Stages: Ken Masters

Note: the title should be read as a parody of David Bowie's "Changes" (i.e Staaa aages)

The Ken stage is one of three U.S stages in the original Street Fighter II and it is likely the most subtle of them all. There is very little "America Fuck Yeah" in this stage, ironically its less of a showboat (ironic because it has fuckin boats you see), regardless you can still feel the Americana in the air.

Ostensibly Ken's stage is a dock in San Francisco with boats in the background, the biggest signifier of this actually being in America is the stars and stripes one one of the side boats. Besides the flag this could really be anywhere, especially since the figures in the background appear to be nondenominational. I have to believe that even in the early 90's they would try to show some diversity in an American crowd. Despite this omission, however, there is no reason to believe this is not America. I mean Ken fuckin Masters is fighting on this dock.

Because there is not much to see besides pink tugboats we must focus on the aforementioned characters. Here we see an instance of different versions of the game having significant differences when it comes to backgrounds (as opposed to the usual, graphical differences). The most noteworthy difference is the woman (the only woman?) on the boat who can be seen wearing significantly different outfits significantly depending on the game. The reason for this is unknown but that doesn't mean we wont speculate!

My first guess was that the version where the woman is dressed like a fucking mennonite was a cleaned up version wherein they tried to avoid having provocative women in the game. This immediately falls apart for two reasons: 1. the alternate version of the woman is not exactly wearing risque attire and b. this.

The second (and probably more accurate) would be that they were trying to avoid people thinking that because the men next to her are dressed like pimps then she would have to be a prostitute. Again, even in the more form-fitting outfit one would be hard pressed to think that the woman was a prostitute. Maybe they just went with the oversized dress in the SNES version to dissuade any assumptions.

In the end I'm a bit disappointed simply because there is not much going on here. If there is one synonym for America then as now its that it thinks highly of itself, people have tons of freedoms and can do pretty much whatever they want, this is completely missing from this stage and thats quite a downer.

It is good to see, however, that they eventually got their act together and they gave Ken a great stage in the Alpha/Zero games. Tons going on there, an apparent birthday party for his daughter, the dock, the boat and is that Morrigan? Felicia? good. The most interesting thing to happen in the SF2 background is when they move everything out of the way and have Zangief destroy a car.