fighter. Kinda ruined her reputation for a lot of people (even though she’s awesome). That game barely had any kind of story at all, minus the endings, so it was harder to get a lockdown on who exactly Ingrid was in this new game, since she was the only one out of the three Code Holders who made the jump into the game.

However, we’d soon get some kind of answer in Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, a re-release of the arcade game including all of the characters from Alpha 3 Upper, as well as new characters done with re-used sprites from Capcom vs. SNK 2. Joining them was Ingrid, using her sprites from Capcom Fighting Evolution. Within her story mode, we got more insight into her character. There, she was said to be a “messenger of the stars”, who was there to reclaim something that Bison curiously stole from her. It’s revealed that one of Ingrid’s crests was helping to power the Psycho Drive. She then uses her powers to time travel into the future, and it seems this might be where her story is going in Street Fighter 6.

Not long after, Street Fighter X Tekken came out. Within its deluxe bundle was a special bonus comic done by Udon Comics themselves, where Ingrid is seemingly the creator of Pandora, the unbelievably powerful macguffin that everybody in the cast is fighting over. Her dialogue in the comic indicates that she’s been around since the beginning of the universe, and her true form is made up of the very stars themselves. Thus, it’s easy to put the pieces together that Ingrid is some sort of creator deity or goddess of sorts, especially given her official epithet in supplementary material published by Capcom is the Eternal Goddess.

With all this in mind, are there any cosmic stats or feats that we can extrapolate from Ingrid that can potentially scale to Bison or the rest of the cast?

No.

Ingrid is consistently displayed as far stronger than the entirety of the Street Fighter cast. During her story mode in Alpha 3 MAX, she effortlessly stomps Evil Ryu, is completely immune to Rose’s powers of divination, and considers Bison a total joke, saying she’ll be able to clean him up in 15 minutes at most. In fact, Ingrid seemingly overloads her seal with energy on purpose in order to disrupt the Psycho Drive, showing there’s far too much power stemming from her for Bison to withstand. Hell, there’s even a line from a Capcom UK video saying she’s the only one to be able to stand up to Oni, someone who is far, FAR out of Bison’s weight class in all continuities. Her win quotes reflect this too, generally taking nobody in the cast as a serious threat to her.

This even extends to crossovers. In her first real appearance in Capcom Fighting Evolution, she beats Pyron, the final boss, with seemingly little issue. In the aforementioned Street Fighter X Tekken, the power of Pandora, the artifact that can easily grant the wishes of any fighter, is stated to be just a small fraction of her actual power. The same power that can effortlessly create 100 Akumas, purify the Devil Gene, outright reject the Psycho Power, turn Ogre into nothing but light particles, and create a copy of Oni for Akuma to fight. And this is all just the smallest bit of what Ingrid left inside Pandora. Even in Project X Zone 2, Ingrid keeps up with the entire cast without a hint of trouble, despite not having her crest (it’s been stolen by Bison again, go figure). The instant she gets her crest back from M. Bison, thus regaining her full power, she’s capable of easily messing with the fabric of time without the use of dimensional portals or technology, saying it’s not much more than a piece of cake.

To sum it all up, at every single possible opportunity presented, even in crossover media outside her home series, Ingrid has been portrayed as the strongest entity in the series by a wide margin. That’s central to the idea of her character; a playful, teasing and cheery yet unimaginably powerful entity who is meant to stand above the cast as someone who only gets fully involved when absolutely necessary. Any cosmic-level feats that Ingrid performs would scale to her, and her alone.

SNK Continuities, How Do They Work?

To briefly explain to anyone unfamiliar to SNK, Fatal Fury and the rest of their fighting like, say Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, Last Blade or the like, contain many links with each other that imply a connected universe between each other due to its long and complicated history, as well as the shifting timelines of KOF that like to play around with the events of games in mainline and move them as happening much earlier or later to fit the setting. For this section, we'll explain how each series connects to KOF as a whole and why, so buckle up.

Lightspeed & FTL KOF?

The King of Fighters franchise has had a controversial history of arguments regarding speed, with many believing their characters should peak at the sub-relativistic ranges (which was around where Death Battle had them the last time the series was featured in the show). In this section we will elaborate on every possible lightspeed argument we could find and weigh on their validity.

  • Sylvie Paula Paula’s electromagnetic attacks: Another one that is pretty straightforward. Sylvie Paula Paula has been stated to utilize electromagnetism powers in her official bios in both English and Japanese, and in her appearance in the KOF XIV Manga. In such appearance, she uses an attack called Mechahaya Reboot, which, according to the move’s description in the manga, fires a blast of concentrated electromagnetism. After the move is fired, Athena is able to react and fire her own Psycho Ball to counter it, which would indicate tandem movement and relative projectile speed.

    You could argue the sphere itself shouldn’t be moving at the speed of light, and that’s a reasonable concern. In the game itself, Sylvie has several projectile electromagnetic beams that are frame 1 and don’t allow tandem movement. However whenever the Mechahaya Reboot projectile hits, it generates an omnidirectional wave that Sylvie herself can move in tandem with (or anyone on the roster if they block it). Since it’s an electromagnetic blast, one can infer that the pulse generated by its explosion can be equivalent to an EMP, which moves at the speed of light. Calcs for her movement in tandem with the wave get in the high relativistic range.

    In conclusion, Sylvie Paula Paula’s powers are manipulating electromagnetism, and we know electromagnetic waves propagate at the speed of light. While the most notable projectile (Mechahaya Reboot) is not so solidly moving at the speed of light, the wave it generates should arguably be an EMP, granting support for light timing in the franchise.

  • Metal Slug: The Metal Slug games offer a few lightspeed arguments, though the ones that work probably aren’t the ones you’d expect. Let’s start with the slower feats and then move to the big scary number.

