"Secret Character Sheng Long" or "The April Fools Prank"

I'm too lazy to tell the old story about "Sheng Long" and EGM again so here is what someone wrote for Arcade-History.com (good site):

"Fans of Street Fighter are well accustomed to the story of Sheng Long. Street Fighter II was already well popular in the arcades when the April issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly came out. There was a story about a secret character in SFII. His name: Sheng Long, the supposed master of Ryu and Ken. To reach him, you had to go a certain amount of matches against Bison without touching him. If that condition was fulfilled, Sheng Long would come up and kill Bison and you would fight him instead. His style was essentially a mix of Ryu's and Ken's styles, but was much faster and dealt much more damage. When the issue came out, millions literally pumped quarters into SFII machines, trying to get to this nonexistent character. Capcom had neither confirmed nor denied the Sheng Long story and it was only much later that EGM themselves admitted that it was just an April Fools' joke... or was it? 'Sheng Long' is the Chinese pronunciation of 'Shou Ryuu' (as in Shou Ryuu Ken).
For some reason, instead of writing 'Shou Ryuu Ken' or the English translation ('Rising Dragon Fist'), Capcom used the Chinese pronunciation of just the 'Shou Ryuu' part of 'Shou Ryuu Ken' for Ryu's victory quote : 'You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance'. People who saw this victory quote were understandably confused as to who or what this 'Sheng Long' was referring to."

NOTE:
Just like Sheng Long was said to attack Vega (aka M. Bison in the Western World) and then challenge you, Gouki did it in SSFIIX as a secret character. Sheng Long (eventhough he never existed) had a big influence on the character Gouki (aka Akuma in the Western World). Just like Sheng Long Gouki is another Ryu clone who wears the typical gi and uses Goutetsu's Ansatsuken style.

There are still people today who believe that Sheng Long exists and is the master of Ryu and Ken (which is crap since Gouken is their master). In the end it was just another Capcom USA mistranslation.

 
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EGM used the same prank again for Street Fighter III (The New Generation) and again a lot of people were fooled.

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sano posted on the Shoryuken.com board:

In Electronic Gaming Monthly's Recent May 2004 issue which marks the Magazine's 15th Anniversary, they gave themselves a well deserved pat on the back for aiding in the creation of Gouki.

"Our best April Fool's Gag: April 1992, EGM #33"
"EGM's most infamous - and to some readers, most aggravating - April Fool's prank promised to pit Street Fighter II players against series mainstays Ken and Ryu's purported mentor, Sheng Long. We figured some chumps would waste their change trying to fulfill the insanely tough challenge we cooked up, but we never imagined the joke might one day lead developer Capcom to create the suspiciously Sheng Long-like character Akuma. The phony Mr. Long returned in an updated joke for Street Fighter III years later."

Here is a pic of what EGM made Sheng Long look like in SFIII NG:

The pics are from GameSpot.com

Here is a fake German SNES review with Sheng Long and Gouken on it and a short bio full of nonsence for each character. I don't know who made it or where it appeared. I got it from this site.

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Capcom USA

To make the confusion perfect Capcom USA had to add another incredibly stupid piece of story to the already crappy game Street Fighter The Movie, the game to the shitty Van Damme movie that made every true Street Fighter fan puke:
It wasn't enough for them to change Gouki's name to Akuma. No they had to use Sheng Long as his brother's name. Of course this made people think that they were right all the time and that Ryu and Ken's master is Sheng Long. It's just amazing how these idiots at Capcom USA work.
Here's Akuma's ending of the Arcade version of the game (read the text and laugh or cry).

Of course this ending also screwed up Gouki's whole character and storyline and urgh this is so stupid it's not even worth talking about it. Just once and for all, Sheng Long never existed!

For 2008's April 1st Capcom released a new picture of Sheng Long, who was said to appear in SFIV:

(original image, click to view brightened version)

Yes we were laughing when we saw the video. Until they made clear that it wasn't a joke. They actually replaced Gouken's design with Sheng Long (or did a weird mish mash) and SURPRISE he isn't really dead! Again the old story: He fell down a waterfall so nobody saw him being ripped into pieces and therefore it's perfectly normal for him to show up now. So that's Gouken now. Sheng Long finally became Ryu and Ken's master. Why Ono, why?