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Dan's the man,
He'll kick your
can,
He busts out 'da rhymes
even Lieberman can't ban!
He's got the strength
of fifty
(dead) men,
'Ya better step back
when he does his
Gadoken!
He fights fo'
his late father
Go,
and shouts "O-ra-ra!"
just like Jotaro!
But he don't need a
stand,
'cuz Dan's the man!
So pack your bags
and
leave while you can!
HE'S A NEW WORLD
DAN...
|
 Hey, I finally have
something to talk about on this page! Anyway, it's
been confirmed on several gaming blogs that the home
versions of Street Fighter IV will feature additional
characters, including that master of Saikyo himself, Dan
Hibiki. A page scan from the latest issue of
the long-running Japanese magazine Famitsu was printed
on Kotaku, revealing an older, pudgier, and slightly
balder Dan. The redesign makes him look less like
The Art of Fighting's Ryo Sakazaki and more like his
middle-aged father Takuma. Oddly, while Dan has
suffered the ravages of time, Ken and Ryu look roughly
the same as they had in Street Fighter III... perhaps a
little more rugged, but certainly no older.
If you'd like to take a look at the
Famitsu scan, you'll find it on this
page, but be warned
that it's very small and indistinct. You'll
get a better feel for how the older but no wiser Dan
Hibiki will look by clicking on this rough sketch.
As for how he'll fight, there is no news yet on
how that will change, but it's probably safe to assume
that Dan will remain the mediocre martial artist he's
always been since his Street Fighter Alpha
debut. It's also a safe bet that
Dan fans wouldn't have it any other
way! |
THE SONG'S NOT OVER
YET!
Dan Hibiki's still making
headlines, thanks to the recent release of Street Fighter
Alpha Anthology for the Playstation 2. All the Dan you
could possibly handle is packed onto this disc, including four
Street Fighter Alpha games and the razor-sharp parody Super
Gem Fighter Mini-Mix. There's even a hidden mode that
gives you some (but sadly, not all) of Dan's wacky attacks
from Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. The Saikyo
master's most memorable move, the Premium Sign, is nowhere to
be found, but the super taunt can still be performed.
Check the move list near the bottom of the page for more
information.
OH YEAH, WE'RE
HIP.
Just when you thought there was no
new news to report on Capcom's beautiful loser, along comes
Onikage88 with this Dan Hibiki tribute video.
It's surprising that Dan still inspires this kind of
fierce loyalty, even two years after Capcom gave Hibiki and
the rest of the Street Fighter cast their pink
slips.
(Well, a few
of the Street Fighter regulars were taken out
of retirement just long enough to star in Capcom Fighting
Evolution. However, judging from how that turned out,
they would have been better off staying in line for their
welfare checks...)
Anyway, click
here and check out what
Onikage88 has in store for you! The fight scenes could
have used a bit more impact (then again, this IS Dan we're
talking about...), but I dare you to keep a straight face when
the training session starts!
THIS JUST IN, FROM NEWS
COMBO 7...
After a year long drought of Dan
Hibiki news, we've finally got something new and exciting to
report. SNK vs. Capcom, the latest and most highly
anticipated Neo-Geo game in years, is currently being tested
in a handful of Japanese arcades. Contributors Chris
Kohler and Matt DelGuidice had a chance to play the game while
on assignment for the the gaming web site Insert
Credit, and the two discovered that Dan Hibiki was hidden
in SNK vs. Capcom as a midboss. The most surprising news
is that Dan is one of the most challenging adversaries in the
game. Neither Chris, Matt, nor the other testers at
Neo-Geo Land were able to defeat the master of Saikyo.
We're not sure what makes Dan so tough, but it's clear that
he'll be getting a whole lot more respect after SNK vs. Capcom
is officially released.
Here's a picture of Chris (left)
and Matt discussing SNK vs. Capcom after returning to their
apartment. Chris wasn't especially impressed by the
game, criticizing it for its unoriginality and similarities to
the Street Fighter Alpha series, but Matt really appreciated
at least one of its features...
CHRIS: "Even though it includes
popular SNK and
Capcom characters, including
Dan..."
MATT: ("Ooooh yeah...")
BEFORE THE DAWN OF
SAIKYO...
We've been scratching our heads
trying to figure out how to add new content to the Dan Hibiki
fan page. After all, our man hasn't been
getting many starring roles lately, and the last games he
was in, Capcom vs. SNK 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2, were already
released for the Dreamcast a couple of years ago. Since
the present holds no new Dan-formation, we'll have to look to
the past for this update.
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|
|
| Let's look back to the mid
1980's. The Saikyo style had yet to be
invented, but its most deadly attack may have been
inspired in small part by one of Capcom's
first games. The mediocre beat 'em up you see
here was called Avengers in the United States, but was
given the title "Hissatsu Buraiken" in Japan.
