It's grade school for me, in the late 1990s. Street Fighter III: New Generation has just graced arcades, and blown me and my friends minds with its mind-blowing animation. OK, not really; it actually only blew my mind, seeing as how my friends had already moved to alternate pastures after the Street Fighter franchise had moved into the hardest-of-the-hardcore realm with III's difficult-to-grasp gameplay. I opened up a new issue of EGM, and saw that a new time-release character had been revealed: Sheng Long.
Click for a larger look.
The character created in Ryu's line from the arcade version of Street Fighter II ("You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance") had finally been revealed as a playable character. Similar to the only one being excited about SFIII, I was also the only one I knew who cared about Sheng Long's inclusion. It was a great time...and a gullible one.
The gullibility factor came in from actually believing it at all. Though I didn't realize it at the time, and constantly went to arcades to look for the character to grace the selection screen soon, it was actually an April Fool's joke. This was a time before the internet came into stride; we didn't have any "online announcements" or the like to officially confirm this. We got all of our news from magazines, and I knew that EGM was the most trustworthy source for video game news. Amidst the disappointment, I thought it was OK to be fooled by one of the most elaborate April Fool's features in video game magazine history.
The joke was so elaborate that Capcom decided to make him an actual character in Street Fighter IV. As revealed in Famitsu last week, Sheng Long, known as "Gouken" in Japan, is now available in the arcade version of the game as a CPU character (not playable. Not yet, at least). You know a joke is good if it still gets the attention of a company like Capcom over a decade later.
And it's no surprise to see that the guy looks like a beast to fight against, too. Definitely more so than Akuma, especially in terms of his move set (he has all of Ryu's best moves), but probably not on the same level as the final boss, Seth (who rivals SFIII's Gill in terms of cheapness). His story in the game is currently unknown; according to SF's canon, he was killed years ago by Akuma's Raging Demon attack.
So, there you have it. All of the hints that SFIV's producer Yoshinori Ono had been dropping for months have finally come to fruition. And much earlier than expected too, as we'd speculated that he was going to be a console-exclusive character to be revealed at the Tokyo Game Show late next week. This only further solidifies the fact that SFIV is definitely being made primarily for the fans.
Click for a larger look.The character created in Ryu's line from the arcade version of Street Fighter II ("You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance") had finally been revealed as a playable character. Similar to the only one being excited about SFIII, I was also the only one I knew who cared about Sheng Long's inclusion. It was a great time...and a gullible one.
The gullibility factor came in from actually believing it at all. Though I didn't realize it at the time, and constantly went to arcades to look for the character to grace the selection screen soon, it was actually an April Fool's joke. This was a time before the internet came into stride; we didn't have any "online announcements" or the like to officially confirm this. We got all of our news from magazines, and I knew that EGM was the most trustworthy source for video game news. Amidst the disappointment, I thought it was OK to be fooled by one of the most elaborate April Fool's features in video game magazine history.
The joke was so elaborate that Capcom decided to make him an actual character in Street Fighter IV. As revealed in Famitsu last week, Sheng Long, known as "Gouken" in Japan, is now available in the arcade version of the game as a CPU character (not playable. Not yet, at least). You know a joke is good if it still gets the attention of a company like Capcom over a decade later.
And it's no surprise to see that the guy looks like a beast to fight against, too. Definitely more so than Akuma, especially in terms of his move set (he has all of Ryu's best moves), but probably not on the same level as the final boss, Seth (who rivals SFIII's Gill in terms of cheapness). His story in the game is currently unknown; according to SF's canon, he was killed years ago by Akuma's Raging Demon attack.
So, there you have it. All of the hints that SFIV's producer Yoshinori Ono had been dropping for months have finally come to fruition. And much earlier than expected too, as we'd speculated that he was going to be a console-exclusive character to be revealed at the Tokyo Game Show late next week. This only further solidifies the fact that SFIV is definitely being made primarily for the fans.
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