    Metal Slug 3 introduces an enemy called the Mars Satellite, a small UFO that fires a green laser beam at you. They appear in other games, namely Metal Slug 6 and Metal Slug 7. A beam by itself doesn’t mean much, so fortunately we have evidence that they are supposed to be lasers, as stated by a guidebook and official concept art. Again, the word “laser” by itself isn’t enough, but at least we establish four important things: The beam is called a laser, it moves in a straight line, it comes from a technological source, and, most importantly, you can move in tandem with it. For more juicy evidence, we can use a different laser from the series: the Laser Gun. While it fires in a single frame in the game, it is directly stated in a manual to be a beam of light. Although they are obviously not the same beam, they are still both called lasers, and one gets a more detailed direct statement of being light. Context clues implies lasers are at least thought to be similar, and the UFO laser should also be considered light. Tandem movement makes it possible to calculate speeds in the relativistic range.

    In the same game, we have a boss called Sol Dae Rokker, a giant round shaped statue that serves as the boss of the fourth mission. The two important attacks it does are firing a multitude of energy projectiles from its red gemstone and a large pillar of light from its “mouth”. Doesn’t seem useful at first given the pillar comes out in a single frame, but the first attack can be interesting. Starting with its name, the boss is called “Sol Dae Rokker”, a corruption of the Spanish “Sol de Roca”, or “Rock Sun”. With this we know this enemy is Sun themed, as it is literally referred to as a sun. If you analyze its concept art, you can see that the gemstone that fires the energy projectiles is signaled as a source of “strong radiation”. The specific kanji used here is 放射, which is used in the context of actual radiation. With that in mind, we can infer that these attacks that come out of a place of “strong radiation” from an enemy that’s sun themed can be argued to be refracted sun rays, or merely solar radiation. Assuming that, calculations can get speeds in the low FTL ranges.

    Lastly, the alien Monoliths. In Metal Slug 3, the second boss can target the player with a laser beacon that signals the spot where a giant stone slab will drop from the sky. Naturally, you are able to dodge the slabs as they fall. In a vacuum, this doesn’t mean much. However, in Metal Slug 3D we are presented with a more interesting description. When you finish the game, you unlock the Monoliths as a weapon you can use yourself. When looking at the menu, you can read that it states that the beacon “summons the Monolith from Mars”. One could infer that the slabs are merely teleported to an arbitrary location above the player, and only then be dropped, but that would be against the little we know about the aliens that use them. At the start of the boss fight in the second mission, we see that the aliens that summon the Monoliths arrived in a meteor crash. Nothing states they have teleportation technology, and context implies they just don’t use that for interplanetary travel. If we’re assuming the Monoliths are directly summoned and launched from Mars, their speed should reach upwards of 300 times faster than light.

    In conclusion, Metal Slug has three arguable feats that can be considered to be around or vastly exceed the speed of light. While they all need further investigation and aren’t as intuitive as other feats in this section, they are all around reasonable.

All in all, KOF might be one of, if not the most consistent fighting game series when it comes to lightspeed and FTL reactions.

KOF Gone Cosmic

For those not in the loop, unlike most fighting games, KOF has a lot of media and with that comes a lot of arguments for higher-tier stats, leaning away from the more grounded side of things like City or even Country (crazy that we’re saying Country level is grounded but just go with it) and stepping into more cosmic-tier showings of power. But how well do these arguments hold up?

  • Various Black Holes: Both Zero and Clone Zero are capable of creating black holes. Both are stated to be black holes in guidebooks for KOF 2000 and 2001 respectively. That’s it. While the wording is pretty promising (directly calling them black holes, saying they swallow everything), we don’t have much more context from the games that help with these feats, like statements about the black holes sucking light, having a great amount of mass, a strong gravitational pull, etc. For what it’s worth, the screen going dark and white particles being sucked in could be an indicator that the black hole is absorbing the light from the environment, but not much else is confirmed, so we decided to err on the side of caution.

    However, in the Manhuas, we have a much more clear cut case. We see that Orochi creates an expanding black hole upon his death, with Chizuru directly stating it to be one. The narration even goes on to state it’s the real deal, or “something that really exists in the universe”. Not enough? They also state the black hole “is a peculiar phenomenon in the universe. Something that appears from the death of a star, the black hole can attract all the matter inside, even light and time cannot escape.” This is the most literal description of a real black hole you could make, the narrative intention is very clear. In terms of scaling, on top of Orochi’s power creating it directly, Rugal is capable of shaking it, and outright blowing it up from the inside. That is… not physically possible, but it can somewhat be compared to a black hole collapse, which would grant results in the FOE range.

    Lastly, we have Otoma=Raga’s black hole. That one is clearly supposed to be real as well, it has an accretion disk, sucks in light and everything. Unfortunately, it’s hard to figure out a scaling chain to its creation, as we have no proof it was generated by the goddess herself. One could argue that it should scale via being in her domain, but there’s no direct creation feat either, and neither does it collapse after her defeat. Once again we opt to err on the side of caution.

  • Disintegrational Universe: One of the more infamous arguments for a possible cosmic KOF feat, Igniz’ MAX2 in KOF 2002 Unlimited Match, known as Disintegrational Universe, has been spoken about in many circles. Which, yeah, we can definitely see why. At a first glance, the feat looks quite impressive. Igniz traps the enemy in some kind of black orb before he transfers his energy into it. We see the visage of the universe before he obliterates the orb. It does look pretty badass, we’ll give it that. There’s a few issues with this feat, though. While we aren’t directly against giving certain characters Dream Match-only feats, we only do so if they’re directly supported by the canon games (see the section on NPI for ki in KOF). Since this was Igniz’s last appearance in a mainline KOF game, and it was a Dream Match… we’re kinda shit outta luck in this regard. We decided to turn to (of all things) the mobile game KOF All Star for… SOME kind of explanation, where the special Boss Syndrome Unit version of Igniz has this move. Funnily enough, the official KOF All Star channel on YouTube has a video dedicated to explaining the ins and outs. In it, Disintegrational Universe is described as… “Igniz disables them by trapping them in dark matter, then proceeds to use their power to transcend them through time and space.” Uh… yeah, that’s the best we got. Yeah, nothing outside of the name really confirms what this attack even truly is, and the explanation we get doesn’t indicate he’s blowing up a universe or anything. Maybe if he comes back in a later game there’ll be something, but that’s a big maybe.

