Street Fighter is one of the longest-running fighting game series in the world and with that comes a ton of history. That history has a ton of interesting facts and stories but one of the most well-known is the history of a character that never even existed, that character's name is Sheng Long.
Even though he isn't real, Sheng Long has had a massive amount of influence on the Street Fighter series and if you're a fan of it, then you should know a few things about him.
10 Where It All Started
The Legend of Shen Long started all the way back in the original version of Street Fighter II. It began with one of Ryu's early victory quotes "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance." This lead people to believe that there was a secret character in the game named Sheng Long and soon after fans discovered this theory took on a life of its own. Fans began to think of ways to make this character appearm what his relevance to the story might be, and how he would play.
9 Inspired Akuma
The fans theorizing about Sheng Long lead to the creation of two characters that are very important in the Street Fighter Universe. The first of those characters was Akuma, the man that threw away his humanity for more power.
Sheng Long also inspired the way Akuma made his entrance in Street Fighter II Turbo, as Akuma attacks Bison before the final fight, like how Sheng Long was said to do if you got to fight him.
8 Inspired Gouken
Sheng Long also heavily inspired and maybe even caused the creation of Akuma's brother Gouken. The release of Akuma did nothing to slow down the theories about Sheng Long, in fact, they made more as people started to theorize that Sheng Long and Akuma were brothers. Eventually, this lead to the creation of Gouken in Street Fighter IV who was heavily influenced by the Sheng Long legends, as he was both the master of Ryu and Ken as well as the brother of Akuma.
7 Hoaxes And Pranks
With the internet being in its infancy at the peak of these rumors, many people were unable to verify if they were true or not. This lead to a lot of people taking advantage of the mystery around the supposed 'hidden character' and created various hoaxes and pranks that were said to be able to spawn him.
Some of these were hard and some of them were just ridiculous. One of the more famous methods was while playing as Ryu you cannot take any hits from or hit M.Bison, for ten rounds.
6 SNES Manual
Some of the people that got in on the trend of pranking poor naive souls were none other than the game's developers. For the SNES version of Street Fighter II the line that hinted at Sheng Long's existence was changed to "You must defeat my Dragon Punch to stand a chance." but in the manual of the game, it referred to a Master Sheng Long being the one that taught Ryu and Ken how to fight. This was later changed to have no reference to Sheng Long for updated versions of the game.
5 1992 Article
In April 1992, Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) released its monthly magazine and became the first place to really start the hoax train on this character. The fact that this issue was released in April should have been a hint to people but EGM's article on Sheng Long had a fake photo in it that seemed legit at the time and even had steps on how to unlock the character, to which the magazine credited "W.A. Stokins" ("waste tokens") of "Fuldigen, HA" ("fooled again, ha") for being the one to send them the information.
4 1997 Article
In 1997, Street Fighter III was still in development with many fans speculating about what new characters might appear in the upcoming game. EGM thought that this would be a great time to restart the rumor mill around Sheng Long, theorizing that he might make his debut in the upcoming sequel. This time the article they wrote had a full character design of the fake character. This turned out to be another prank with the first letters of the first ten sentences spelling out April Fools.
3 Legacy
Despite never existing, Sheng Long has been a massive influence on the Street Fighter series. The character was actually ranked 19th on GameDaily's list of the "Top 20 Street Fighter Characters of All Time," as well as making it to second place on IGN's "Top Ten Gaming April Fools' Pranks". Like we mentioned earlier the rumors around Sheng Long lead to the creation of Gouken and Akuma, who are some of the most important and popular characters in the series. The hoax around Sheng Long is considered by many to be a part of gaming history.
2 Joke Profile
Despite never being a character, Capcom does like to call back to this joke character in different games, mostly Street Fighter for obvious reasons. In Street Fighter V, the developers gave the character his own joke profile in the Shadaloo Combat Research Institute as part of the Capcom Fighters Network website. The profile had a moveset, which included moves like a throw that would instantly kill his opponent, as well as one that throws teabags. It also listed his birthday as April 1st.
1 The Mistranslation
This quote is where all of this started. From the jokes to the actual characters that were spawned, it all comes from this one quote right here. The thing about it is that the quote itself is a mistake. The actual quote is supposed to be "You Must Defeat The Shoryuken To Stand A Chance." Sheng Long is the translation of Shoryuken, which is Japanese, to Chinese Pinyin this made it's way to the English version. The original quote in Japanese is "If you cannot overcome the Rising Dragon Fist, you cannot win!"
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