Welcome to 30 Ridiculous Retro Rumors, a brand new series that will run daily between November 26 and December 25, 2015. This is a series where we debunk some of the craziest rumors and predictions of all time.
Today is the final episode of the 30 Ridiculous Retro Rumors. Find out how this ends as we talk about Die Hard Game Fan's many Street Fighter III rumors. It's the episode you've all been waiting for!
This is a real rumor taken directly from the April 1993 issue of Die Hard Game Fan ...
It's the mystery that gripped most of the 1990s: When will Capcom count to three? After releasing one of the most successful games of all time, both critics and players expected Street Fighter III. That is, after all, what you normally do -- make a hit game and then release sequels until it stops selling. But that's not what Capcom decided to do. Instead of counting to three, they released Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition, Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Street Fighter II, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Street Fighter: The Movie, Street Fighter EX and Street Fighter Alpha II. I guess what I'm saying is that Capcom had a problem.
But before the Osaka-based company had a chance to release every game except Street Fighter III, critics and pundits had fun predicting what the game would look like. Die Hard Game Fan led the pack with so many rumors that I could spend the next four hours debunking them all. I don't have that kind of time, so let's try and run through them as quickly as possible.
Believe it or not, the Street Fighter III rumors kicked off in Die Hard Game Fan's April 1993 issue, when they revealed that Ryu and Sagat would be the only returning characters. The magazine was so sure of this information that they reported on Sagat's tiger knee helicopter kick.
Of course, almost none of this panned out. Yes, Street Fighter III featured only two returning characters, but Sagat and his tiger knee helicopter kick wasn't one of them. Shadow Lu was also completely made up, but you already knew that.
One year later, Die Hard Game Fan reported that Street Fighter III, along with Dark Stalkers and X-Men, would appear on PlayStation, Saturn and Nintendo 64 before hitting Genesis and Super NES. Not only did none of those games come to those 16-bit consoles, but they also skipped the Nintendo 64.
With Street Fighter III still years away, Die Hard Game Fan continued to make lousy predictions into 1995. In August, they reported that the future of the company depends on the all-important fighting game. Of course, the notion that Capcom might crumble without Street Fighter seems laughable in this post-2D world. After the PlayStation launched, Capcom relied heavily on Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Onimusha and a number of other 3D adventure games.
Two months later, Die Hard Game Fan announced that Street Fighter III would hit in early 1996 and be a timed exclusive on the Nintendo 64. As we've already established, Capcom didn't bring Street Fighter III to Nintendo's 64-bit console. In fact, they didn't bring it to any fifth-generation machine. When Capcom did finally bring the game to the home market, it was on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000, five years after this prediction.
In December of 1995, the magazine told a harrowing story about Nintendo strong-arming Capcom into granting exclusivity over Street Fighter III. This meant that the arcade game would be developed on Nintendo 64 hardware, much like Killer Instinct and Cruis'n USA. But again, Street Fighter III didn't show up on the Nintendo 64.
One month later, they reported that the much-anticipated fighting game was already in arcades in Japan. For those not keeping track, this is a full year before the game actually came out, so these claims are dubious at best. They don't explain whether or not this is the version made on Nintendo 64 hardware.
Later that year, Die Hard Game Fan finally backtracked on the Nintendo 64 stuff. They didn't actually issue a correction, but did announce that Street Fighter III would use Capcom's new CPS-III board. This is the first accurate reporting they've done in years.
Die Hard Game Fan's predictions end exactly where they began. Three and a half months after starting us down this dark path, the magazine goes back to their original rumor -- Street Fighter III will launch with only Ryu and Sagat. This is wrong, but by this point I have lost my will to debunk this magazine's bullshit. Or any magazine, for that matter. I've been at this for a full month and reality is starting to slip away. I swear, I've been at this so long that I'm pretty sure I posted a video about True Lies being the sequel to Total Recall. I mean, there's no way that actually happened. Right?
