After living his life as a wrestling street fighter, Mike Haggar turned to politics and won the election to become mayor of Metro City. He swore to rid the city of the terrible crime wave caused by the Mad Gear gang. This made Belger, leader of Mad Gear, royally pissed and arranged for Haggar’s daughter, Jessica, to be kidnapped. Rather than succumbing to Mad Gear’s threats, Haggar enlisted Jessica’s boyfriend, Cody, and his friend Guy to go down to Metro City’s meanest streets and beat the shit out of every single Mad Gear member.
Wasn’t the above paragraph fun? That’s the plot of 1989’s Final Fight, the game where the world was introduced to Haggar. I remember playing it for the first time at the arcade. Cody and Guy looked cool, but Haggar was a fucking shirtless pile-driving mayor with work pants and a huge belt over one shoulder. I had never seen an awesomer game character before. Is that belt supposed to keep his pants from dropping to the floor? Who cares? He’s Haggar, and her can wear whatever the hell he wants.
He was the slowest, but also the strongest. He singlehandedly made the pile-drive famous. Russian bear-wrestler Zangief made the pile-driver even cooler by giving it a spin two years later, and that’s why these two monsters of wrestling despise each other.
Capcom knew they had created an unstoppable muscle machine and decided to include Haggar as a playable character in 1993’s Saturday Night Slam Masters and its sequel, Ring of Destruction, a year later. He also made appearances in the Super Nintendo exclusives Final Fight 2 and 3, rejoining forces with Guy and recruiting help from newcomers Maki, Dean and Carlos. In 1999 Capcom USA released the god-awful Final Fight Revenge, a 3D fighting game with some of the worst polygon models ever. Haggar was a playable character but not even his awesomeness could save this steaming pile of rhinoceros anal discharge. Haggar had a cameo in 2006’s Final Fight Streetwise, teaching Cody’s younger brother, Kyle, some grappling moves. He ran a crummy gym and was no longer the mayor of Metro City. People barely remember him, if they remember him at all. That’s so sad. Why would Capcom do this to poor Haggar? Oh by the way, Final Fight Streetwise sucks the big one.
After beat’em ups died down and Final Fight’s future seemed bleak, a few characters from the series started appearing in Street Fighter Alpha. First there was Guy and Sodom, then Rolento, then Cody. Even Hugo Andore appeared in Street Fighter III, but still no Haggar. What the fuck, Capcom? Namco included Haggar in Namco X Capcom, but that game was never released outside Japan. Again, what the fuck?
You can see I’m passionate about Haggar and can only hope Capcom brings him back soon. If there’s ever a Marvel vs. Capcom 3 every character on Capcom’s side should be Haggar. Raise your hand if you want to be pile-drived by Haggar. *raises hand*