That's pretty darned close to the name of Dan's flurry
of punches and kicks, the "Hishou Buraiken". By
the way, you can find the game included in Capcom
Classic Collection Remixed for the PSP, but I hope
you've got a better motivation to buy the collection
than Avengers. Final Fight and Captain Commando,
also included on the disc, are ten times better than
Avengers could ever hope to
be! |
 |
Next up is
Kuri Kinton, another substandard beat 'em up featuring a
character that should be pretty familiar to fans of
both Japanese cartoons and fighting
games. Kuri bears more than a passing
resemblence to Goku, the star of Dragonball and its
sequel Dragonball Z. He's just as comical as Goku
was as a child, and has the ability to charge up his
inner strength and throw it in the form of a deadly
fireball, a trick Goku learned later in life.
However, if this attack isn't fully charged, Kuri's
attack fizzles out before it goes anywhere, leaving the
poor boy dumbfounded and the player wondering if
Capcom borrowed this idea when it created Dan
Hibiki. |
THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN...
ER, DAN
We've got Dan fan art! Dan
fan art... hey, that's pretty fun to say. Anyway, these
two drawings come from reader David Graham, who contrary to
the rumors really DOES stay crunchy in milk. The first
depicts Dan as a less than stealthy soldier. You'd have
to expect that from him, but let's face it, he can't be much
worse than Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2. The second
involves an understandable case of mistaken identity.
Thanks for the pics, David... there haven't been many Dan
Hibiki sightings lately and your drawings give us a good
excuse to update this page.
TAKE NOTES, THIS IS
IMPORTANT!
Sakura is not related to Dan Hibiki. I
repeat... Sakura is NOT related to Dan Hibiki. I can
understand how people would get this impression after playing
Match of the Millennium on the Neo-Geo Pocket... when you team
them up, Dan and Ryo are collectively referred to as The Big
Brothers, and Dan mentions his "cute sister" in passing at the
end of the game. That cute sister, however, isn't
Sakura, and frankly, she's not all that cute either.
You'll see her in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter after
you beat Cyber Akuma with Dan.
It's probably more accurate to assume that
Sakura Kasugano (another sure sign that the two are not
related) trained with Dan Hibiki, since this was as close as
she could get to learning karate directly from her idol
Ryu. In one of the Street Fighter Alpha 3 endings, Dan
proudly announces, "This is Sakura! I taught her
everything she knows!", to which she replies, "Oh, give me a
break..."
GET IN THE RING!
I always thought Dan would make a great
character in Saturday Night Slam Masters. Well, that's
never happened, but if you've got Fire Pro Wrestling for the
Game Boy Advance, you can introduce Dan to a whole new
fighting arena and even pair him up with his wrestling
counterpart Chris "Y2J" Jericho in tag matches. You'll
need to create him in the character edit mode first, but this
list of
attributes should help you
out.
HERE COMES A NEW
CHALLENGER!
It looks like Saikyo Crusher is catching on
with my readers... both Kao Megura and Mandi Paugh (he's the
editor of the first Dan fan page, she's the backbone of the
Official Mega Man Web Site) really enjoyed my work, and even
Pat Reynolds, the world's foremost critic of the Saikyo style,
admitted that he got a kick out of this page. But some
of the coolest letters I've gotten about Saikyo Crusher have
come from a martial arts Dan-sciple named Aaron Thacker.
A while ago, he came up with a great name for the taunting
Mortal Kombat ninja on this page. I considered calling
him Vermin, but Aaron's own Flamingo is a better fit, so from
now on, that'll be the character's name.
I've decided to thank Aaron for his help by
answering some of his questions about Dan right here on the
fan page. He asked about a lot of stuff that I didn't
think to include in Saikyo Crusher, so printing his letter and
my response will also help make this page a little more
complete.
I wrote to you before and here I am again
with some new questions about your favorite Street Fighter and
mine, the pink panther of shotokan, Dan
Hibiki.
Cool, fire away!
First off, I've read that Dan and his
being a parody of Ryo came from a background picture of Sagat
beating up what appeared to be an early version of Dan, and it
said it was in one of the earlier Street Fighter
games.
Yeah, it was in a bit of press artwork
promoting Super Street Fighter II (which Dan wasn't even
in!). You can find it and a lot of other pics of Mr.
Hibiki at another Dan tribute site, Saikyo.com.
I remember in Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold
that whenever Ryu went up against Sagat (not vice-versa),
Sagat appears to have just finished his victory over another
fighter. It only lasts a couple of seconds, but I could
just tell it was Dan, except he was in an orange gi costume
and wearing sandals. Now was that Capcom's final attempt
at making fun of SNK's Ryo (even if Dan was in the light of
day of that game) or could it have been something else like
Dan's father?