  • Otoma=Raga: Now a big thing that people have likely noticed if they’ve played KOF XV is that in Otoma=Raga’s domain is that there is a black hole. It’s directly stated to nullify space-time, has an accretion disc, and seemingly absorbs light particles. This is a pretty easy thing to discount for any scaling mainly because the only time anyone interacts with it in gameplay is Shun’ei or Isla getting a bit close to it and being fine, which would be a resistance, not a feat. You could argue that maybe she could survive in it since it's basically living rent free in her home, but we never see her interact with it directly so scaling her to it would be a big stretch.

    There’s also the matter of her domain as well, which has been described to be a galaxy of endless lights and seems to be a move she can use in gameplay against opponents. Strong emphasis on seems as, once again with Verse, it’s very vague on the status of this level of power and if it’s done via an ability or raw stats, so best left aside for now.

    She’s easily Planet level though at minimum, as she is constantly referred to as the one who will destroy the world. Heck, she may even be way stronger than that due to being able to upscale Orochi of all people, as just a single shard of her body had enough energy to completely resurrect the deity in the alternate ending for Team Awakened Orochi, which would, in turn, let her upscale from that Sky Stage feat from earlier.

  • Shizuka Gozen: This one is rather simple to explain. As we are soon to see with a later entry in this lineup of cosmic shenanigans, Samurai Shodown notably takes a lot of influence from the likes of Shinto and Buddhist mythologies. Interestingly enough, during the most recent game in the franchise, Samurai Shodown 2019, we meet the boss, Shizuka Gozen. Apparently, she’s a restless soul who was unable to move on into the afterlife, and is now causing a cloud of evil to hang over Japan. Her hatred festers so much that she ends up influencing the world in negative ways. You are able to beat her and free her from her suffering as basically anybody in the cast (knowing SNK, it was probably Haohmaru or Nakoruru again).

    Interestingly enough, however, when we fight Shizuka, her rage has increased to such a degree that she begins to warp the area around her, creating a dimension known as Eternity, or Yomi in the Japanese version. She’s capable of warping this dimension freely, and it’s consistently stated to be another realm that collapses upon her defeat, implying she sustains it.

    While it’s pretty easy to determine that this is indeed a separate dimension or realm, finding the exact size of it is trickier. There are no visible stars in her dimension (we checked the artbook too, it’s just a bunch of sakura petals), so anything in the ballpark of multi-solar system or higher is a bust without a deliberate mention of a space-time, and it’s only ever referred to as a realm or dimension. Luckily, there are a few things we can use. First off, in the animation on the map screen for when you enter her domain, it expands all the way past Japan and into China, along with the rest of the ocean, implying it’s as large as the world. 2019 has numerous stages all across the world depicted on its in-game map, including the likes of France and Central America for Charlotte and Tam Tam respectively.

    Additionally, we learn from Ukyo’s story mode that Shizuka’s world is the boundary between life and death itself, as he was after a special flower that only grew there. It’s also distinctly different from the likes of the Netherworld from Samurai Shodown 64. This calls back into the Shinto mythology that Samurai Shodown draws upon for a lot of its finer details. Within Shinto and the Kojiki, Yomi-no-kuni, the location which Yomi draws its lore from, is geographically identical to the real world, just a lot more decrepit and dilapidated. This lines up with the world map animation well, and it also lines up with how Shizuka declares that she wishes to extinguish the entire world, and all within it.

    With all this in mind, we can determine well enough that this feat is solidly Planet level, given all the information at hand. Nothing more, nothing less.

  • Last Blade merging of realms: This feat is from both of the Last Blade games, where in the first game Kagami attempts to merge our world with the Netherworld, and in the second one, a brainwashed Gouryu attempts to do the same thing again.

    Let’s back up a bit and try to give some greater context to this feat. In the story of Last Blade, in the year 1862, the barrier between our world and Hell’s gate began to weaken for a multitude of reasons, but mainly due to the absence of the 4 gods. This also began to disrupt the harmony of the two realms, and gave an opening to Kagami, who highly loathed the human race after seeing the worst they had to offer, and trying to reshape it in his image. Now, given that he was going to mostly work on effecting the Earth itself, not our whole universe as he never gives that indication, and we don’t have a time frame of him doing it in his ending, the most this feat of power would likely get to is Planet level at most, which is still nothing to scoff at.

    Now, how would the cast of Last Blade, or better yet, other non-Last Blade characters scale to this feat? Well, in the second game, once Gouryu is defeated, two different events can occur depending on who you ended up beating him with. In certain endings like Kaede or Yuki’s, Yuki ends up being the one who stops the realms from merging due to her power alone. In other endings like Akari’s, Gouryu simply stops the merger with his own energy, likely due to the fact he’s wielding the power of the Four Gods in this game, who did the initial sealing of the barrier between our world and the Netherworld. Now this would at first seem exclusive to their faction of power, seeing as how they’re gods or using the power of gods, but it’s thanks to Setsuna that we can scale the others to these displays of power. In Last Blade 2, if you play the game as Setsuna, in his ending, he ends up killing Gouryu, pretty clearly meaning even the non-gods can scale to the gods in terms of power, seeing as how Setsuna isn’t one of the 4 gods in the story.

  • Enja nukes Buddhist Cosmology: Man it wouldn’t be an SNK game for a casual martial arts battle to suddenly become a fight for the cosmos. Feels like I’m describing a Regular Show episode. Remember how we said Buddhist mythology would be incredibly important to later Samurai Shodown feats? Yeah… we weren’t kidding about that.

    Well, in this instance, in Enja’s ending in Samurai Shodown VI, Enja just goes on a rampage and just… vaporizes everything, and it’s not vague, it’s quite literal in fact. Additionally, in the Japanese description of the event, he’s described as not only razing the planet’s surface, which is blatantly Multi-Continental, but also destroying all the realms in Buddhist mythology. This isn’t exactly vague as, well, they flat out spell it out and blatantly admit that he just destroys them via sheer power, albeit at mostly just surface wiping. That’s… pretty fuckin’ insane, ain’t it? Suffice to say that’s LEAGUES ahead of him simply burning all of the planet, so definitely worth looking into at a later point.

