I guess in my mind, if it doesn't make sense for a character to have multiple skin tones ranging from black to white, when we know what their natural one is, then the other ones are gonna look pretty weird. Do you think white Balrog should be a thing? Because that shit would look extra weird to me and actually even kinda racist. Why not leave him black? To appeal to those that don't wanna play as a black guy? Shit's dumb. Even blonde blue eyes Chun makes me cringe.
I don't know if white Balrog should be a thing but there are definitely mixed race people who are very fair-skinned but still readily recognizable as black. I think a "white Balrog" would probably look like that as opposed to looking white.
Chun-Li is a weirder situation because she rarely comes off as looking distinctly Asian except for maybe SF2. Karin is also a weird one where I thought she was white until SFV because I didn't know her last name. I figured she was a western schoolgirl Ken to Sakura's Japanese schoolgirl.
Race in fighting games is a little tricky because the characters aren't bound to typical hair or eye colors for that race, and this seems to go double for the Japanese cast. Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess a lot of people (specifically brown and black people) enjoy playing as characters that have skin tones that mirror their own. I personally don't get it (I'm pasty and play Balrog and Dudley) but it's their prerogative and I don't think there's any controversy in black and brown players wanting to play black and brown characters.
If one were to ban skin tone variants in fighting games that just means most fighting game characters would look white or look like fair-skinned Asians. It's kind of the same thing as people bitching about cosplayers cosplaying characters not of their own race. You're primarily impacting black and brown people because the majority of characters in anime or Eastern videogames are light-skinned Asians or white.
Anyway, Guilty Gear does this and no one seems to care there.
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