Sheng Long

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Sheng Long is a nonexistent character in the Street Fighter series, created by Electronic Gaming Monthly as an April Fool's gag, and is one of their most notable jokes. While the character does not actually exist within Street Fighter canon, the joke has been an influence on Street Fighter II and the arcade game based on Street Fighter: The Movie.

Sheng Long's appearance was defined in EGM's second usage of the joke in relation to Street Fighter III. The artwork is not original, and is actually a modified illustration of Ryu from Street Fighter Alpha 2 with Gen's face.

Contents 1 Origin 1.1 Official mentions 1.2 Original EGM April Fools 1992 1.3 EGM April Fools 1997 2 Legacy 2.1 Akuma 2.2 Street Fighter: The Movie 2.3 Capcom April Fools 2008 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Origin

[edit] Official mentions

The name Sheng Long comes from a mistranslation of the "shō ryū" (昇龍 rising dragon) of Ryu's Shōryūken (昇龍拳) into Chinese pinyin-- "shēng lóng." One of Ryu's win quotes in the English localization of the arcade version of Street Fighter II was "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance." The original win quote in the Japanese version actually translates to "If you cannot break through the Rising Dragon Punch, you cannot win!" (昇龍拳を破らぬ限り、おまえに勝ち目はない！, Shōryūken o yaburanu kagiri, omae ni kachime wa nai!^?) However, the English translation gives the impression that Ryu is referring to a person (his supposed master), instead of simply being the name of one of his techniques. The SNES and Genesis ports of the Street Fighter II games offered a less ambiguous translation: "You must defeat my Dragon Punch to stand a chance."^[1]

However, the English localization of the home versions compounded the confusion: As Capcom USA had a habit at the time of embellishing certain factors of the character's backstories, they did so with Ryu and Ken's. At the time, the character that would become Gouken, Ryu and Ken's sensei, was unnamed. Capcom USA's localization team modified the profiles from the two characters in English instruction manual for the SNES version of Street Fighter II, referring to Sheng Long as Ryu and Ken's master.^[2][3] This addition persisted until Electronic Gaming Monthly's April Fool's joke.

[edit] Original EGM April Fools 1992

Because of both factors, rumors about Sheng Long actually being in the game spawned and players sent letters to video game publications attempting to confirm the character did indeed exist (see image, left). He would eventually appear as an April Fool's joke in the April 1992 issue of the video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. The fake reporter, named W.A. Stokins (Waste Tokens) of Fuldigan, HA (Fooled Again, HA - as in haha) claimed that he could be found if the player (only as Ryu) did not suffer any damage during the entire game; then, once he reached the final match against M. Bison, he had to neither hit him nor let him inflict any damage until the time limit expired, thus ending the fight in a draw. This had to be repeated for ten consecutive rounds with Bison. If these conditions were met Sheng Long would then come out of nowhere and throw Bison off of the screen and out of the way, and the clock would lock at 99 seconds, resulting in a "fight to the death."

Sheng Long was stated to feature the special moves of all the fighters (including Chun-Li's Spinning Bird Kick), but did much more damage and was also faster, and his Dragon Punch was "revealed" to consume his fist in flames to show his greater power (much like would happen to Ken in later Street Fighter games).

Many fans thought this was true, and flocked to Street Fighter II machines hoping to find him.^[4][5] When asked whether or not Sheng Long was a real character, Capcom neither confirmed nor denied it.^[6] Capcom USA was uncertain if the character was really in the game or not: they actually contacted Capcom of Japan and asked them if the character had been included without their knowledge.^{[citation needed]} The joke became an international sensation when publications from Europe and Hong Kong reprinted the trick without verifying it or asking EGM's permission, and a Hong Kong based comic based around Street Fighter II by Jademan Comics altered their story just to include the character.^[5] EGM later revealed that Sheng Long was a hoax.

