Can you play as the four boss characters?

No. The four bosses cannot be played as in any version of the game, without resorting to hacking it. There were all kinds of crazy rumors and supposed methods of unlocking the bosses, such as beating the game without getting hit, but none of these worked. In the SNES version I believe it was possible to use the bosses by using a Game Genie or Action Replay cheat cartridge, but the result was very glitchy and often made the game crash. Gamers really wanted to pick the four boss characters and this was the main reason why Capcom would create Street Fighter II' Champion Edition a year later.


I've read about glitches called things like Handcuffs and magic throws, what are those?

Street Fighter II has a lot of bugs and glitches. Rather than go through them all here, I'd like to link to the excellent Street Fighter II Glitch Handbook, created by error1. It has in depth looks at everything, including pictures and video links.


Who is Sheng Long? How do a I defeat him?

Ryu's victory quote caused mass confusion when the game first came out, with many people believing that there must be a hidden character called Sheng Long you could fight. There isn't. It was changed to "You must defeat my dragon punch to stand a chance." in many of the console versions, such as the SNES port. From vasili10:

"What's really amusing about Capcom USA saying Sheng Long instead of shoryuken in Ryu's quote is that for SF2:WW no kanji was used in the entire game; everything was in simple hiragana letters saying sho-ryu-ken showing you the correct pronunciation syllable by syllable, and still Capcom USA read it as sheng-long."

So basically Capcom USA screwed up the translation. This win quote goes unchanged in all arcade versions of Street Fighter II.



What was the Electronic Gaming Monthly SFII April fool joke about?

In the April 1992 issue of EGM, the cheats portion of the mag had a near full page displaying the hidden boss of Street Fighter II: Sheng Long. The method of getting him to appear was ridiculous, as you had to play through the game as Ryu whilst beating every other character without taking any damage yourself. Once you got to Bison, you needed to go 10 rounds without him hitting you and vice versa, then Sheng Long would appear and toss Bison away. EGM said that Sheng Long had all of Ryu's moves but was faster and did more damage. This was all an April Fool's joke but a lot of people fell for it and several other magazines even copied EGM's tip, without asking or verifying that it was true. EGM didn't admit that it was an April Fool prank until December of that year and their joke was so popular that Capcom USA had to contact Capcom Japan just to verify whether Sheng Long was real or not. Check out the full article here.


How do you do the orange fireballs with Ryu and Ken?

Usually, Ryu and Ken's fireballs are blue, but occasionally they will be orange. At the time, most people believed that there was a certain way of doing orange fireballs and that they did more damage than the blue ones (they don't). Many a quarter was wasted back in the day with people desperately trying to find a joystick motion which did the orange fireball.

For the longest time it was thought the orange fireballs were just a glitch, however, it turns out that they were an intentional easter egg put in by the game's programmers. This was confirmed by a tweet from Akira Nishitani (Street Fighter II's lead designer) in 2013.

The fact that the orange fireballs showed up in the next two versions of the game and even many of the home console versions made many think there was a genuine orange fireball move method in the game, but there really isn't. Ryu would eventually get the orange fireball (shakunetsu hadouken) as a special move in Super Street Fighter II.


Why is Chun-Li's outfit orange in her portrait artwork?

Possibly a glitch, or maybe she was originally going to have orange clothes, but then they changed it to blue later on and forgot/didn't bother changing her portrait artwork. This was fixed in most of the console versions of the game.


What are tick throws?

These are usually associated with Guile, and are the art of throwing out a sonic boom and then throwing the opponent as they block it. Heavily frowned upon back in the day due to being "cheap", there are still some people who still like to whine about it in modern times.

Did Street Fighter II save the Super Nintendo?

1991 hadn't been a great year for Nintendo -whilst the SNES was crushing all competition in Japan, the American launch had been trickier. The country was in recession at the time and people were going for the cheaper SEGA Genesis, thanks to SEGA releasing Sonic the Hedgehog that year. But in 1992, SEGA had an abysmal year, with only one AAA game out (Sonic 2) and even that had to be rushed to make the release date. Whilst Nintendo released Street Fighter II in 1992, there were several other great games out for the SNES also, such as Super Mario Kart (Mario Kart actually outsold Street Fighter II) so it wasn't like Nintendo were solely relying on Capcom's fighter. However it did give Nintendo a massive and much needed sales boost. One can only wonder what might have happened if the game had appeared on the Genesis first.