Barefoot Mod... for FEXL?!! Barefoot Hokuto FINALLY! (Patreon)

Back in the day, since I'm one of the more... mature gamers... I was really into Streetfighter EX, not just because it was one of Capcom's early forays into 3D polygon fighters and it had pretty cool gameplay. Of course I was in since the roster had this cool female fighter named Hokuto. She was in a traditional Japanese costume which included Hakama, the wide, loose pants we've seen with martial artists and a certain beautiful peacemaker dojo princess from Osaka. Hokuto was my crush in SFEX, but sadly she wasn't barefoot- she more tabi, the Japanese-style toed socks. They're probably thicker than ordinary socks, but to me, only a wee bit of cloth separated Hokuto's feet from the floor and barefoot-ness. I always yearned to see her barefoot, much like I wanted Cammy to lose those big Doc Martens boots of hers.

Well, fast-forward years and years later, Arika released Fighting EX Layer, and it was graphically improved since SFEX, and of course Hokuto was in the roster- and she looked gorgeous. BUT- she still wore the tabi. Eventually FEXL went the way of old, no-barefoot games and was uninstalled to lay dormant in my Steam Library.

Then another fast-forward to today, just an hour ago as of this writing. I was just looking around online for screenshots or images and I randomly saw this screenshot of Hokuto in FEXL... and she was barefoot. It was early in the AM and I did a double-take. Was that real? Or was I just seeing things?

Yep, it was real. I followed the screenshot and the link to a DeviantArt page of a user named Zhaohongxu1314, and his page for the Barefoot Hokuto mod for FEXL. He apparently had a modder friend make the mod, and he posted it on the page. I DL'ed it and tried it out- and it works. So yeah, I now have a reason to have FEXL installed, and we have a new barefoot babe to play with. Even better, I checked and UUU (V.4) works with FEXL, so we have a freecam to use as well- as you can see with the screenshots above.

FEXL isn't that much in content (I'm not even sure if there's a proper CPU VS mode), and unfortunately only Hokuto is barefoot, but I think we can get a KO Ending and some vids for the Youtube channel from this.

This is pretty awesome, and if you have FEXL, go and get it from Zhao's page and thank him for sharing this cool mod.

Note: He also has a SF6/Real Bout-style Mai Shiranui mod for City of the Wolves on his DA, which I'll feature on its own post.