I think it's supposed to be Dan. You
see, Dan desperately wants to defeat Sagat for killing his
father. If you play as Dan, it's actually possible to
beat Sagat, but if you play as Ryu, it turns out that Dan was
easily beaten and Sagat just tosses him away like yesterday's
garbage.
I'm sure that you know that Ryo is in the
new Capcom vs. SNK, but unfortunately Dan wasn't. Gee I
wonder why not? That would've been a neat
fight!
Well, there's always Capcom vs. SNK Pro, which
is going to have a whopping two new characters... one of them
is Dan, and the other is Joe Higashi, the wacky gator-eating
kick boxer from the Fatal Fury series. Both of them made
a cameo appearance in the ending of the first Capcom vs. SNK,
but you couldn't play as them, which was disappointing (kind
of like the game itself).
(Pictures provided by Chris MacDonald,
aka Kao Megura)
Speaking of Capcom and SNK, you can pit Dan
against Ryo right now in Match of the Millennium for the
Neo-Geo Pocket. SNK's portable system is dead in the
United States, and they're only making girlie mahjong games
for it in Japan, but I still strongly recommend buying
it. The Capcom/SNK crossover games alone make the system
worth the investment... and there are a lot of other great
games for the Neo-Geo Pocket as well.
I also
wondered... is Dan really Chinese or Japanese? In Alpha 2 his
background is in Hong Kong, but in Alpha 3 he's in Japan and I
know his last name is Hibiki. I guess he must be
Japanese like Ryu, Akuma, etc., but I was just
wondering.
I think the designers intended for this to be
a mystery... you know, like what Akuma does to his opponents
when he performs the Raging Demon, or why Capcom keeps making
Resident Evil games. I think I read somewhere (possibly
Kao Megura's old site) that Dan's heritage isn't clear,
although the name Hibiki is Japanese (suggesting that Dan is
as well).
And about Dan's background stage in Alpha
3, I don't know about that simple swing set in someone's back
yard. Is it Dan's childhood home or yet another parody
of something from Art of Fighting/King of
Fighters?
I never saw a round like this in any of the
Art of Fighting or King of Fighters games, so I doubt it's a
parody of them. I think it's more of a stab at Dan
himself, hinting that he's just a child (skill-wise) in a
sport of men.
I've also seen Dan in some beautifully
drawn manga parodies from Japan... (including) a flashback of
Dan's father Go fighting Sagat. Go looks different than
what he may be envisioned as, another parody from the Art of
Fighting. Did the final boss of that game wear a goblin
mask? Is that why Dan's father is envisioned in a very
ugly cartoony sense?
Yeah. I should have added this to Saikyo
Crusher when I first published it, actually. Ryo's
father was disguised as a cheesy villain named Mr. Karate
(also known as just ?) at the end of the first Art of
Fighting. Once you beat him, Ryo is about to finish him
off when Yuri, his sister, begs him not to do it. Now,
in the end of the Genesis and Neo-Geo versions, they don't
actually come right out and TELL you that Mr. Karate was
actually Ryo's dad, but Art of Fighting for the Super NES
explains everything in great detail. You can find this
ending right here if you don't want to actually play the game
(and I couldn't blame you, because the Super NES version of
Art of Fighting was actually worse than the other
ones)...
http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/snes/a/artfight.htm
That's from the Video Game
Museum, by the way.
It's a great site for those times when you want to see what a
game looks like before you buy or download it, or when you
want to see the ending of a particular title you were never
able to beat yourself.
Anyways, Mr. Karate wears what's called a
Tengu mask before he's revealed to be Ryo's father. A
Tengu is a creature in Japanese mythology... he's a winged
human with a very long nose and an arrogant personality.
Dan's dead father always appears with a Tengu's face and nose
for two reasons... the first is because he's a parody of Ryo's
father Takuma. The second is because Dan is a little too
confident of his abilities... sort of like a Tengu, who also
has a high opinion of himself.
Oh, and Dan finally makes his animated
debut in Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie from Manga
Video. I haven't seen it yet, but from the cel photos he
looks pretty hip, not to mention he appears to have an earring
on his left ear! I read he goes up against Vega, but is
defeated... Oh dear, not good for his first anime appearance,
but hey, Akuma and Sakura are in it as well!
I heard Vega slices him up pretty badly... my
friend Matt DelGuidice was wondering if he could have survived
after that. But what the heck, the characters in
Japanese cartoons take an incredible amount of damage and
still manage to survive, sometimes with only a few cuts and
bruises. Well, if they're the main characters,
anyways. In the Gundam series, the heroes cut through
dozens of rival mechs with ridiculous ease... I have to wonder
why the Earth forces even bother to send out those Leos when
they know they're going to be nuked the minute they enter the
battlefield. It's worse than those episodes of Walker:
Texas Ranger where Chuck Norris never gets hit, even
once. Wait... nothing's worse than Walker: Texas
Ranger.
