Hiya!

The most recent Capcom Cup just ended this weekend and it was a fantastic show with some fantastic Street Fighter 6 matches. Well, I can only really guess as to how good the matches were as Capcom, in their infinite wisdom (and need for money), decided to make the Top 16 of Capcom Cup a pay-per-view show. As in you had to pay a fee to watch the culmination of their big yearly tournament! This, of course, more than ruffled the feathers of the fighting game community. Capcom did eventually relent a bit and made it possible to watch the Top 16 matches for free through Street Fighter 6’s Battle Hub. However, as my colleague on this site had already talked about, this was hardly the ideal way to see it.

It’s sad to see Capcom really flub this but, then again, this isn’t the first time they messed up when it came to the Street Fighter franchise. That’s to be expected with a franchise which has lasted for almost 40 years. While I am a huge fan of the Street Fighter games, there were more than just a few foibles here and there. So, with Capcom totally getting it wrong with the entire Capcom Cup pay-per-view debacle, let’s go through just three of the mistakes Capcom had done with Street Fighter throughout those almost 40 years.

The “Sheng Long” mistranslation

During the 90’s, video games weren’t the billion dollar industry it is today. Yes, video games were big but it was still young. As such, there was a lot of growing pains as video game developers like Capcom were still figuring things out, such as how to translate text. So, when they made the original Street Fighter II and they were localizing the game for English speaking audiences, instead of simply translating the Japanese to English, they went through the extra step of translating it to Chinese first and then translate the Chinese to English. This led to Ryu‘s Rising Dragon Punch in his win quote to be translated to Sheng Long. However, when the Chinese was translated to English, the translators seemingly thought Sheng Long was a name instead of Ryu’s iconic special attack. So, the win quote became “You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance!” This led to the myth that Ryu and Ken‘s master was a man named Sheng Long.

This would have been a funny anecdote in Street Fighter history but the problem is Capcom themselves weren’t aware of this error! In the Super Nintendo port of Street Fighter II, Capcom did correct Ryu’s win quote to say “You must defeat my Dragon Punch to stand a chance” but they double downed on the mistranslation in the game’s manual! In both Ryu and Ken’s bios in the manual, it specifically says their master is a person named Sheng Long! So, Capcom USA inadvertently made Sheng Long a canon fighter in Street Fighter lore!

Of course, it didn’t help how Electronic Gaming Monthly, a video game magazine, printed an April Fool’s joke on how to supposedly fight Sheng Long in the arcade version of Street Fighter II. The process was ridiculous and virtually impossible as it involved both Ryu and M. Bison, the final boss, to not get hit for 10 rounds. After the last draw game, Sheng Long would jump out and face off against Ryu. Despite the magazine mentioning in the very same page they were holding an April Fool’s contest to find what was their April Fool’s gag that month, people still believed this!

Despite this huge gaffe, something good did come from this mistranslation as Electronic Gaming Monthly actually gave Capcom the groundwork for Akuma/Gouki. In Super Street Fighter II Turbo, you could face the mysterious fighter and he would have some of the moves Sheng Long was described to have, such as an air fireball and flaming projectile. Akuma would soon become a mainstay of the Street Fighter universe. So, while this started out as a huge mistake, Capcom did make some lemonade out of that lemon.

Street Fighter III‘s sucky start

Capcom was riding high on Street Fighter II’s success for a long time. A little too long for a lot of fans. They would release incremental updates and also worked on the Street Fighter Zero/Alpha series of games at the same time. Capcom, however, hesitated with making and developing an official 3rd entry to the Street Fighter series. So much so, in fact, they apparently forgot to start making one. Street Fighter III started out as, well, not Street Fighter III. It was a totally different fighting game and this explains why, besides Ryu and Ken, all of the characters are so weird!

This was just the start of the blunders Capcom made when making, or not making as the case would be because of what I just mentioned, Street Fighter III. They didn’t have any veteran programmers working on Street Fighter III, which is dumb because this is the highly awaited next entry to their groundbreaking Street Fighter II.

Street Fighter III was gorgeous for the time, especially with the super fluid animation. The problem is the gameplay felt wonky for a lot of veterans. It just didn’t feel like a Street Fighter game. Things did get better but it took them a while to really make Street Fighter III a good game. Actually, they really put a lot of effort into it and eventually Street Fighter III’s final iteration, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, is known by the hardcore fighting game community to be one of the best, if not the best, fighting game ever.

Unfortunately, the damage was done. Because of how bad the first Street Fighter III game was, as well as fans simply getting bored with fighting games in general, the entire Street Fighter series had to go into hibernation until 2008 when Street Fighter IV came out. This game did cause a resurgence in the popularity of fighting games. Still, Street Fighter III nearly killed the genre.

Street Fighter V‘s barebones package

After Street Fighter IV’s massive success, Capcom was, once again, riding high. Fighting games were popular once again and gained a lot of fans throughout that game’s tenure. It did seem Capcom learned their lesson as they didn’t exactly wait for Street Fighter IV’s popularity to wain before announcing they were in the process of making Street Fighter V. Street Fighter V was released to the general public in 2016.

Well, some of it anyway. Apparently, while Capcom learned to strike while the iron was hot when it came to releasing sequels, they made a new mistake by releasing Street Fighter V with hardly any single player content!

For some strange reason, Capcom thought it was okay to release Street Fighter V without the other stuff you would expect from all their previous Street Fighter games. No arcade mode. The only way to play against the CPU was by modifying the Training Mode dummy. The individual character Story mode AI was so dumb even a baby could beat it… literally! It wouldn’t have been so bad if the online netcode was decent but even that was bad!

Once again, Capcom had to play catch up as, over the game’s lifespan, they kept on tweaking the game and adding new features. They eventually did put in an arcade ladder. They also put in a cinematic story mode (which was both a mess and fun) later on. Capcom kept on adding more characters, ballooning the original base 16 roster to a very robust 35 (36 if you include Eleven… but you shouldn’t). By the end, Street Fighter V did become a good game. The problem is it took Capcom years of adding stuff to it and tweaking the gameplay to make it a good game.

Byee!

What are the other screwups Capcom made with the Street Fighter franchise? Let me know in the comments section below!