In conclusion, Cosmic KoF is somewhat valid, but mostly for Planet-Star level arguments. While there are potential arguments you could push for Universal and higher, they are all a bit shaky. We won’t really do any pushing for them or further look into higher interpretations as it’s fairly unnecessary for this matchup in particular.

Fight Track

Check out this fan-made original soundtrack made once again by our very own Frenchhoaxwider: Psycho Omega!

Verdict

As befitting the nature of these franchises, we have decided to split up this verdict into two categories, Canon and Soft-Comp. The Canon round will involve everything from their canonical games while the Soft-Comp round will involve everything from the non-canon games to their various comic and animated adaptations. With that out of the way, let's begin!

Canon

Street Fighter canon is easy to figure out. The canonical games would be the Alpha series, all the numbered Street Fighter games from the original to 6, the Street Fighter IV OVA, the canonical Final Fight entries and the Rival Schools series. The King of Fighters canon will be considered all the numbered entries from KOF 94 to XV (excluding Dream Matches), the canonical Samurai Shodown games, the Samurai Shodown OVA, the Last Blade series, the Ikari Warriors series, Psycho Soldier, SNK Heroines, Fatal Fury games up to Real Bout, the Art of Fighting games and the main Metal Slug entries.

Stats

Now these two classic fighting game bosses are very well known for being cheap and hard to take down, but who among them could easily overpower the other? Well let’s start by looking at the thing that these two covet most above all else. Power.

Both Bison and Rugal are known for their immense strength and their ability to dominate their opponents with their might, but who’s hitting harder here? Well, let's start with Bison.

Bison is capable of creating a massive explosion which dwarfs the nearby trees and even a crater which was previously made by Chun-Li. Looking at the size of the explosion in comparison to the trees and the crater, the feat gets to an impressive range of 7.54 to 38.38 Megatons of TNT…however, there is one small issue with this. The feat performed by him is a suicide move which he used at the end to take out his opponents. So…does that mean that's the best he can get? Obviously not!

He is comparable in strength to his Psycho Drive and has even fought characters like Ryu who is capable of powering it up, so it's completely reasonable to say that he should scale to it. The Psycho Drive is capable of destroying a city to a yield of 33.347 Megatons to 1.157 Gigatons of TNT. You can scale him to other feats performed by the Street Fighters Roster but this is the highest value that Bison can scale to without diving into Soft-Comp territory.

Unfortunately for him, Rugal simply outclasses him by an enormous margin.  While Rugal obviously doesn’t have any notable direct feats, he does have very strong scaling. Scaling to other characters and teams like Hakkeshu gives Rugal scaling to feats such as Shermie creating storms and flooding a mountain range which gets to 7.34 Gigatons of TNT, Yashiro flooding the mountain range with lava which gets to 9.27 Gigatons of TNT or him shaking that same mountain range very violently which yields a result of 18.48 Gigatons of TNT, but it doesn't end here.

Let's talk about the cosmic feats briefly. The feats performed in Samurai Showdown and Last Blade are completely fine to use for scaling as explained earlier in the blog. Thanks to Rugal being able to scale to Haohmaru in KOF XV, this would allow him to potentially scale to multiple realm creation and destruction feats in the series. This includes Yuga’s dimension collapsing, which potentially contains a moon, Shizuka Gozen potentially creating a planet sized realm, or Yuki stopping the merging of two planet sized realms. In addition to that, Rugal should scale to the various feats from Metal Slug, which further add consistency to this level of power. Invaders are capable of freezing, melting and even outright destroying planets, netting results of 18.5 petatons, 214.45 petatons and even 59.44 zettatons of TNT. You could say the scaling chain to these could be considered a bit odd, though, so for this round we’ll be generous to Bison and discount the AP comparison. However…

Even sticking to the more normal feats from the series by the Orochi Team and just scaling to Rugal in KOF 95 by beating Saisyu, who was stronger than the Kusanagi who sealed away Orochi, Rugal still overpowers Bison, with his scaling of 18.48 gigatons outscaling Bison’s 1.157 gigatons by 15.97x. That is already enough for Rugal to one-shot with any attack, and factoring the power increase from MAX mode, it seals the deal. If miscellaneous realm feats are accepted along with Metal Slug scaling, the comparison becomes even more lopsided. Power belongs to Rugal Bernstein.

But Power isn’t all that matters in a debate, next up comes Speed.

Now this is something any broken fighting game boss loves to rub in your face. Unfortunately for Master Bison, he can hardly keep up with Rugal when it comes to speed. When it comes to direct showings, the dictator certainly has the better score, with a showing of being able to move in tandem with the beam from the Psycho Drive in Street Fighter Alpha 3, which can move at most at speeds of Mach 517. When you factor in scaling, things become more interesting. Several fighters from the Street Fighter universe can move their limbs as blurs, and our favorite family man Guile can outright cause sonic booms with his arms. Unexpectedly, this ends up being small fry compared to the speed showcased by… high school students? In the canonical Rival Schools series, characters are able to move in tandem with camera flashes, a feat worth 0.835c. Of course, camera flash feats in general are pretty odd to use, so the validity of this even amongst our own team is contested. Still, if you want to be generous to Bison, you can give this to him as a maximum high end.

