Stages: Guile

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

Because nothing says "superpower" better than a display of military might it was only fitting that Capcom would go to an airbase full of fighter jets to represent Guile's stage. Ok maybe its not full of fighter jets but the one F-16 certainly proves the intended point: the U.S has the most advanced air force in the world, just look at that fucking jet!

The stage has some other interesting features. First there is a U.S Airforce roundel right in the middle of the stage, in the same spot that the hammer and sickle holds in the Zangief stage, the message is simple: freedom, brought to you by the U.S military vs oppression brought to you by bureaucratic factories in the USSR. This isn't a negative thing, its simply the truth! The cold war ended with the inefficiencies of the Soviet model of "communism" laid completely bare, the differences between the two stages highlight these inefficiencies while still maintaining that the U.S and its over reliance on its military is not a utopia either.

In the interest of treating this entry as a meditation on the cold war let us pursue a comparison of the two stages. The many levels of fences in the USSR stage are a complete contrast to the vast openness of the Air Force base, sure there are advanced machines in the Soviet factories but the workers dont have access to them, they're state owned you see. On the other hand if you really want to get in that F-16 then by all means.

Also who would you rather hang out with? the drunken bolshevik workers or the blonde men and women of the United States Air Force, pulled straight out of the then recently released Top Gun. You could be Iceman or Maverick and, better yet, you can get laid right afterwards. In the USSR all you really have to look forward to are more and more meetings of the Comintern and the Comecon. Snore.

Lastly, lets not forget that this is a Japanese game and the differing views of the two cold war giants are not from an American, and therefore biased, point of view but rather from a Japanese. This is not to say that there isn't any bias, Japan being a capitalist country and whatnot, but this is still a valid representation of how the international community saw these two countries: the declining empire of bureaucracy vs the emerging empire of military might. The Guile stage, then, is still a jab at the U.S, but the reason we see it as a positive is because of the images we have grown up with.