Yoshinori Ono on Final Fight's Poison: She's supposed to be mysterious

Attention Poison fans: EGM just (well, yesterday) posted an extremely interesting interview between its own Eric Patterson--you may remember him as Shidoshi from the old Diehard GameFan magazine--and Capcom's Yoshinori Ono.

"Poison" by Speeh

Rather than pick Ono's brain about his upcoming 360, PS3 and Vita brawler, Street Fighter X Tekken, Patterson picks the producer's brain about one of that title's key cast members: Poison, the lovable female thug who first appeared in Final Fight.

The highlight of this fascinating tête-à-tête, in my opinion: Ono seemingly backtracks on his earlier assertion that the fuchsia-coifed character is trans- gender. (In late 2007 he told EGM that "in North America, Poison is officially a post-op transsexual. But in Japan, she simply tucks her business away to look female.")

While chatting with Patterson, however, Ono said, "Capcom’s official stance has and will continue to be that we don’t have a stance technically. It’s supposed to be mysterious; if people want to talk about it on forums or what not they’re welcome to, but we’re not going to give you a straight answer because, well, there isn’t one. We deliberately want to make it a mysterious thing—that question of what’s at the core of this character. At the end of the day, we don’t have an actual canonical answer to that."

That's not the only eyebrow-raising comment included in this Poison-focused Q&A. Read the rest of them by checking out the full interview here. You may also want to check out this NeoGAF thread, which was started by Patterson and features a number of interesting insights.

And here I thought Bravely Default would be the lone Square Enix title on my 3DS wish list ...

In case you couldn't tell, I'm completely obsessed with the 3DS at the moment. As for what prompted this particular bout of game-inspired craziness: I'm pretty sure Nintendo's decision to release a "misty pink" system is the main culprit, but repeated viewings of the Nintendo 3DS Conference 2011 trailers for Animal Crossing, Mario Kart 7, Mario Tennis and Super Mario 3D Land deserve some of the credit (or maybe I should say blame), too.

Also to blame: The following trailer for Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, a game that piqued my interest when it was announced a few months ago but has been all but ignored ever since.



I won't be ignoring the title any longer, though, thanks to the frenzied gameplay and fabulous tunes highlighted in the video above. The only complaint I can aim at the title thus far: The Final Fantasty VIII scene sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to the highly stylized scenes that come before it.

For more information on Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, read Eric Patterson's hands-on impressions of the forthcoming 3DS title over at egmnow.com.

See also: 'Five reasons I'll definitely be buying a 3DS in 2012 (if not before)'