Ed Joins The Street Fighter V Roster

If Street Fighter V's newest competitor looks familiar, there's a good reason. Not only did Ed appear briefly in Street Fighter IV, in which he made a small cameo as the bandaged boy in Balrog's ending, but he's also a young clone of M. Bison, Street Fighter V's resident dictator and the head of the criminal Shadaloo organization.

According to Capcom, Ed was originally conceived as a replacement body for M. Bison, and "night after night he is troubled by Bison's ghost, and struggles desperately to prevent M. Bison from possessing his body." Balrog has been training Ed since the end of Street Fighter IV, and the teenager's fighting style borrows both from Balrog's boxing and M. Bison's genetic Psycho Powers.

While Ed shares deep connections with a few different Street Fighter characters, he plays unlike any other member of the Street Fighter V roster. Instead of using traditional joystick motions in conjunction with button presses to execute special moves, "Ed's special moves have simple inputs; they only require simultaneous button presses, repeatedly pressing a button, or holding down a button." That should—theoretically—make Ed extremely newbie friendly, although exactly how he compares to other Street Fighter V characters remains to be seen.

Ed will be playable May 11 through May 14, when Capcom tests the latest version of its online infrastructure, the Capcom Fighters Network. The beta test is free for players on both PlayStation 4 and PC, and doesn't require a copy of Street Fighter V.

Capcom hasn't announced Ed's official release date quite yet, although you can purchase the Street Fighter V Season 2 Character Pass for $30 right now. In addition to Ed, the character pass will get you Akuma, Kolin, and three as-yet unannounced characters, as well as a variety of different costumes for each.

Street Fighter V launched last year as a fairly bare-bones game—it didn't have either a single-player or a standard arcade mode and lacked a few crucial, promised features—and many fans wondered if the franchise could ever recover. Slowly but surely, however, Street Fighter V has been getting better—that's not great news for early adopters, but if you decide to jump in now, you're going to get a much better package than you would've last winter (and there's even more content if you're willing to shell out for all of the game's DLC).