During the early days of fighting games, localizations that changed the meaning of certain things were a fairly common thing. By this point, we all know that Street Fighter’s M. Bison, Balrog, and Vega in Japan were renamed to Balrog, Vega, and M. Bison in the United States respectively.
Jmcrofts has recently released a video that covers some of the more unique localizations we’ve seen. It’s also interesting to note that some of these localization changes are being either retconned or explained in today’s modern fighting games.
One of the more amusing localizations changed Marco Rodrigues’ name in Garou: Mark of the Wolves to… Khushnood Butt in English. While it’s unknown why this change was made, it’s believed that SNK wanted to avoid potential legal troubles considering the name resemblance to Ricco Rodriguez, the real life mixed martial artist.
However, Butt’s names has been officially retconned back to Marco Rodrigues with his big reveal for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Despite this, Rodrigues will likely be the butt of the joke for a long time due to SNK’s decision to change his name so long ago.
Of course, Jmcrofts also spends some time talking about the aforementioned situation with how three of the four Street Fighter 2 bosses had their names swapped. Once again, while we don’t have any confirmation as to why this was done, it’s believed that M. Bison’s name for the boxer came off as being too similar to the real world Mike Tyson.
Still, this doesn’t explain why Balrog’s name was changed to Vega. It can be assumed that Capcom’s localization team just didn’t think the claw wielding character fit “M. Bison.” Of course, it’s also worth noting that “Gouki” was changed to “Akuma” for unknown reasons entirely.
Check it all out in the video below: