Street Fighter’s Surprising Crossover With Red Earth

Not that long ago, I felt like I had to clarify that this wasn’t strictly a Super Mario blog. Today, I want to clarify that it’s not a Street Fighter blog, even if that’s where I’ve been focused lately. But yes, this is another Street Fighter-related post.

In researching the previous posts, I learned about a connection between the Street Fighter V character Menat and Red Earth, a one-off fantasy-inspired fighting game that Capcom released in 1996. (It’s titled Warzard in Japan.) Menat, in case you don’t recall, is the Egyptian fighter and a protege of Rose, who is the fortune teller character introduced in Street Fighter Alpha and who is definitely not Lisa Lisa from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Menat is cute as a button, even if Capcom hit the Egyptian theming a little hard. For example, she literally walks like an Egyptian — and now that I think about it, that is also probably a JoJo connection.

Whereas Rose’s weapon in battle is her scarf — again a lot like Lisa Lisa — Menat fights with a floating crystal ball called the Left Eye of the Lion (獅子の左目 or Shishi no Hidarime). It’s also the name of one of her moves, but the lion in question would seem to be a very specific one from within Capcom lore.

Meet Ravange, the third boss character in Red Earth.

If DarkStalkers is the answer to the question “what if Street Fighter but horror?” then Red Earth is the answer to the question “what if Street Fighter but fantasy?” And it leans into the genre far enough that it has character classes and leveling-up, even if the meat and potatoes of the game is the classic Capcom one-on-one combat. The game features four playable heroes — Kenji the ninja, Mai-Ling the martial artist, Tessa the “sorcerologist” and Leo the warrior-king who will probably remind you of Lion-O from Thundercats. There are also an additional eight unplayable bosses, though some have shown up later in spinoff titles. For some reason, many of the proper names in Red Earth were altered for the English localization, including the chimera-like boss Ravange, whose Japanese name is Secmeto (セクメト), which would appear to reference the Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess of ancient Egypt. It’s not coincidental that one of this monster’s many head’s is also a lion’s.

Street Fighter V director Takayuki Nakayama is quoted in the commemorative artbook Street Fighter V: A Visionary Book that the connection between Menat’s crystal ball and this relatively obscure Capcom character is very much intentional. Here’s his statement, translated from the Japanese: She possesses a crystal ball known as the Left Eye of the Lion that came from a divine beast said to have guarded the mythical desert kingdom of Alanbird. There are various rumors but a certain figure's descendant proved to be compatible with Menat.” In the English version of Red Earth, the name of the nation associated with Sekhmet is given as Sangypt, which seems like a very overt reference to Egypt and perhaps a clunky portmanteau of that country’s name and the word sand. In Japanese, however, the country is Aranbādo (アランバード), which is officially rendered in the game as Alanbird, though I’m not convinced this is correct — More on that in the miscellaneous notes section.

What’s notable about this is that it implies a shared universe between Street Fighter and Red Earth, which is especially odd because, unless I’m mistaken, no such link exists between Street Fighter and DarkStalkers, which is a lot more popular than Red Earth ever was. In the English localization of the game, Red Earth takes place during the 1300s, but the Japanese one takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of the year 1999. Either way, it seems like Red Earth might most easily be explained as occurring in a dimension parallel to Street Fighter’s, and perhaps this is why Menat’s lore refers to her crystal ball coming from a “phantom kingdom.” It exists… just not in the sense regular geographic locations do. And if any group of characters would know how to access a parallel dimension, it would be Rose and her young psychic proteges. (Among the canonical members of this group is Maggio, the brother of Aprile, the Italian representative of Bison’s elite guard team, The Dolls.) 

Obviously, DarkStalkers has had a huge impact on other Capcom franchises, with Morrigan and others appearing in many of the crossover games — Marvel vs., SNK vs. and Tatsunoko vs., but you could argue that those games don’t actually affect the Street Fighter canon, whereas the Final Fight and Saturday Night Slam Masters series can be included fairly easily. DarkStalkers doesn’t integrate without having to account for Ryu and Chun-Li existing in a world where vampires, werewolves and zombies exist, and to my knowledge, Capcom has held off on officially folding DarkStalkers into Street Fighter’s somewhat more grounded canon.

I feel like this is going to get me a lot of “what about ______?” comments, but I think the closest it’s gotten so far is Ken’s stage in Street Fighter Alpha 2.

From left to right, per Resetera: Lord Raptor, Hsien-Ko, Mei-Ling, the Unknown Soldiers, Morrigan, Victor Ortega and Biff Slamkovich from Saturday Night Slam Masters, Eliza, Captain Commando, Ginzu and Carol (also from Captain Commando), Strider Hiryu, Linn Kurosawa from Alien vs. Predator, Felicia, and finally Pure the Mage from Adventure Quiz. 

The setting is is a pleasure cruise celebrating the birthday of Ken’s girlfriend, and in the background you can see various representatives from DarkStalkers and other franchises, but I don’t think it’s *actually* them. As it’s explained here, you’re seeing lookalikes for Lord Raptor and Hsien-Ko and her sister, but these people are clearly living, breathing humans and not, you know, animated corpses.

Outside of Menat’s orb, there’s not too much of a lasting legacy for Red Earth. The one-off was represented in the 2004 title Capcom Fighting Evolution (by Leo and Kenji, plus bosses Hauzer the dinosaur and Hydron the nautilus-looking merman, playable for the first time), and otherwise it’s been Tessa, appearing as the role representative for the series in Super Gem Fighter: Mini Mix and SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos. Through Menat, however, I suppose it’s possible that the series could continue, in some sense, in a way the more popular DarkStalkers can’t — at least not yet.