[edit] EGM April Fools 1997

This was not the end of Sheng Long, though. EGM perpetuated the hoax again by claiming that he was in Street Fighter III in 1997. They did not finish their explanation of how to reach him; "To reach him, you will need at least six perfects and..." were the last words of the article.^[7]

The character itself was expanded on greatly, however; Sheng Long was now specifically stated to be the American name for the character Gouken, much like Akuma is the American name for Gouki. His profile listed in the article paralleled Gouken's almost exactly, but instead of Akuma killing him he was knocked into a raging river. The result gave him a scar over his eye, and a desire to get revenge on his brother. To this end he revived several "killing techniques" of his fighting style, which were to include an air version of Akuma's red fireball that knocks his opponent down, a double ground high-low Hadouken, an unblockable Denjin-Shinryuu-Ken Super Art that would shocks the opponent, an air rapid Hadouken Super Art akin to one of Ibuki's, and a Super Art intended to be a stronger version of the Shun Goku Satsu.

[edit] Legacy

[edit] Akuma

The Sheng Long rumor is often credited with inspiring the creation of Akuma, a character who debuted as a hidden final boss in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, due to their similarities,^[8] although Capcom has never officially confirmed nor deny this. Like the hoax, Akuma would require special achievements met during the game, and would then interrupt the fight between the player and M. Bison at the game's final match.

[edit] Street Fighter: The Movie

Sheng Long is mentioned twice 'Street Fighter: The Movie, in the endings for Ryu,^[9] Ken,^[10] and Akuma.^[11] In each, he's stated as the master of Ryu and Ken and Akuma's brother, but never stated as dead. Despite the repeated mention, Sheng Long himself makes no appearance in the game.

On January 30, 2007, the game's designer, Alan Noon, appeared on Shoryuken.com's forum and discussed many aspects of the game and some of which not included in the final product,^[12] later compiling these statements into a PDF hosted on his blog. According to Noon, while shooting and digitizing the character images for the Street Fighter: The Movie arcade game, talk had been circulating about adding extra characters that weren't in the movie. As the Sheng Long hoax was still fairly recent at the time, and Akuma having just debuted in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, the designers asked for Capcom's permission to add both Akuma and Sheng Long. Capcom approved the addition of Akuma, but denied the inclusion of Sheng Long. A stunt actor from the film posed as Akuma and was included to the game. Unexpectedly, during the digitization sessions, Capcom came back and approved the addition of Sheng Long. Noon points out in his postings that Capcom had ambitions that the game would crush Mortal Kombat II, and be one of the greatest of the series, which no doubt lead to the decision to add Sheng Long. Noon was given the chance to design the character, giving him a mandarin style gi, and one hand taking the form of a dragon's claw, citing that Sheng Long's power was so great, that he began to physically transform into a dragon. Capcom approved the design, and another stunt actor posed as Sheng Long. However, shortly afterward, Capcom once again rejected Sheng Long's addition to the game.^[13]

[edit] Capcom April Fools 2008

In the January 2008 Issue of EGM, Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono stated "Let's just say that [jokes] that your magazine have reported in the past might find their way into the game as fan service." Exective editor Shane Bettenhausen took this to mean the appearance of Sheng Long in Street Fighter IV, though added that if the character did appear in the game, it would be Gouken.^[14] No further information beyond this however has been stated.

In April 2008, Capcom announced Sheng Long as a "secret, unlock-able character" in their Japanese development blog for Street Fighter IV^[15] and later posted in their official US blog^[16] at the same time showing a silhouette of the character. The post took the tone of a Capcom PR representative trying to announce a character without giving away too many details, hinting that "Sheng Long is Ryu's..." then holding back and saying to wait for an official character announcement. Similar and possibly in homage to the original EGM joke, the post lists the method to unlock him as requiring the player to win every round as Ryu without taking any damage whatsoever and then perform a Shoryuken during the final boss fight. Reception to the joke the third time was met with somewhat negative reception,^[17] including a jab from 1Up.com.^[18] The following day, the Japanese website confirmed that it was indeed a joke, and explained the origin of Sheng Long.^[1]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• FightingStreet.com article on Sheng Long

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