Moving to Rugal, he has deceptively little for canon feats. Despite the impact Rugal made, he has basically no speed showing in KOF 94 and 95, and very little to scale to in those games. However, thanks to his resurrection in KOF XV, he can scale to a wide variety of feats performed throughout the entire series. Namely, thanks to being comparable to the speed of Orochi related characters now and the current Kyo Kusanagi, he can basically scale to every speed feat in the series. KOF characters can move as blurs and bullet time, but it doesn’t stop there. Takuma in KOF 2000 was capable of moving to block a satellite beam fired from the Zero Cannon at speeds of at least Mach 511, and firing a ki blast to disperse at speeds of at least Mach 2920. This is, like you read on the BTV for this feat, the bare minimum. Taking into account a different method, similar to what we used to get the speed of the Psycho Drive, the feat gets bumped to at least 0.02c for movement and 0.13c for his Ki speed. Bao can also perform another feat related to the Zero Cannon, being able to fire back its beam at speeds ranging from Mach 893 to 0.53c. As you can notice, these feats are both consistently faster than Bison’s own satellite feat, but that’s nowhere where the speed of the KOF verse peaks. Since KOF 97, the cast has been able to move in tandem with lightspeed attacks, such as Orochi’s, with feats ranging from 0.2c to 1.07c. Since then, other lightspeed feats have been around, such as characters moving in tandem with Igniz’ attacks, granting speed up to 0.69c, and Sylvie Paula Paula being able to move in tandem with her own electromagnetic waves, getting up to 0.879c. That would be enough for KOF to be slightly above Street Fighter’s dubious higher ends in speed, and on a very consistent basis, too, but it doesn’t stop there: let’s talk about Elisabeth. Thanks to her light manipulation abilities, the cast is able to perform feats such as evading the expansion of her light at 1.10c and blocking it in close range at 6.18c. Elisabeth herself is able to move in tandem with it, with results ranging from 6.12c to 9.62c.

For consistency, we can potentially also add feats that can be performed in the Metal Slug main games, such as characters being able to dodge lasers and sun beams at 0.31c and 1.71c respectively. While an argument can be made that dodging the Martian Monoliths gets 375c, Metal Slug 3D’s canonicity is up in the air, and that’s the only source that justifies the slabs being that fast.

As you can see, Speed is a pretty clear cut win for Rugal. Bison’s best non debatable feat is Mach 517, while his high end is 0.85c, while Rugal’s consistent light timing peaks at 9.62c. To put it bluntly, Rugal is 11.32 times faster than Bison’s dubious high end, let alone anything below that, meaning that the dictator could only hope to catch up with him.

Of course, speed and power wouldn’t be anything to these two without any sort of finesse or martial arts ability to follow it for these two. So let’s compare their skills.

Skill

As far as we know about their backgrounds, neither have an extensive detailed history on how long they’ve fought for or any of that due to how their pasts are purposefully shrouded in mystery. But we do know that Bison has trained in Soul Power as a young martial artist under an unknown master along with Rose and eventually molded it into his powerful Psycho Power after he killed his master, which he eventually incorporated into his self made style. Whereas Rugal has defeated many around the world and has incorporated all forms of martial arts into his composite style thanks to both his complete mastery of them, and his capability to seemingly copy abilities from styles like the Hakkyokusseiken, Kyokugen or the Stroheim Fighting System from sheer observation, outside of many unnamed martial arts he stole and the many guerrillas he’s beaten. So Rugal has more personal experience on copying and knowing martial arts, whereas Bison knows more about the inner workings of energy.

However, it’s not like Bison would be out of his field given he’s defeated characters like Seth who have copied abilities from all sorts of fighters around the world before, he’s also beaten groups of ninjas on his own and has fought other Street Fighters like Ken that contended with Karin, who know all forms of martial arts. In the same vein, both Bison and Rugal gave a tough time to top class martial artists and geniuses in the fighting world like Ryu and Kyo Kusanagi, accomplishing skill feats such as previously winning many tournaments in the past and learning untaught techniques unconsciously or while wounded.

So as far as we can put it, given their prior experience and battles with opponents similar to each other. It’s safe to say that both can adapt to each other’s fighting styles, so this category is a tie.

So their sheer fighting style might be a Draw Game, but what might matter most is perhaps their abilities.

Abilities

To first start off with similar or shared abilities that Bison and Rugal might have, both can use their senses to track energy sources like Ki or tell if both are hiding should they want to pull a sneak attack on each other, they can use energy to mold many of their attacks like the Psycho Crusher/Genocide Cutter or throw projectiles like the Psycho Shot/Psycho Cannon or Reppuken/Kaiser Wave, among many other moves. Both can also reflect projectiles through Ki absorption or shields, as well be capable of levitating, can mess with minds and even cause people to fear them with their aura. Though Rugal would hold slight advantages in his moveset with how Genocide Cutter is a perfect anti-air and perfect counter to Bison’s Psycho Crusher or his many jumping attacks like the Head Stomp, and how his Dark Barrier would reflect many of Bison’s projectile attacks with a far greater chance of success, which is notable given how not only it can reflect supers, but they can even reflect similar psychic abilities like Athena’s Psycho Power and just overall being way more spammable than some of Bison’s options that require him wasting V-Skill meter. Other moves like Dead Mount Press or Dead Press Wave should let him pull Bison towards him or walk through his attacks thanks to invincible armor.

However, despite all those similarly shared abilities or the few abilities that Bison doesn’t have, Bison’s Psycho Power grants Bison a greater variety of uses and abilities that Rugal just simply does not have in canon. His psycho power can be molded around himself for way more things than projectiles like electricity, portals or forcefields, drain energy, lift and throw people with telekinesis, instantly move around the battlefield more quickly than Rugal’s Vanishing Rush with his teleportation and has more explicitly shown and consistent methods of messing with minds via creating illusions, illusionary worlds and brainwashing more people in general as shown with the Shadaloo Dolls. Most notable of all is his ability to astrally project his spirit even when his body is gone and how he can be able to possess others via imbuing others with this same spirit energy by throwing a projectile into them to possess a new body, though some of these processes like mind control or possession are gradually overtime and take way too long.