Well, that's all I have to ask and sorry
this letter's such a long one.
Hey, no problem.
but since you're a Dan buff, you seemed to
be the right guy to ask.
Thanks. I hope I was of some
assistance.
 THE RANMA
CONNECTION?
In Japan, there's an incredibly popular comic
and animated series called Ranma 1/2. In it, a father
takes his teenage son to China to perfect his martial arts
skills. Unfortunately, they decide to train near a
series of enchanted wells, and while sparring, they both
manage to fall into them. The boy, Ranma Saotome, takes
a tumble into a well that claimed the life of a young girl
centuries earlier, and comes out looking just like her.
When the father, Genma, tries to scramble out of his own
watery predicament, he sees two clumsy white paws clinging to
the lip of the well rather than the hands he expects... he's
become a panda! Now- oh, what does this have to do with
Dan? Well, the thing is, in Cyberbots and Marvel vs.
Capcom, there's a mech pilot who shares the last name of the
main characters in Ranma 1/2. Oddly enough, Ranma's
angry but easily confused rival is named Ryoga... Ryoga
Hibiki. I'm sure the characters aren't related, but I
get this feeling that the names were chosen as a tribute to
the terrific Ranma series rather than just being a
coincidence.
On a side note, there are Ranma 1/2 fighting
games... two of them were even released in America, although
one was stripped of the license (and its personality) and
renamed Street Combat. Unfortunately, none of them were
outstanding. Furthermore, the previously mentioned
Street Combat and the Japanese exclusive Ranma 1/2:
Renaissance are among the worst fighting games available for
the Super NES and Playstation... I haven't played the latter
game, but j-pop editor Jason Thompson warned me that it's a
hair-greyingly bad experience. Ironically, Capcom's
never had the rights to the Ranma 1/2 comic, even though its
Marvel vs. Capcom and JoJo's Venture game engines would more
than do it justice.
IS THIS THE END OF OUR UNLIKELY
HERO?
 Well, maybe. Dan
hasn't appeared in any of the Street Fighter 3 games, although
Ken's eager martial arts student Sean does refer to him when
taunting defeated opponents ("Rule number one... Don't be like
Dan!"). It was hinted in Street Fighter Alpha 3 that
there might not be enough left of Dan to wrap a black belt
around... when you beat the game with him, M. Bison seems to
die of embarassment, and Dan takes over his secret military
base, turning it into the Thailand branch of his famous
Saikyo-Ryuu dojo and inviting Blanka over to practice some
taunts. As (bad) luck would have it, though, that's just
when Chun-Li and Charlie swing by in their heavily armed
harrier jet...
Charlie: "We've finally pinpointed the
exact location of M. Bison's secret base!"
Chun-Li:
"Careful... I'm detecting life signs down
there."
Charlie: "Not for long! Bombs
away!!!"
(meanwhile, inside the base...)
Dan: "My mastery of martial arts and
this great new dojo guarantee that the Saikyo style will live
forever! Right, Blanka?"
Blanka:
"Rrrowr!"
Was Dan turned into so many self-confident
charcoal briquets along with his hairy hombre Blanka?
Maybe, but hey, this is Capcom we're talking about!
They've snuffed Charlie twice, turned him into a cyborg, put
their seal of approval on a crappy movie that claimed he was
Blanka, and now has him buried in Marvel vs. Capcom 2,
looking just like he did before his supposed deaths and
whatever else Capcom's done to him. In other words,
never mind the plot... if Capcom wants Dan in another fighting
game, he'll be there even if they've thrown him into a volcano
in the previous one.
SPECIAL THANKS
 This tribute page just
wouldn't be o-ra-ra-riffic without the assistance of these
people, who provided me with resource material, emulators,
games, and all kinds of other support. Thanks to staffer
Kao Megura for his great FAQs as well as setting the
foundation for Dan fan sites with his own tribute page, the
guys at Saikyo.com for their own fun and informative site,
Matt DelGiudice for catching the Hibiki fever and creating his
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 strategy guide, Aaron Thacker for both his
letters and for naming one of the characters on this site,
Carl Schafer for the Dan, er, fan art, the boys at Sector:
NGP, (now available at Classicgaming.com!), Z-Force for his
awesome guide to Card Fighters' Clash, Judge of the Rather A
Pokemon Emulator, the anonymous creator of NGPocket, Gollum of
NeoPocott fame, and of course Capcom, for creating a great
character, and SNK, for ripping him off, and Capcom again, for
turning that rip-off into another great character, and SNK,
for ripping HIM off, and... well, you see where this is
going...
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