Archive for
Watch Gouken (Sheng Long) in Action
This has been nearly two decades in the making, but we can finally see the infamous Sheng Long take part in battle in Street Fighter IV. Yes, I know the mythical origins of Sheng Long are rooted in a horrible EGM hoax and that Capcom only invented the character of Gouken after the fact, but it’s pretty easy to connect the two to say that they are one and the same.
The rumor has been confirmed and now we even have a gameplay video to prove it. From what we hear, Gouken (Sheng Long) is the storied master of Ken and Ryu, having taught both pupils the martial art of Shotokan. Yes, Shotokan is a real martial art, but these Street Fighter guys happened to throw in an extra hadouken here and an extra shoryuken there. We also learn that Gouken is Akuma’s older brother. Wowzee!
Anyways, you can peep the Street Fighter IV gameplay video below. It shows off a few of Gouken’s signature moves. He’s got a hadouken that fires off in multiple directions, a charging strike of some kind, and a killer midair hurricane kick, as well as Ryu’s three-stage super shoryuken special attack. Because Gouken is a playable character in Street Fighter IV, Capcom made him more balanced with the rest of the roster. See how the Shotokan master fares against newcomer Abel the wrestler.
First Look: Sheng Long in Street Fighter IV
I didn’t believe it at first either, but what you see here are magazine scans from Famitsu in Japan, depicting Gouken — who we know as Sheng Long in North America — as part of the cast of Street Fighter IV. This is much bigger news than the inclusion of Akuma (Gouki), because Sheng Long is a mythical being that was born out of a mistranslation and an April Fool’s joke.
For those of you who weren’t fighting game fanatics at the time, Street Fighter II introduced the possibility of a super secret character. One of the Ryu’s winning phrases was “You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.” Everyone wondered about who the heck was Sheng Long, because he was not mentioned anywhere else in the Street Fighter mythology. As it turned out, Sheng Long was simply the transliteration of the Chinese translation of Shoryu (as in Shoryuken), or Rising Dragon. Ryu’s statement was supposed to say that you needed to defeat his Dragon Punch to stand a chance.
It didn’t help that Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) started what has to be the greatest video game hoax of all time. They concocted one of the most elaborate schemes to unlocking Sheng Long in Street Fighter II, telling you that you had to use Ryu to finish the game, but in a very specific manner. First, you had to defeat the first 11 opponents (including the first three boss characters) without getting touched. This is not “no damage”; having a block no-damage attack nullified your chances. Next, you had to survive ten rounds against M.Bison without either character taking any damage, resulting in ten draws. After the tenth round, Sheng Long would come to replace M.Bison. Sheng Long was the master who trained Ryu and Ken, or so the story went.
Well, Sheng Long (known as Gouken in Japan) is finally making a monumental appearance and it’s in Street Fighter IV. Holy crap!
Source: Kotaku
