Fans can be very fickle, and that’s ok in context, because sometimes fans have reasons to gripe, and then, sometimes, they don’t. For the Street Fighter franchise, many of their characters don’t get many “new looks”. But, for Street Fighter V, many of them did. Including Ken Masters, the best friend of Ryu and one of the first “clone” characters in all of video games. The team at Capcom aimed to make him look very different from Ryu in the game, and they succeeded, but it came at a cost.
How so? Well, although he looked different, many fans weren’t a fan of the look. Which is fair given that some people may have preferred how Ken looked before. Then, yesterday, Super Smash Bros Ultimate revealed that Ken would be in their game as an Echo fighter (a clone character but with some differences). Their version of Ken was in the classic style, with their own touches mind you. And between the reveal trailer and the gameplay model of him…fans preferred it to the Street Fighter V version.
This is ironic on all sorts of levels, not the least of which is that Nintendo had to get Capcom’s approval to use Ken in the game. So that says something right there. The debate about which model of Ken was better actually spilled onto Twitter, where numerous people made their thoughts known on how Ken looks better in Ultimate than he does in SFV:
“Well played Nintendo, Ken has a better face in Smash than in SFV.”
“Dam, Nintendo made a better Ken for Smash than Capcom made for SFV”
“Top 5 things I take away from the Smash Direct
– Sonic tried to save Pikachu
– Ken’s model makes SFV look like a joke
– Characters already revealed as AT won’t be DLC (I’m pretty sure that’s correct)
– THE GAME LOOKS AMAZING
– Little Mac got sauced by Ken”
Again, it’s all opinion really, but it’s interesting to see how the fanbase prefers classics to new style.
