The Street Fighter franchise is one of the longest running video game franchises of all time, with its first release dating all the way back to 1987. In the decades following, Street Fighter has become one of the most iconic fighting games of all time, featuring some of the most iconic video game characters of all time. Ryu, Chun-Li, Guile, Ken, and more are all household names, with a legacy that spans over 30 years, and reaches across the video game landscape, frequently crossing over with franchises like Super Smash Bros. and even Fortnite.
Right now, the Street Fighter franchise has had a total of 114 characters in its three decade-long history. 80 of these characters are from the mainline series of games, while the remaining 34 come from the franchise's various spin-offs. With over 100 characters, there's no wonder that a few slip through the cracks and don't appear in every entry, but for fan-favorite characters like Fei Long, there may be a more prevalent reason as to why they haven't appeared in the franchise for some time.
The Legal Issues Behind Fei Long
First appearing in Super Street Fighter 2, Fei Long is an unashamed tribute to the martial arts legend Bruce Lee. While Fei Long's appearance closely resembles the Hollywood icon, their fighting styles also match up pretty significantly. To top it all off, Fei Long is also a movie star, who first gets into competitive fighting as a way to promote his new martial arts movie. Though Fei Long hasn't appeared in every Street Fighter entry since his introduction in 1993, he has cropped up fairly consistently over the years in both the series' mainline entries, and the Street Fighter Alpha spin-offs.
However, Fei Long's last playable appearance in the franchise was in 2008's Street Fighter 4. While Fei Long did appear in Street Fighter 5, it was only as a background character in Rashid's character story. To fans of the franchise, it seemed as though Capcom was suddenly being hesistant to include Fei Long in a modern Street Fighter game.
In a Q&A last month, Street Fighter 5's composer, Daniel Lindholm, was asked about Fei Long's lack of representation in the franchise in recent years, and in response, Lindholm suggested that Fei Long wasn't going to be coming back to the franchise for a while, as Bruce Lee's estate could possibly sue.
In recent years, the Bruce Lee estate has been notoriously wary of allowing movies or video games to use the actor's likeness. The most infamous recent example of this was Bruce Lee's representation in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which the estate thought had taken Lee's character too far in a comedic direction. Following this controversy, the Bruce Lee estate announced that it would only be granting the rights to the actor to those who were making a product that would present him in an "honorable" light.
This theory would also tie-in with Fei Long's change in appearance over the years. While he used to resemble the late martial arts icon clearly, Capcom has changed Fei Long's design in the last few entries, perhaps to distance the character from his inspiration, potentially to avoid a lawsuit from Bruce Lee's estate.
While this doesn't seem too farfetched, this is all apparently untrue. In the past, the Bruce Lee estate's official Twitter has released a statement that it has no legal issues with the Street Fighter franchise and its use of Fei Long, and according to a recent statement from Street Fighter 6's Director, Takayuki Nakayama, there are no legal issues between the long-running Capcom franchise and the Bruce Lee estate. That being said, that doesn't mean that Fei Long is coming to Street Fighter 6, as Nakayama also said that he could not reveal whether he's coming to the game or not.
Street Fighter 6 releases in 2023 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
