Here at Frost, I am getting all excited about the latest bone crunching matchup release that is Street-fighter X Tekken.

In case you didn’t know anything about it – it pairs up the mighty and most loved characters from the Street-fighter arena and flings Tekken fighters into the mix for an all hands down, blood sweat and tears fisty cuffs. Think of Marvel Vs Capcom, but with finesse. Think of Tekken Tag Team but with more accessible moves, think of Father Christmas Vs the erm…Easter Bunny – yes, it sounds insane but it does work.

Street Fighter X Tekken hits the shops this Friday, and of course the review will be here in Frost Magazine. But for now to get you excited as I am here are some top facts about perhaps the biggest and well-known franchise of all time.

1. If Ryu was a real person he would be 47 – yep, you heard that right, in the original Street Fighter game Ryu’s date of birth is clearly stated as July 21, 1964 which makes him 47 to date. So, not so much Hurricane Kick as Hurricane wheelchair. Not like I would ever tell him that to his face…obviously.

2. Ken and Ryu are the only characters that have appeared in every single Street Fighter title. In the first StreetFighter, you could only play as Ryu by default in single player, and player two as Ken in multiplayer. The two are best friends (and rivals) from different sides of the world. Ken is an American-born fighter, and Ryu from Japan. According to the storyline, and the fantastic Manga Movie they trained at the same school of martial arts – the same school that can been seen on the first stage of the original Street fighter game. Their tournament led them to take on the final boss, Sagat. In the final battle between Sagat and Ryu, Ryu defeated Sagat with a mighty dragon punch, leaving him with his iconic chest scar.

3. Evil Ryu was a fluke and came about by chance. I am going to feel like I am telling a child that Santa doesn’t actually leave presents but it’s true. You can believe the ‘published’ stories that Ryu succumbed to ‘the dark side’ but the reality was that in the arcade version of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo there was a ‘cheat’ to get a hidden character – Akuma. To do so required a series of button presses on the character selection screen which would land on Ryu at the last step. If you did it correctly Ryu’s face would be replaced with a blacked out image of Akuma, which would reap incredible kudo’s and benefits in the game for the player.  However if you did it wrongly you would still end up choosing Ryu but a somewhat tanned version which would reap humiliation because everyone would know what you had tried to do. This was originally meant to be an in-game joke but such was the feedback that Capcom in later additions gave the tanned version extra abilities which were similar to Akuma and thus a new character was born.

4. There were two American Street Fighter movies made, the first, titled Street Fighter starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, and Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue as Cammy. The second adaptation released in 2009 was called Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li which stars Kristin Kruek as Chun-Li, Chris Klein as Charlie, Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog, and one of those dudes from the Black Eyed Peas (Taboo) as Vega. In essence all you need to know is that they are crap. Well, that’s not entirely true the first movie is crapity crap, crap and the second one is, well…average…o.k. no it is crap.

5. Super Street Fighter 4 was the first game in the series to be released on console before hitting the arcade. The simple answer to why this happened is because the arcade industry is slowly dying. Blame it on the recession, or newly formed anti-social behaviour with this generation of couch-dwelling gamers. Don’t believe me? Well check out the once flourishing arcades known as Namco Wonder-Park or Fun Land Trocadero in central London. Once upon a time games developers would prize themselves on bringing out ever more elaborate gaming cabinets and gaming hardware. Once upon a time it would be the hardware in the arcade pushing the home markets. Now it is the opposite and you will find that these gaming arenas are slowly closing their doors, making it difficult for game companies to justify making a true arcade game over a console game.

6. Dee Jay, Super Street Fighter II’s Jamaican kick boxer, was originally designed to have pants that read “MANTIS” down the side of his leg. However, the words would not have looked right when his sprite was mirrored to face the opposite direction. To save time and resources the game designers changed the word to the vertically symmetric “MAXIMUM,” so it can be spelled correctly facing either direction. Think “MAXIMUM” is cheesy? Other options for his pants could have been “YUMMY”, “WAX MOUTH”, “OOOH YUMMY MUMMY” or “HI WHY AM I A MOM”.

7. Quite a few things were lost in translation. Whenever Ryu won a match during the one of the early iterations of Street Fighter II, he would say, “You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.” Who or what the heck is Sheng Long? I hear you cry well, “Sheng Long” is actually the Chinese pronunciation of “Sho-Ryo”, as in “Sho-Ryu-Ken” (better known as the Dragon Punch). What Ryu was trying to say at the time was that his opponent needed to master his technique in order to defeat him. Due to one poor translator’s epic mistranslation, many gamers across the world believed that Ryu’s cryptic words hinted at a hidden character named Sheng Long. Taking full advantage of gamers’ gullibility, Electronic Gaming Monthly Magazine pulled off one of the greatest April Fool’s jokes of all time and claimed that Sheng Long is indeed a playable character. The long-rumoured master of Ryu and Ken can be unlocked by performing certain ridiculously difficult feats, causing players from across the world to pour in quarter after quarter into Street Fighter II machines in order to unlock him. So how did Capcom respond to the Sheng Long fiasco? They made him a real character of course for the release of 2009’s Street Fighter IV.

8. Bruce Lee lives on – Street Fighter’s very own Fei Long has more than a striking resemblance to what many would call the god father of Martial Arts Bruce Lee but it is not the only game where his likeness appears. It seems as if any fighting game worth their salt pays homage to his memory and with damn good reason; the man, the myth and the movies are the reason many a man has jumped about, pulled a mean scowl, imitated his cool noises and even tried to do a bicycle kick. He has appeared in many many games but here are a few: Liu Kang (Mortal Kombat)  Jann Lee (Dead or Alive) Kim Dragon (World Heroes) and Marshall Law (Tekken). Now Fei Long versus Marshall Law would be the mother of all match ups but will they make it to the final rosta of characters?

9. No such thing as a fireball – just a cheap trick. I used to think that it was a huge ball of energy moving out of Ryu’s hands whenever I managed to pull off his fireball move. That is until I saw the picture above. Look closely at the still image of the Hadoken Fireball. The centre of the flame of the fireball is an image of Ken and Ryu’s hands. Developers at Capcom must have been laughing.

10. Street Fighter X Tekken is the first time that a Street Fighter game will actually become a crossover. Capcom does come out with a lot of crossovers, but this is the first time they’ve teamed up with Tekken. Announced at the “Street Fighter Mania! SSFIV and Beyond” panel at Comic-Con 2010, it is another benchmark in the Street Fighter history books.