20080518

Retcons in Street Fighter 1

The word "Retcon" stands for Retroactive Continuity and is used in games that intend to add a character or thing that never was planed or could never fit in early games actions or story. Street Fighter is one of those games that abuse from this expression. I will list some of the things that were un-canonized and replaced with new events. Some of them you'll find a little ridicule:




1. Ryu
Originally: Ryu was the champion of this game. We won the tournament fairly, since he was the best fighter of the world. According to SF2 he left a scar in Sagat's chest with his shoryuken: "You must defeat my dragon punch to stand a chance".

Retcon: Ryu lost the tournament against Sagat. When Sagat was lending him a hand he turned into "evil Ryu" hand gave sagat a cheap shot, winning the tournament improperly.


2. Ken
Originally: Ken, a blond hair American and friend of Ryu, participated in SF1 tournament but lost.

Retcon: Ken, didn't have a blong hair after all. He died his black long hair and after loosing the SF1 tournament went back to America where he went in the US Martial Arts. There he fought against Alen Snider and, at the finals, he managed to win.

Retcon #2: Ken, a dark hair American and friend of Ryu, didn't participated in SF1 tournament at all. He also didn't fought Alen Snider, but still won the US martial arts, previously won by Nash, Guile's friend.


3. Joe
Originaly: Joe shares three similarities with Ken: he is american, blond, he has black eyebrows (at least in SF2 intro), wears red pants, and both are inspired in the US kickboxer Joe Lewis (who also trained with bruce lee, the inspiration for Fei Long).

Retcon: Like Ken, Joe has black eyebrows and blond hair so that makes him also a black haired fighter, according to Capcom's formula.


4. Mike
Originally: Mike was a champion at boxing until the day he killed a opponent in a fight. After that he joined forces with Shadowloo. As seen in SF2 intro he fought against Joe in SF1, who punched him and apparently knocked him out. That punch must have been the cause for the loose of his teeth as shown in his SF2 character screen.

Retcon: Capcom decided to expand the joke of this stereotypical character and added the last name of "Bison" to him, reveling to be Mike Bison (a parody of Mike Tyson). Due to obvious lawsuit issues Capcom US had to change his name into Balrog (which belonged to Vega at that time) and gave the "Mike Bison" to SF2 final boss. After that Capcom spitted Mike into two characters: Mike, the black American boxer from SF1 and Mike, the black American boxer from SF2, to unrelated the first with Mike Bison/Tyson.


5. Birdie
Originally: Birdie is an english caucasian punk. He doesen't use any weapon, just his stranght.

Retcon: After all Birdie is a black punk who got sick into the tournament and became white. In SSF2T (see Ryu's ending) he got sick once more, the reason why he also seams white. He uses chains to help him to catch and throuw his opponents.


6. Sagat
Originally: The evil Sagat wanted to prove his strength to expand his ego.

Retcon: The evil Sagat wanted to prove his strength to expand his ego. He killed a man during a fight and left two kids orphaned. He joined forces with a crime and drug syndicate to serve his master for a purpose of world domination.

Retcon #2: The good willed Sagat lost due to an injustice in the final fight against Ryu. He should have won and now wants a rematch to prove that.

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