The Street Fighter 30th Tribute: Ken Masters is no longer just a P2 character in SFII!
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by D’Angelo Wallace |
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“Attack me if you dare! I will crush you!” Ken Masters is one of the nineteen playable characters from the Street Fighter II series since its start in 1991. Originally starting out as a Player 2-bound pallet swap of Ryu from Street Fighter I, he has since returned in the sequel as his more fiery rival. Ken not only is Ryu’s total opposite in technique, but also in personality and lifestyle. While Ryu is rather calm and nomadic, Ken tends to be cocky and lives a life of luxury inheriting his father’s business. No doubt his ego was bolstered when he became the reigning Martial Arts Champion in America. Also unlike Ryu, Ken Masters has a girlfriend named Eliza; who he marries during his ending of Street Fighter 2. But despite their differences and rivalry; Ken and Ryu are good friends. They both live for the fight and when an opportunity arises for them to spar with one another, they gladly accept with friendly resolve.
Though both Ryu and Ken trained at the same dojo in Japan; they both became masters of two different techniques. Ryu mastered the Hadouken (Fireball) while Ken Masters became a master of the Shoryuken (Rising Dragon Punch.) In fact Ken became so good at performing this move, that in further installments of Street Fighter 2 and beyond he has had the ability to light his fist (as well as his opponents) on fire with it while Ryu got moves focussing on the Hadoken instead. This became a major source of frustration for players as Ken was more prone to be on the offensive with anti-air Shoryukens and horizontal fireballs, while possessing insane reach with his moves that countered almost any attack.
Ken and Ryu became almost as inseparable as Mario and Luigi. This was particularly true in the American depictions of the duo in both the 1994 live-action Street Fighter movie and the Animated series. In the movie they were depicted as con-men trying to rip off Shadowloo henchmen; but were eventually caught and had to escape through some misadventures. In the animated TV series they were both serving in Guile’s “Street Fighter” unit, where Ken was notably single and a constant skirt-chaser with Ryu acting as his sort of moral compass. The Japanese versions for the most part keep their rivalry as the key source of their characters; particularly in the Animated Movie where Bison kidnapped Ken and turned him into a brainwashed warrior trying to defeat Ryu. This version of Ken would be incorporated into future videos games as ‘Violent Ken.’ ~ |
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The Artists that drew Ken Masters from Street Fighter II for our Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Art Collaboration:
Dangelowallaceart is an American artist who participated in our Street Fighter Anniversary with Ken Masters shortly after joining our community. He illustrated Ken in his classic victory pose for the Street Fighter II tribute; showing off all his cockiness! We look forward to future contributions from him as his artwork continues to grow and evolve. Update: He deactivated his account on dA sadly =/ ~
Raymond Vidal from the Philippines joined our community back in 2012 already and contributed a take on Tusk from Killer Instinct 2 for our FGE Project. His take on the classic Ken Masters performing his burning Shoryuken is his return to video game art collaborations and I look forward to see him participating in more of them soon! Have a look at his gallery here! ~
Gino Descalzi aka Dreamgate-Gad from Peru is one of the most active Game-Art-HQ Contributors since around two years and started with a really unpopular character from the Final Fight games for one of our fighting game related projects and participated in almost all later art activites, like myself he is a big fan of the fighting games and especially their character designs which is a reason we can count on more excellent illustrations by him in the future! Have a look at his whole gallery there on dA!
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Back to the Street Fighter Tribute Main Gallery Street Fighter II Main Gallery Ken Masters in the Video Game Character Database
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