Miscellaneous Notes

While the original Japanese version of Red Earth shows the name of the Egyptian style city as Alanbird, this strikes me as a bit nonsensical. I wonder if it was intended to be something more like Arumanabad, coming from the name of the Cleopatra-like ruler, whose name in the Japanese version is Arumana IV (アルマーナIV世) and then the place name suffix -abad, like you see in the names of cities like Hydeabad in India, Islamabad in Pakistan, Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Vagharshapat in Armenia. That suffix means “dwelling of” or “town opf” and comes from Persian, which is to say it’s not representative of Egyptian cities, but if looking into Street Fighter has taught me anything, Capcom is neither tidy nor accurate with its cultural references. In the context of Red Earth, it seems like Alanbird is the capital, so I wonder if it’s supposed to be an alternate universe version of Alexandria, which is named for its founder the way Alanbird might have been founded by Arumana I. In the English version of the game, Arumana is named Clara Tantra, and I can’t think of a reason why they would have chosen that aside from its vague similarity to Cleopatra.

I’m fairly certain that Ravange should be female, despite the fact that the English localization refers to the character as male. For one thing, it’s named after an Egyptian goddess and for another, in the intro sequence before you fight Ravange shows Clara Tantra’s spirit specifically being the thing that brings the monster to life. 

Points in favor of Red Earth existing in a parallel universe is the fact that it has a map screen a lot like the one you see in the original Street Fighter II. It’s just full of different place names, and most of them are headscratchers. 

I’m guessing the Uranus is a reference to the Ural Mountains, but I’ve no guesses for what Evelious might mean. And Sahada is close enough to the name of the Sahara, but I’ve not got a clue what to make of the Temple of the Ancient reference on Africa’s southwest coast. The map is centered on Japan, but it’s labeled The Kingdom of Reece here. The actual stage — claimed by both Kenji the ninja and Kongou the oni — is Zipang, on “obfuscated” name for Japan based on the Marco Polo-era interpretation of the Chinese name for it. The stage set in the upper west coast of Europe, where Scandinavia should be, is called Icelarn. It’s the homeland of both Tessa and Hydron. And the Roman temple-looking stage where Leo is king and where your chosen character fights Hauzer is identified as Savalia. I’ve no clue what that’s supposed to mean; in the Japanese version, the area is called Greedia. Even more confusing is the name for the stage set in the Zonama region in South America, which is simply dubbed Crypt here. (It may not be a geographic name at all. The stage does in fact appear to be a crypt.)

According to the Japanese Wikipedia page for the game, the Perudvian stone idol boss Gi Gi has male and female modes: “There are two modes depending on gender, male or female, and by switching, the color and guard ability change. [Gi Gi] always appears in red female mode, and attacks with a combination of four long-reaching swords. In female mode, [Gi Gi] can put up a green curtain to deflect projectiles when guarding, but will only deflect one consecutive hit. In blue male mode, [Gi Gi] does not have the ability to deflect.” There’s no mention of any gender in the English literature around the character, unless I’m mistaken. I’d imagine this character was a test-run for the non-symmetrical sprite that Capcom would do even better in 1997 with Street Fighter III’s Gill, who also has a red side and a blue side, but they’re not gendered.

I’ve said it before on this blog, but the sprite for the harpy boss character — Lavia in the English localization, Luan (ルアン) in the original Japanese — has one of the most beautiful and beautifully animated sprites in a fighting game ever.

It’s weird that the English localization names the character Mai-Ling specifically it’s very close to the name of Mei-Ling, Hsien-Ko’s sister in the DarkStalkers series. In the original Japanese, Mai-Ling is named Tao (タオ) and Mei-Ling in Lin-Lin (リンリン). Clearly, someone on the localization team really liked the sound of these names for female Chinese characters.

In her ending in the original DarkStalkers, Felicia becomes a famous movie star and there’s a joke about her wanting to cast Blanka in an upcoming project.

And while this would seem to indicate that Blanka and therefore all of Street Fighter exists in the same universe as the DarkStalkers games, there’s a kinda-sorta out in the fact that, as noted in this post, Felicia has a tendency to break the fourth wall. In fact, there’s a win quote of hers in Darkstalkers 3 where she seems to be aware that she’s a video game character.

To get back to Menat, she takes her name from a special necklace that back in ancient Egypt was associated not with Sekhmet but with the sky deity Hathor. Wikipedia offers this word in both Arabic (منات) and ancient Egyptian (𓏠𓈖𓇋𓏏𓋧), which is the same as what Capcom offers for the character’s name, so I guess sometimes some names are translated properly. Who knew?

Finally, here is Takayuki Nakayama’s statement about Menat’s crystal ball in the original Japanese:

彼女の持つ水晶玉は「獅子の左目」と言い、幻の砂漠王国アランバードを守護していたとされる神獣から生み出された物です。諸説あるのですが、ある人物の子孫であるメナトと相性が良いの。

What’s interesting is his use of the 神獣 (shinjū) to refer to Ravange. Fatimah translated it as “god beast,” but it’s the term for mythological creatures like the Kirin or the Phoenix. We don’t have a tidy term for this in English. But in Japanese, this term also refers to the various elemental bosses fought in the Secret of Mana series and in the newest release, Visions of Mana, which I’m playing through right now. For the English localization, they just made up the word benevedon to refer to them, even if that term seemingly implies that they’re good and not evil.