As of today, almost everyone is familiar with the misadventures of Ranma Saotome, the fighter who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water (and turns back into a boy when splashed with hot water). His story spanned 38 volumes, covering nine years of serialization by Rumiko Takahashi, and was later adapted into a legendary anime that is currently having a fabulous remake on Netflix. Everyone seems to adore Ranma ½, even those who don’t seem to know anything about manga and anime. But… it wasn’t always like this.
Life is tough, you have to fight
On March 27, 1992, Super Nintendo released the first game in history based on the series, titled Ranma ½: Chonai Gekitōhen, a fighting game where the main characters of the series would face off: Ranma, Shampoo, Kuno, Hyoga, etc. The problem was that when it came to bringing it to the United States, no one seemed to understand what on earth this strange game was adapting, and they decided to Americanize it. But you would never guess to what extent.
Suddenly, the game turned into something called… Street Combat! The skins were pure comic, ridiculously ultra-American, and the plot and characters were completely changed. In fact, Happosai and Cologne ended up becoming the same character: Happy; Ranma became Steven, who instead of getting wet and turning into a girl, lost his armor; Genma was Tyrone; Kodachi turned into the clown Dozo; Kunou was the very American G.I. Jim; the main Kunou a war machine called Helmut; Shampoo changed to Lita and, finally, Ryouga was called CJ.
As for the story, which was about Ranma wanting to win a martial arts tournament whose prize was a trip to China to lift the curse, it became something much simpler: the character wants to win because he is the best, and that’s it. Fortunately, the sequel to the game did not have this crazy treatment (similar, on the other hand, to what happened with Super Mario Bros 2) and the Street Combat saga was forgotten over time. Certainly, it deserved nothing better.