Well as most of you may or may not know, the names of the boss characters in the US version of Street Fighter II were switched around, and the reason for this was a mystery to me for many many years. I looked it up now though and found my answer. First of all let me just list the names of the characters in the US version, and beside them their original (Japanese version) names.

M. Bison > Vega
Balrog > M. Bison
Vega > Balrog
Sagat > Sagat

Sagat was never changed. The reason for this is because he was already in the original Street Fighter I, so they couldn't change his name.



Anyway, it all started with the boxer, Mike Bison. His story and background (and obviously his name) was very similar to Mike Tyson. So to avoid legal issues when porting the game to the US, Capcom switched the names of the bosses around. Sagat remained the same due to the reason above.
But they also changed Gouki to Akuma. Not sure why, but I think that has more to do with how it sounds to people outside of Japan.

So in case anyone was wondering, mystery solved.

Yeah I remember reading about this in an EGM or something waaaaay back in the day. I always thought it was weird myself that the changed the names around... But back in the day when things were imported, be it anime or games or foreign films; nothing was sacred. Things like names and storyline would be changed in a heartbeat for whatever reason without a second thought.

That's odd... I didn't know trademark/name/copyright laws went so far that there could be potential issues just for having a similarity and a rhyming name. But I guess it's better safe than sorry.

And I can't say I looked into this particular switch-around anyway. I haven't been into street fighter since I last played it on like...genesis or something when I was way younger. But looking back, I think the way the names were switched seems a bit more fitting anyway. Especially for Vega.

Vega's name was Balrog? @_@ Vega sounds better for him and Lol at Mike Bison, clearly a knock off. It would have been 10 times more funny if it stayed Mike Bison.

Well they still have their original names in the Japanese versions.



So if you happen to play those games, you'll see their names like that. I played Street Fighter Zero (called Alpha in the US) and the Japanese version of Street Fighter EX, Marvel vs. Capcom, Capcom vs. SNK, etc. so that's when I noticed the difference, and wondered what was going on.


It's not only Capcom who suffered from this, but SNK had to completely drop the character K9999 from the King of Fighters series.





Because he was apparently too similar to Tetsuo from Akira.
Obviously that's where they got the inspiration for K9999 from, no doubt about that. But they're not identical, and personally I'd see it more as a tribute to a character from an old and dead series, rather than a copyright issue. I guess some companies are more uptight than others.

What KoF titles is K9999 in? I'm interested in playing one that features him.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say KoF 99?

He is in KOF 2001 and 2002.

- K9999 is based on Tetsuo Shima from Akira. He has Tetsuo's hairstyle and wears a similar cloak. His ability to transform his arm into a long tentacle closely resembles Tetsuo's mutations and both also possess the ability to create a psionic shield. Additionally, Nozomu Sasaki voices both characters.

- Fans of the series have simply referred to K9999 as "Tetsuo", either mockingly, or simply because of the inevitable similarities.

- For a while, it was believed that Eolith (developer of KOF 2001 and 2002) held the copyright for K9999. As it turns out, this is not the case. SNK, however, has expressed public disfavor for K9999, presumably due to the explicitness of his tribute to Tetsuo. It is unlikely he will appear in the future.