The internet is full of shit all year round, but today is extra special, second only to those ‘new console specs’ press releases in terms of misdirection, exaggeration and outright fibbing. But some of those outrageous, impossible stories flying round are actually true. Here are my ten favourite (fighting game-themed, natually) truths you’d never believe if you saw them on GameFAQS.

As I type this, even though I’ve read the official press release and seen the screenshots - I’m still not 100% convinced it isn’t all an elaborate hoax, that’s how unlikely the concept sounds.

It’s because aside from a short-lived experiment with the fatally flawed HYPER NEO GEO arcade system at the end of the 1990’s, SNK resolutely stuck with their MVS Neo-Geo hardware for 15 years. While Capcom got through CPS1, CPS2, CPS3 and NAOMI and Sega went from Master System to Dreamcast to “hey buddy can ya spare a dime?” in that time, the MVS remained SNK’s output of choice, being cheap, familiar and with a gigantic installed worldwide user base.

Considering the companies sometimes precarious existence there were moments when it looked like the cartridge-based console fossil would double as a convenient coffin, but wouldn’t you know it, all of a sudden SNK was reborn, KOF2003 was good and now, with Sammy owning a controlling share and providing a spiritual successor to the MVS with the ATOMISWAVE hardware, we’re finally seeing the thing that the internet has cried out for more than a decade, and is currently in the process of crying out that it didn’t want it really.

Back in the days before cross-platform releases were commonplace - the clash of these two companies seemed like an impossible dream. While it always seemed a slightly more friendly, knockabout rivalry compared to some of the more bitter franchise wars of the time, that sort of thing was simply never done. And although looking back, the games have all been flawed in one respect or other, and sometimes frustratingly short-sighted, that it happened at all is still a truly great, truly unlikely thing. Just look where we are now.

When it was announced that the latest MK installment, a franchise as reknowned for it’s non-existent AI, homogenous characters and shallow repetitive gameplay as it was for its buckets of blood, gore and ribcages, was going to be given a complete overhaul, with the finished product concentrating more on deep, strategic gameplay than venting 200 pints of blood per uppercut - there was a distinctly skeptikal tinge to the air all around internet town.

And they only went and did it. Admittedly it’s no Virtua Fighter, but the multiple stances, branching combos, PROPERLY integrated weapons and decent free walk system meant it was still leaps and bounds above the rest of the series, whether people will admit it or not.

A tale of attempted censorship, off-colour humour, miscommunications, corporate antagonism and transexualism the likes of which the videogame world had never before seen; the tale of Poison rocked a generation to its knees. Could the somersaulting, handcuff-wielding temptress that millions of impressionable youths lusted after at they battled their way through the streets of Metro City in Capcom’s smash hit Final Fight really have been a man?

Yes, he was. This shocking truth lies dormant on page 339 of the game information book ALL ABOUT CAPCOM, the language barrier obscuring all but the ‘male’ gender symbol next to his picture, a truth finally uncovered by those brave (and foolish) enough to translate the sacred texts, and confirmed by Capcom themselves.

We’d still hit it, though.

Justice broke souls and guard meters with equal disregard as the terrifying boss of Arc Systems’ 1998 minor hit fighting game Guilty Gear, but it wasn’t until the release and subsequent translation of the “Black” GGX2 drama CD in late 2003 that the truth was revealed - Justice was a girl! And as if that wasn’t shocking enough (how do you explain the crotch spike now, guys?) - ’she’ is also Dizzy’s mother. The father still currently unknown (perhaps he fled for his life upon waking up after a drunken one-night stand to find himself sharing a bed with a 15 foot tall exoskeletal monster) but knowing the series as we do, the truth is sure to be a surprise.

My money’s on Roger. Or April.

DO YOU KNOW THAT HE IS A BOY? Guilty Gear X2’s Bridget, in typical Ishiwatari fashion, broke radical new ground in concepts that no-one else would touch with a ten foot scalpel pole. And rightly so, too. That cute-as-a-button squealing blonde nun, rollerskating around and fighting with a yo-yo … you did, didn’t you? You DIRTY BOY. And then, afterwards - the rumours you prayed couldn’t possibly be true - that slow, creeping guilt, the fear, the nauseating gnawing horror as his storyline and origins were revealed … God you make me sick. Get out of here.

This one is very close to my heart, as for years I’ve lusted after the sassy, feisty, bouncing minxes of the DOA series (while er enjoying the fast, frantic gameplay, of course!) and then, one morning: this. A beach volleyball game. A lesbian dating sim. Hundreds of swimsuits. Posing sequences. I immediately reached for my clock (I said “clock”) to make sure it wasn’t April 1st. It wasn’t. The rest, as they say is history.

While there remains no news whatsoever on the possibility of a sequel, which is admittedly a disappointment, it is surely only a matter of time, and will doubtless be, like the first one, one of the most ludicrous, unbelievable, true announcements ever made.

Outspoken creator of the Guilty Gear games, Daisuke Ishiwatari, confessed in a shocking interview that three year-old Dizzy, the super-powered cute Gear boss of GGX was designed the way she was, solely for the benefit of sick Japanese pornographic artists.

Ishiwatari has always been a bit of an eccentric, a simple look at his games is enough to confirm that, and there has always been room for plentiful near-nudity and teasing in any videogame … but to go out of your way to placate such a seedy underground following is almost … unbelievable. It’s true though.

“Charlene from ‘Neighbours’, Gomez Addams and Jean-Claude ‘The Sprout’ Van Damme to star in live-action ‘Street Fighter’ film!” Still brings a chill to the soul even now, doesn’t it? Maybe it was all a long, long time ago, maybe it’s innate cheesiness makes us view it in a slightly fonder light, but still, Jesus Christ!

An Australian singer who, prior to this, was most well-known for playing Charlene Mangel in Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours‘, a vowel-mangling, mid-air splitsing Belgian twit and Raul “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” Julia, perhaps sensing his imminent demise (both critical and mortal) giving a hysterical torrent of a performance as retarded warlord-dictator-garden gnome M. Bison.

And what’s worst of all: EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU LIKED IT WHEN YOU FIRST SAW IT. I did too!

The news that Namco’s Tekken 4 was to feature absolutely no versions of the ‘Jack’ character whatsoever sent shockwaves around the community. For weeks afterwards people wandered aimlessly in the streets, cossack-dancing under cars and trains all over the world. For the first time in the series’ history, there would be no Jack, or P. Jack or Jack-Nicholson or Gunjack or Jack-2 selectable whatsoever.

Thankfully it was true.

P.S. We’re not really hosting Fighters.net. Not after the last time.