Ash Crimson - Reception

Reception

Ash Crimson's character has received negative comments from video game publications. When first introduced, GameSpy's Christian Nutt stated that Ash was a "clone" of Guile from the Street Fighter series because of their similar movesets. Nevertheless, Ash's team was praised for standing as new characters from the series with new elements. Lucas M. Thomas, writer from IGN, commented that a major fan complaint was the character's strength in the video games which caused him to become one of the strongest opponents despite his apparent lack of effort within fights. Thomas himself shared similar comments, commenting that Ash is "nothing if not strange" in regards of stereotypes, and lamented how many times he appeared in the KOF 2003 manhua in comparison to more popular characters. When the playable characters for the arcade version of The King of Fighters XIII was revealed, Anime News Network's Todd Ciolek wondered about Ash's lack of teammates and joked that it was possible he was alone since "no one likes Ash now." Marissa Meli from UGO Networks commented on Ash's design, placing it sixteenth in a list of "The Most Androgynous Video Game Characters". The notable androgynous appearance was jokingly mentioned by Meli to have been done on purpose by the Japanese designers in order to confuse Western gamers regarding their sexuality. Similarly, while placing Ash's voice as one of "Gaming's Top 10 Deepest Voices", Dan Howdle from Now Gamer joked about him, referring to him as a female character. Writers from Game Informer also commented about this, joking about their surprise to realizing that he is actually a male character. When UTV Ignition Entertainment started a poll in which fans voted which artbox would be used in console versions of The King of Fighters XII, an official press release noted that the fans' negative reaction to Ash reduced the number of covers to only two featuring Kyo and Iori.

In an interview with Ignition Entertainment's Director of Business Development Shane Bettehausen, Alex Lucard from Die Hard Game Fan stated that SNK fans from the Pacific simply hated the character and complained about his inclusion in The King of Fighters XII when the title did not have a storyline related to him while they wanted other popular characters from the series to star there. In response to this, Bettehausen commented that he had problems understanding what were the problems regarding aside from his design which he did not find appealing for fans outside Japan. Nevertheless, he commented that as his gameplay mechanics were improved for the game, it would be possible that Western fans would like him now. In June 2009, Stephen Totilo from Kotaku had an interview with Bettehausen, who asked him when playing what was Ash's gender. Totilo replied female to which Betehausen replied that KOF was progressive with introducing cross-dressing characters. He also commented that fans appeared to be "warming up to him" despite his design. Michael Grimm from GamesRadar noted the inclusion of Evil Ash in The King of Fighters XIII was suitable for the game as it was meant to conclude the character's storyline and pointed out that it was not common to have an "evil version" of a character in a fighting game.