Who's your favorite character in this classic game?

Ken

To play as? Bison. Just in terms of how much I like them, Blanka.

Ryu=Ken > Chun-Li > Guile > Blanka > Dhalsim > E.honda > Zangief (imo)

Zangief being last, is mostly how slow he feels, and difficulty to play.
The others seem alot easier to play and master, compaired.

Yeah, I think Zangief was my least favorite character when I was a kid. Mostly because he's really slow.

I like the U.S.S.R. stage, though.

For serious multiplayer me and my friends mostly played Ken and Ryu and a bit of guile. There was basically no difference it was just we couldn't pick the same character so whoever picked Ryu the other would pick ken. A year or 2 later we would use guile just as much with his magic throw . It was awesome to pull those throws together without the opponent having the chance to get up

For me its easily Ryu.

The character, the fighting style and the moves.

On the Blanka stage, there's this snake that appears in a tree. What fascinates me about the snake is that the devs couldn't seem to decide on what color it was. Dark Green in World Warrior in arcades and on SNES, brown in both versions of Turbo, Orange-Brown in SNES Super and latter arcade revisions, etc.

The tree changes color too!

I think it's just kind of neat, that's all.

EDIT: They changed it again in the HD version!

To play as, it's Ryu / Ken (of the original 8). M. Bison comes into the mix if you include the bosses. Blanka is pretty handy as well.

While I like all of them, I think I have the most fun when I play as Blanka, Zangief and Dhalsim. Ryu/Ken are nice but I prefer these three. Honda is my least favorite, but still good.

Edit: I actually thought about making a thread about favorite fighting game characters, now here you go. Nice thread!