The new character lineup for 1993’s Super Street Fighter 2 would have been a bit different if James Goddard and the a few other staff members at Capcom USA hadn’t suggested Dee Jay in place of a head-swap of Fei-Long.
Capcom Japan had sent over four new characters for inclusion into Super Street Fighter 4, to join that entry’s 12 playable roster members. They were Cammy and T. Hawk, along with Fei-Long, but the latter character also had a head-swapped version who Capcom Japan proposed as the 4th playable fighter.
Since Ryu and Ken already existed as head-swap characters, the team pitched Capcom Japan on the concept of Dee Jay, who’s now become a franchise regular appearing in Street Fighter Alpha 3, Super Street Fighter 4, and Street Fighter 6.
However, the twins proposed here sound a lot like Yun and Yang who made their debut in Street Fighter 3: New Generation in 1997 as head-swapped fighters. They’re from Hong Kong and share a number of moves and traits with Fei-Long, who’s modeled heavily off of Bruce Lee.
Yang has Mantis Slashes, which closely resemble Fei-Long’s Rekka-Ken attacks, while both Yun and Yang have Fei-Long’s Tenshin (Flip Grab), where they briefly stun the opponent, which essentially functions as a command grab, where they can then perform a follow up combo afterwards.
This isn’t the first, nor probably the last time Capcom would take a concept for a fighter and either change or evolve it into the characters we now know and love. Character concepts regularly evolve at Capcom, as one of Vega’s original concept artwork pieces shows him as something close to a Templar of the Knights Templar.
It would have been quite interesting to see how the franchise’s lore and competitive history would have shaped out if characters like Yun and Yang were made playable roughly four years prior, but regardless the Twin Dragons have amassed a very solid following in the Fighting Game Community since they were introduced.
We explore the history and gameplay aspects of Yun and Yang into the video below, and discuss how they may play if they’re added into Street Fighter 6 in the future as DLC. This is part of a larger discussion on the theory of what Street Fighter 6’s future DLC Seasons may look like, according to character choice.
We also spoke about how Gill and Urien’s origins are tied to Christianity’s Jesus and Judas Iscariot, further demonstrating how Capcom often takes aspects from society and implements them into their fighting games.