It’s not like Rugal would be completely defenseless against his abilities despite that versatility advantage partly thanks to his resistances. Many characters like Kyo across the KOF series can regularly withstand similar fear auras from Iori’s Orochi Power like Bison’s that can stop people in their tracks, resist energy draining from characters like Orochi and most importantly of all to the crux of this debate: be capable of harming Bison’s soul. And why is that you ask? There are many instances across the series where characters are fully capable of interacting and even harming similar ghosts with just pure Ki mastery or their fists alone. Notable examples include:

Furthermore, even in Street Fighter V, Charlie has shown the full on capability to fight a possible spirit apparition of Bison’s Astral Form, and we know this is likely not a hallucination given how Kolin comments on how his fighting abilities have not worn down at all. So all in all, Rugal should be capable of harming Bison and even potentially reflect his possession with his Dark Barrier as it's done with Psycho Powered projectiles. Though for what’s worth, Bison’s incredible versatility would let him keep Rugal at bay with his illusions and Psycho Power will certainly be a notable challenge for Rugal especially if he’s not careful and Bison has the necessary time, he could very much be capable of possessing Rugal’s body. So abilities in a close call go to Bison.

In all, this round is pretty open and shut. While Bison holds a very strong advantage in abilities thanks to the versatility of his Psycho Power, Rugal can resist its immediate effects well enough to not submit to the dictator’s aura passively. Holding a decisive stat advantage and a tie in fighting skills, Rugal can evade all of Bison’s attempts to possess him, deflect all of his Psycho Power projectiles, and simply kill him with a single direct strike or projectile. While Bison’s ghost form could be trouble, it’s still only as strong and fast as Bison’s body was, which is enough for Rugal to destroy him again thanks to the non-physical interaction properties of Orochi Power and Ki in the KOF series. Round 1 goes to Rugal.


Soft-Composite

Now with the basics out of the way, we can deep dive into the more off the walls and bizarre bits of Street Fighter and SNK media, where Bison and Rugal have way more to work with and that they can throw at one another. The Street Fighter material that will be included will be the EX series, Final Fight Revenge, the many animated adaptations of Street Fighter, the UDON comics, and many Street Fighter manga and manhua entries. The new material used for The King of Fighters will be the dream match KOF games (98, 2002 and XII), the non-canonical Samurai Shodown VI, the Metal Slug mobile games, the KOF Maximum Impact duology, KOF Sky Stage, the many KOF manga and manhua adaptations, and the Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting and KOF animated adaptations.

Stats

We’ll kick things off by seeing what greater Power they’ve obtained from this soft composite.

Things get a bit closer this time around with their greater media, as the feats they get would easily put them around the high tiers of their verse.

For Bison, as expected, the best soft composite feat here would easily be the Hagger piledrive feat which gets up to 216 teratons of TNT. Bison would likely downscale this though, mainly due to where Hagger ranks in the hierarchy of Street Fighter characters, but it is still a very notable buff. Unfortunately, there is nothing scalable across UDON or EX that even comes close to this, so there isn’t much else to talk about here.

Now Rugal however… yeah he definitely got a lot more going on. Thanks to the inclusion of Samurai Shodown characters in KOF XV, Rugal can also compare to the likes of Haohmaru and Nakoruru, who can also scale to Enja and Suija. The twins, in a non-canon dream match game, are capable of large scale feats, such as Enja burning the surface of the world to ashes and Suija returning life to the planet again with rain, getting at the very least 3.77 exatons and 1.01 exatons of TNT respectively. That alone would be enough to vastly outscale Bison in terms of raw power, but once again it doesn’t stop there.

In the marvelous world of the KOF Manhuas, things get a little crazy, and Rugal is capable of direct showings that also eclipse the best Bison can scale to. Starting with a bit of scaling, Iori can directly stop the rotation of the planet, which can also be controlled by Orochi own’s power. The rotational kinetic energy of the Earth is 50.19 exatons of TNT. Orochi’s power can also create a real black hole, which Rugal can directly shake and outright destroy. This is the most impressive feat by Rugal netting 11.07 petatons of TNT for shaking, and at most 2.08 FOE for collapsing it. To put this into perspective, 1 FOE is the average energy a star releases when going supernova. Rugal after this grows hundreds and even thousands of times stronger.

To be blunt, even Rugal’s least impressive feat with the black hole at 11.07 petatons is outscaling Bison’s 216 teratons by 51.25x, which is enough to one shot Bison with any of his attacks. When you factor the fact he straight up collapses the black hole, well… 2.08 FOE would be 2.3016488e20x (over 230 quintillion times) higher than Bison's limit…that's literally a gap of orders of magnitudes, and without factoring Rugal’s multipliers, which can bring this value up to sextillions and even septillions. Any higher argument is massive overkill at this point, as you can clearly see.

Rugal Bernstein once again towers above M. Bison in raw power.

But Power isn’t the only thing these two overlords have gained from extended media. Let’s see how their Speed fairs.

Now with Side Games and Manhuas on the table, speed has a lot of potential to get higher and more absurd.

Bison’s speed gets good supporting evidence this time around, with scaling to Haggar piledriving through the planet and Nanase jumping out of it getting 0.65c and 0.03c respectively. This of course is small next to the insane jump that he’d get in combat speed from scaling to Cracker Jack, who can hit people across planets at speeds up to 3400c.

Moving to Rugal, not much has changed. While the Manhuas offer more consistency with Heavy D punching at the speed of light, this is something the KOF games could already give. In terms of movement speed, Rugal gets a decent direct feat of moving at 0.01c to 0.02c to save Shingo. However, thanks to inclusion of Metal Slug 3D, we know that the Monoliths from Metal Slug 3 are likely moving at speeds of up to 375.26c, and can also be dodged.

All in all it’s pretty clear cut. Bison’s 3400c scaling when compared to Rugal’s 375.26c is 9x superior. M. Bison swiftly takes the speed category.

Speed is one thing, but the ability to put that to good use also matters, so let’s look at their Skill.

Skill

Now, here’s where it gets interesting… Thanks to alternate mediums like anime, comics or manhua we have way more opportunities to explore the backstories of these tyrants…. So buckle up, because this is where it gets truly crazed.

