Stay with me; this entry to really long, but really interesting!



In most Street Fighter games from Street Fighter 2 and onward, the victorious fighter of a match will exclaim a winning quote upon completion. For the North American release, these quotes were taken from their original Japanese, translated into Chinese, then translated a third time from Chinese to English. Why it had to be this complicated is something I will never understand. Nonetheless, a win quote from Ryu that was meant to read:"You must defeat my Dragon Punch to stand a chance" instead read to American arcade goers as "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance".



In the series as a whole, one of Ryu's special moves commonly performed is a flying uppercut called his "Shoryuken" which is Japanese for "Rising Dragon Punch". By the same token, the Chinese word for "Rising Dragon" is "Sheng Long". Therefore when Ryu's win quote had finally been translated to English, the Chinese middle-man had mistranslated a portion of the quote, and the signature produced said, "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance." To put it bluntly, it was a pretty evitable mistake.



After hearing the explanation, the confusion makes sense. However in 1991, it made anything but sense to American gamers who did not interpret the "Sheng Long" aspect of the quote as a "what" as it was intended, but rather as a "whom". "Who is Sheng Long?" gamers marveled. Rumors and speculation attempting to answer this question spread like wildfire through arcades from coast to coast. The prevailing theory was that Sheng Long must be a person, and he must be Ryu's karate sensei. But what a strange reference gamers thought. Why such a cryptic message? And how could anyone defeat Sheng Long anyways?



Anxiety regarding the attempt to solve this mystery reached a boiling point in 1992 when Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) magazine's April issue printed an article confirming suspicions that Sheng Long was in fact Ryu's sensei, as well as a step-by-step account of how to fight against the elusive character in the game! As it turns out, this article was actually a mean-spirited April fool's joke, but that was a fact the magazine would conceal until December of that year. After competing magazines reprinted EGM's findings (without confirming it themselves) word spread the world over with gamers ferociously attempting to unlock the battle against Sheng Long with no success. Needless to say, people were pissed off when they finally found out after 9 months of fruitless attempts that they had been swindled.



When ported to the SNES, developers changed "Sheng Long" to its correct "Dragon Punch", and while the entire episode became something of a running joke within Capcom, the confusion surrounding the mysterious Sheng Long did influence future incarnations of the Street Fighter series. 1994's Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo included an evil secret character of demonic power described as Sheng Long's brother. Sheng Long himself would eventually become a playable character in Street Fighter 4, but his name was changed to Gouken.



Consider this a public service announcement regarding the dangers of elaborate April fool's jokes...

