Might as well,
1. Hanzo Hattori (Samurai Shodown)
2. Shin Akuma (CvS 2) or Chun Li
3. TIE Nightmare/Ivy/Voldo (Soul Calibur)
4. Lei WuLong (Tekken)
5. Vermillion (Toshinden)
Hanzo gets top billing because...well, just because. One of the most notorious names of antiquity associated with shinobi given digital flesh and treated with respect. Honorable mention to Psylocke from Xmen:CotA for cool ninja-ry with the clones and duplicates and head games. But Hanzo is the OG.
Shin Akuma? I was going to try to betray the little shoto in each of us and say Chun Li, as she is the premier SF spokesfighter-person. Woman. Police Officer. Whatever.
Namco character development skills! "I'll show you... the greatest nightmare..." was one of the coolest winquotes from this badassed demonic knight with it's resident evil infected arm, and that huge sword. But then again there is Ivy, and she didn't make it on the list just because of her boobs. Although, I'm sure it helped somewhat. The concept of fighting with a segmented sword is phenomenal, and Namco really gives [that sword], and Ivy herself a beautiful, maniacal, and sadistic spirit. She and that sword were truly made for one another. Voldo almost made the list too, but there might be laws against that sort of thing here.
Lei Wulong. First off, let's dispense with the bullsh*t. It's Jackie Chan. I gotta say, Tekken (mostly after part 2) became one of my favourite franchises Just because it had the balls to take all of the stars from all of your favourite martial Arts movies and put them in a fighting game. How bad assed is that? Bruce Lee? Jet Li? Sonny Chiba? Even Blade is in there. But Jackie Chan, with all of those classic quirky Jackie Chan antics, fighting from the ground, switching up stances in the ring all hit that nice nostalgic yearning for Saturday afternoons with poorly dubbed but excellently choreographed fights. Tekken is as close to being in a Shaw Brothers film as many of us are going to get.
Lastly Verm. Vermillion made the list, from this series that we are all gradually forgetting about, Toshinden. Weapons based fighter, everyone was all swinging around swords and clubs and everything was all nice and happy untill this guy showed up. Packing a friggin Pistol and a sawn off double barreled shotgun. I never played him, but my roommate at the time of Toshinden 2 only and exclusively played Vermillion. Very fun fights. Plus, I like to think that Vermillion paved the way for the likes of Cable & Jill(MvC 2), Chris & Wesker (MvC3), those two gun toting characters from Bushido Blade 2 (my favourite weapons based fighter? perhaps...), that extra cheesy shotgunning cowboy from Samurai Shodown Sen, and Fox McCloud and his crew from the Smash Brother's side of things, making projectiles the norm as opposed to the exception.
