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Ken Sei MoguraJust when you thought you'd seen everything to do with the CPS-1 era along comes something simply incredible! Ken Sei Mogura: Street Fighter II is a 'whack-a-mole' style arcade game (mogura means 'mole', incidentally) developed by Capcom, Sigma and Togo, released in Japan in 1994. In this game, M. Bison assumes the role as the titular 'mole' as the player, either as Ryu (P1) or Chun-Li (P2), attempt to bash him on the head with a mallet. On the game-screen, an automatic fight plays out between the players based on how well they are doing at whacking M. Bison...! The game is based on Champion Edition character sprites and stages but the cabinet, of course, is utterly unique and the title also features portraits of Ryu and Chun-Li not seen elsewhere.

Noisy CrowdBut wait! There's more. Subconsciously players might already know this, but it wasn't until I watched a couple of promo videos unearthed on YouTube, dating from 1992, that I realised it was in the Super Nintendo and Genesis/Mega Drive ports of Hyper Fighting [a.k.a. Turbo] and [Special] Champion Edition that crowd noise was added at the end of each round (in stages where there is an audience). You know the sounds, you've heard them a thousand times or more. The cheering actually sounds a bit like Dhalsim's elephants now that I think about it. Whatever, the funny thing is that this is absent in the arcade originals. As the totally rad dude in the promo videos exclaims, 'Actually, the [console] version is even better than the arcade version, no lie!' (Crowd sounds were included for the first time on arcade versions in Super).

AnimalsIt's tiny alteration time! Have you ever paid attention to what is shown on the world maps in Street Fighter II besides the national flags? In World Warrior, from West to East you can see the Sahara desert, a giraffe, an African elephant, Saint Basil's Cathedral (partially hidden behind the flag of the U.S.S.R.), a koala bear, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. However, did you ever notice that in Champion Edition Capcom added a panda bear to the world map? Maybe this was to compensate for the grizzly being almost completely obscured by this point. The map is unchanged in Hyper Fighting but was redrawn completely for Super and depicts a saguaro cactus, a grizzly bear, a blue whale, a killer whale, a European hare (I think), an Indian elephant and a panda. The map was re-drawn once more for Super Turbo where, sadly, in my opinion, the animals and landmarks were removed entirely.

Mirai NikkiIn the seventh episode of the Mirai Nikki ('Future Diaries') anime, the characters Rea Amano and Reisuke Houjou are seen playing a videogame parodying Street Fighter IV. If you're looking for it, it's around the 9-minute mark and the episode is titled 'Dial Tone' (although other sources give it the title 'Answering Machine'). Precisely which characters are being parodied here is moot, athough Ryu and Chun-Li immediately come to mind (especially as the former's 'Metsu Shoryuken' is performed in the clip) but what is unmistakable is the 'K.O.' graphic, the game's H.U.D. and the similarity to Street Fighter IV's 'Old/Deserted Temple' stage.

USAF PilotsThe Shadaloo Combat Research Institute tie-in for Street Fighter V expands upon some of Guile and Charlie's compatriots in the U.S.A.F. This might be entirely common knowledge, but hey-ho. The names of the servicemen shown in the game's cinematic story, A Shadow Falls are as follows: Captain General Byron Taylor (Guile's superior), David Crislip (an information analyst who shares his name with real-life Capcom employee David Crislip) and Joe (whose name is only given in the game's end credits). Additionally, there is the curious case of Captain Sawada, who prior to V had only appeared in the Street Fighter live-action movie and its accompanying videogame. Capcom seem to have invested a lot of time tying up loose threads just lately as Sawada was 'canonised' with an entry in the Shadaloo C.R.I. and also named as a member of the U.S.A.F. on a character relations chart in Street Fighter V: A Visionary Book.

Gone GoreI've previously written about how Zangief's profile art in Alpha 3 differs internationally compared to the native version by removing a spurt of blood from his head. What I didn't know before is that the "regulation" setting in the Test menu of Alpha 3 arcade can be toggled on or off to either remove or display this instance of blood. (In Japan the default setting is "off", internationally the default setting is "on"). Additionally, this setting also censors the image of Bison punching through Rose’s abdomen in her ending when turned on, cropping the image to hide the blood and Bison's emergent hand.

Crazy CreditsThe dialogue between Haggar and Jessica and Cody and Jessica is subtly different in the ending of the Japanese version of Final Fight (arcade) compared to the international versions. For instance, in the former, Haggar suggests that he, 'Could not go on' if he had lost Jessica whereas in the latter he, 'Won't let anything bad happen' to her again (see the image for full transcript). Less subtle is the crazy credit roll that appears in the Japanese version, whereby POM (Akira Nishitani) and Akiman (Akira Yasuda) share a funny message with the player, followed by each staff member contributing a short quote next to their avatar (e.g. 'I am moved to tears by your hard battle.') This was replaced with just the staff member's name and avatar in the international version, boring!


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"anyone can release electricity! rub your hair a little, and...zap! easy, right?"

NAME: Laura

NATION: Brazil

HEIGHT: 175 cm

WEIGHT: 72 kg

B/W/H: --- --- ---

BLOOD_TYPE: O