Similar to his game counterpart, we know that Bison in UDON has trained along with Rose under an unnamed master on Soul Power, but this time he read the forbidden scrolls surpassed the own techniques of his master by just… meditating and studying to realize the true potential of Soul Power, removing the positive psychic energy inherent to all living and only keeping the negative within him to power his rage and bloodlust, which is how Bison came up with his iconic Psycho Power. So Ryu considered Bison one of the greatest martial artists he’s ever seen for a pretty damn good reason regardless of his evil intentions, he has a greater fighting ability than his former subordinate Sagat, took on both Ryu and Ken and held their attacks for a significant amount of time and hell, even early on Akuma considered him an opponent that was worthy to kill among his many targets.

However…. Rugal’s experience and skill goes a little beyond that, a little way too beyond that in fact. According to the KOF 98 Manhua, Rugal’s past in fighting extended to his literal infancy. aAd by infancy, we don’t mean like fighting as a child no no no. What we mean, IS this guy has been fighting any natural disaster, animal or war that was sent at him by the very will of the heavens themselves throughout all his life ever since he was a newborn. Shocking, to say the least. Later when he grew in life, he had fought all sorts of strong fighters while travelling around the world to absorb the conscience of his fallen enemies, letting him know not just their power and secret arts, but every single thing they knew down to their movements and memories, down to the last drop of memory such as power levels or techniques. As stated by Rugal himself, minus his two defeats to Kyo and Goenitz, prior to KOF 94, Rugal had never met defeat in his life. Giving him way more loads of known experience than Bison as far as we know.

In alternate continuities such as the KOF manhua or KOF Destiny, we’re shown this exact level of battle brilliance. Kyo thought him as a strong fighter, and Heidern described him as someone relentless who will do anything to win, even waiting for the exact moment he wants to gain an opening. He copied moves from Terry and Heidern from just witnessing them once, which is especially impressive because Rugal was able to copy the Kusanagi Flame; something that’s thought to be normally impossible to manifest because of intense and arduous training outside of blood relations, yet he was able to manifest it just fine in comparison to Shingo’s little spark. And he’s quite the technique critic, as he called the Kusanagi martial art an outdated style that should have long been in the retirement home after seeing every single move, and considered every single one of Geese’s techniques useless after enraging him into giving him his own moves, which he beat Geese back with. A strategy that he employs to increase his own fighting level and get up. All in all, it should be blatant - the Unending Calamity’s skill far surpasses M. Bison’s, landing Rugal the win in this category.

Skill isn’t the only thing that they’ve increased, as now let’s delve into their greater Abilities.

Abilities

Let’s begin with Bison. From extended media such as the Udon Comics or mangas, he gets a few noteworthy things. He effortlessly sees through Rose’s illusionary abilities, various Doombot-esque dummies at his disposal for a surprise strategy, and the ability to phase through objects such as walls. He can even dish out his own incredibly potent illusions by trapping people in illusionary worlds. The manhua also gave him very potent flame powers and the ability to absorb energy should Rugal fondle his balls. Unlikely, but you never know. There’s also arguable scaling from Hayate, who can slice apart spirits with their sword, so you could say Bison can do the same thanks to being a superior threat. Not a bad showing for the master of darkness. Now, while Rugal already had small mentions of his power copying within the KOF games itself… holy shit, does extended media take it up to a whole other level. KOF Destiny lets him copy any attack after just seeing it happen once. Moves such as Heidern’s vacuum blades or Terry’s Power Wave are paltry to this guy. But also, he’s capable of directly copying Kyo’s flame, something that’s thought to be impossible to do for people not of the Kusanagi bloodline. Notably, these flames are capable of incinerating and purifying evil entities with ease. Insanely effective against a dude who practically radiates evil. The manhuas take it up a notch, letting him read someone’s entire fucking lifetime and all their memories with just a grasp. All their martial arts skills, weaknesses, powers, and even their movements. All for the taking. The only caveat is that Rugal HAS to be stronger than his opponent in order to pull it off… luckily, in this matchup, he is. By a wide margin.

You could possibly argue that, since Bison grows stronger from the fear and hatred of his opponent, he could feasibly leech off Rugal’s hatred of him as he fights. Hell, if he himself hates Rugal, that would boost the Psycho Power by a good bit. But Rugal’s Power of the Great Universe is a far more tangible boost in power. Rugal can go upwards of 1000% past his own limits, which is… well, incredibly clear cut. Sure, it is called Infinitely Great Wrath, and Bison can feed on wrath and anger and such. But a nondescript “I get stronger from your fear and anger” is much less direct than “I get 600%/1000% stronger immediately.” Additionally, we know thanks to Ingrid that if Bison tries to absorb too much energy, the Psycho Drive will be overloaded and Bison will just explode. Not a good look. Now, while Bison can be argued to possess Rugal, since Rugal is potentially vulnerable to Orochi’s spirit if he overuses his power, the issue is that all of Bison’s main methods of possession are done via energy transferral. He usually sends his own soul or energy out as an orb or some kind of strange mist in Udon. But Rugal can redirect energy like nobody’s business. He can catch lightning bolts with ease, and even the likes of the Kusanagi flame, a spiritual power composed of all of the Kusanagi ancestry, is nothing to him. He also absorbed all of the powers of Orochi, which is consistently shown to be able to tear and grab souls. And all of that was done WITHOUT using Omega Rugal, which is the form that runs the risk of possession. Even if Bison managed to land a clean attack and it wasn’t simply redirected or outright negated from Rugal, we know from ugh SNK Heroines that characters are able to fight inside a mental mindscape as consciousnesses separate from their body. It certainly doesn’t help that Psycho Power by itself has shown to be absorbed by Charlie in A Shadow Falls, or even redirect the infused Psycho Power back into Bison’s body, much like how Ryu did in Sagat’s Alpha 3 ending to blow him up. Making this wincon very viable as even characters affected by the Black Crystal like Robert can redirect energy back into other’s bodies and cause notable harm.

That’s not even to mention how out-ranged Bison is. Sure, the Psycho Drive is an impressive satellite laser, but characters in the KOF manhua can send their attacks all the way down into the core of the Earth itself and affect the axis of the planet itself. Rugal also gains potent danmaku from his time in KOF Sky Stage, so playing lame to win game and outranging Bison is entirely possible for him.

Unlike the canon round, Rugal very easily has this in the bag. His accelerated development exceeds Bison’s, his energy redirection can counter the Psycho Power’s possession with little trouble, and a single grab can result in Rugal stealing all of Bison’s special powers for himself. Abilities go to Rugal Bernstein.

So with this soft composite round done, it’s clear that Bison can still put up a fight. But against Rugal, he just isn’t cut out for the final boss. Thanks to Rugal's absurd power advantage, AOE and counters to most of Bison’s game-ending hax, the dictator has very little chances of scoring a win through his speed advantage. While Bison is 9 times faster, any Kaiser Wave or large-scale attack that Rugal chucks out is guaranteed to hit Bison thanks to his frankly insane AOE. Even if Bison tries possession, Rugal can just pull the energy out from his body and crush it, and if Bison tried drawing from his hatred, it could potentially overload his own body.

The winner in Round 2 is once again Rugal Bernstein.


Conclusion

"At the limits of despair, death is the only respite!”

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

  • Far weaker with every end
  • Far slower in canon
  • Much worse range in the soft-composite round
  • Healing methods are much worse or situational
  • Cannot absorb Rugal’s energy through his balls 💔
  • …But Rugal can harm/destroy intangible beings and spirits, and is still much faster
  • …but not enough in the soft-comp round by both aspects
  • …however, it’ll take him years and is thus non-combat applicable
  • Neal McDonough's terrible performance in Legend of Chun-Li

"Feel the terror consume your soul! Hand your power to me!"

Advantages:

  • Far more powerful across every end
  • Far faster reactions in canon round
  • Greater variety of abilities overall…
  • Doesn't need to have his balls fondled to absorb any energy
  • Far larger AOE in the soft-composite round
  • Regen makes him hard to kill
  • Far superior skill in soft composite, and relative skill in canon
  • Black Crystals are capable of repelling Psychic Powers like Bison’s
  • Is capable of harming and destroying Phantom Bison…
  • Norio Wakamoto's glorious performance in 2002 (fun fact, he’s also voiced Bison in SF4, 5, and the CVS games)
  • Prohibido jugar con Rugal
  • The Yujiro Hanma of fighting games with the amount of glaze he gets
    • Seriously, SNK glazes bro so much that he can give Sukuna or Yujiro a very tough competition.

Disadvantages:

  • …but only in the soft-composite round
  • …though it could be a challenge for him as he is vulnerable to possession
  • Slower in the soft-composite round
  • Lost the One Minute Melee
  • Ray Park’s performance that was just as bad as Neal McDonough’s

Overall, no matter what way you take this match, Rugal should generally have a commanding edge across the board. Whether in canon or soft composite, his power is far beyond Bison’s own, rendering him able to kill him with a single blow, and in the canon round, his speed should also be blitzing Bison fairly easily. With this in mind, while Bison is a bit more versatile overall and matches Rugal in skill, Rugal should just … punch him twice, and win in the canon round, as Bison cannot really react to him or get a chance to do much of anything. In the soft composite round, while Bison gains a speed edge if you use EX feats, Rugal’s skill and abilities far exceed Bison’s own, lending him counters to anything Bison can reasonably do and letting him once again hit him twice for a solid win again. In either round, Rugal can simply hit Bison’s spirit with ki or his fists to disperse it outright, meaning he won’t be getting any kind of possession off of him, and in the soft-comp round he can just redirect or wrench Bison’s spirit from his body and fight off any mental attacks in the mindscape.

M. Bison was a persistent, undying threat to be sure, one of the most unkillable villains in fighting game history - but Rugal Bernstein had the raw power and counters across the board to ensure the Undying Lord would be put down for good, gravity smashing his way to a genocidal win. Bison will be asking for a ban in Round 3, but Rugal is simply the King of this Fight.

The winner is Rugal Bernstein.

Vote Tally:

M. Bison (0) - O captain my captain….

Rugal Bernstein (14) - Kaiser Wave, door-kun, T0m, Sharaku Jr., Riley, Yuix, Br3ndan5, Blessedaura, Tonygameman, Tario, Cryotechnics, Kuma, AgentRedHead, TrexGamer

 

Next Time


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bang's Blogs: Sadako vs Slenderman

Image
  “The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.” -Elbert Hubbard Sadako Yamamura, the vengeful and unforgiving Onryō. The Slenderman, the urban legend and stalker of the forest.  Sometimes the monsters that lurk in the shadows or under our beds, from our own understanding, escape out of sight, and out of mind, based on an unbelief in their existence. But, they are out there; they seem human, but are something beyond our understanding. Specters that can bend the human mind. Torture the soul. Kill by a mere gaze. When the TV static flickers, you may want to watch your back, because they may already have their sights set on you… and nowhere but death is safe. But what happens when the targets they creep up on fight back? When the inflicter meets the inflicted? Will Sadako enact vengeance on the wretched world and cleanse the forest of a monster, or will Slenderman blur out the smudge on the TV screen? Ring in the arrival of the icons of Japanese and online horror in this D...
Read more

Bang's Blogs: Gohan vs Ultraman Zero

Image
  (Sirus) (Flip) (Gio) (Landon1195) (Scar) (Marlon) (L.A.D.) (WWAL) (KaijuConvoy) “The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.”   -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Son Gohan, the Golden Fighter. Ultraman Zero, the Ultra Zero Mantle. Confident, proud, and heroic; These two are the sons of the universe’s greatest fighters; Goku and Ultraseven, and the first of the next generation of heroes, continuing the legacy of the Saiyans and the New Generation of Ultras. Only these two rose to the occasion against their most formidable foes, Cell and Ultraman Belial, but not without the training of a father’s friend that molded them into protectors of the earth and the universe, attaining legendary transformations along the way that tapped into their heritage. They are some of the most iconic humanoid alien warriors across their long-running Japanese franchises, honing martial arts and special beam attacks and being the pinnacle of heroism, peace, and justice. ...
Read more