Capcom designer
Takashi Nishiyama created Ken's character as he became
Street Fighter director when coming up ideas with a project. Inspired by
Spartan X, Nishiyama took notes about the needs of
Street Fighter. Planner
Hiroshi Matsumoto was influenced by martial arts which led to the usage of multiple styles. Nishiyama thinks the most regrettable experience of the game was the fact that, they had all these ideas for coming up with different playable characters that they wanted to put into the game, but due to budget concerns, scheduling concerns, among others, eventually that got reduced to only Ken and Ryu. Nishiyama would have loved to have more playable characters, but Capcom were only able to put in just the two of them. In
Street Fighter II, Ken and Ryu were originally going to be Y.S.'s characters; however, he ended up taking over in the early stages. Okano remembers making the dot patterns for the Shoryuken and the Hadoken special moves first. After that, he moved away from game design and created a design room for the illustrations and manuals. Akiman recalls having drafts for most characters except Ken and Ryu. Y.S. eventually finished the characters. From there, the first move he made was the Hadoken. Ryu and Ken "are the so-called standard characters in the" game, and since they were coming from the first
Street Fighter game, they could have the other characters be "weirdos". He gave them a stoic feel. Numerous spinoff products were made as well during the game's popularity: when Capcom licensed
Hasbro to produce a line of
action figures, Ken was given the surname "Masters" to avoid trademark conflict with
Mattel's
Ken dolls. The full name Ken Masters was used in the animated
Street Fighter II movie and in the
Street Fighter II V series before being canonized in the video games with
Street Fighter Alpha 2. The first decision when making the prequel
Street Fighter Alpha was keeping Ken, Ryu and Chun-Li. Capcom did not want to end up with just Japanese and Asian characters. As much as we could, they wanted to think in terms of creating a good balance, with all sorts of different skin colors. The secret of
Street Fighter Alpha is the Ryu and Ken vs. Bison team up mode, where if word did not get out, we figured we would just stay silent. However, the staff spoiled it. While they found such idea fun, it eventually became a troublesome mode. This eventually inspired more team up fights involving characters who wear opposing colors like Ryu and Ken. Yasuda disliked the handling of Ryu and Ken as old characters, resulting in the creation of Sakura Kasugano as a response to a younger, cooler fighter that contrast the others especially in outfits. In the prequel
Street Fighter Alpha Capcom did not want to end up with just Japanese and Asian characters. As much as we could, they wanted to think in terms of creating a good balance, with all sorts of different skin colors. The secret of
Street Fighter Alpha is the Ryu and Ken vs. Bison team up mode, where if word did not get out, we figured we would just stay silent. In both
SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos and
Street Fighter II, game designers created an alternate persona called "Violent Ken" with stronger moves than the regular Ken Masters. Despite similarities with Ryu's evil persona caused by not being able to control his dark powers, Violent Ken is the result of the villain
M. Bison manipulating Ken with his Psycho Power. This exploits Ken's hidden side including fears or hatred, most notably his inferiority complex over Ryu and starts wielding purple flames alongside all of his attacks. Eventually, Ken recovers his original persona when seeing his best friend's red bandana which is a present the character gives him in
Street Fighter Alpha 2. Though Ken did not undergo several changes in
Street Fighter IV, he and Ryu Rufus were meant to be have an acrobatic bald slender black male wearing a
gi named "King Cobra", meant to be a more, the character became Rufus.
Reuben Langdon voiced Ken in
Street Fighter IV,
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and
Street Fighter V.
David Matranga took over in
Street Fighter 6, feeling responsibility for it as a result of the series' popularity. He also regarded Ken as iconic based on how he gets the chance to yell his attack's names which required lessons of screaming and grunting. The character's inclusion in the
SNK fighting game
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves over Ryu was done because producer
Yasuyuki Oda said in the
Capcom vs. SNK crossover games, Ken's character was often promoted alongside
Terry Bogard, who originated in
Fatal Fury in contrast to Ryu who instead is marketed alongside
Kyo Kusanagi who originated in ''
The King of Fighters '94''. This reasoning was also done with fellow character Chun-li who tends to be promoted alongside
Mai Shiranui.
Designs In the original
Street Fighter, Ken fought
barefoot and wore yellow arm bands without gloves. Ken and Ryu were designed to be nearly identical and share the same moves despite their different races. By the time of
Street Fighter V, Ken's appearance underwent a design change. Ken's gi top now hangs around his waist and he wears a black v-neck training shirt with several red linings in its place. He sports black sparring gloves and has his hair tied back in a topknot instead of hanging loose which it was grown into medium length after the events of
Street Fighter III series and now wears black ankle wraps with red linings instead of barefoot. For this game, Capcom wanted to differentiate Ken and Ryu's moves since they have been seen as "clones". According to
Street Fighter V Senior Manager Matt Dahlgren, "Ken's more of the hothead. He's the one that's gonna rush you down and be in your face, so his V-Skill is a run move that can be used to constantly pressure your opponent." In
Undisputed Street Fighter: A 30th Anniversary Retrospective, it was noted that while Ken was already a popular character in previous games, his redesign in
Street Fighter V helped to improve it thanks to its more original take. This also was helped by the fact that Ken's special moves have flames in contrast to Ryu's electric Denjin Hadoken. After 30 years in
Street Fighter V, the moves and new designs help Ken look his own. For the crossover game with
Tekken,
Street Fighter X Tekken, Ken was given an alternate costume based on
Tekken fighter
Lars Alexandersson, while several fashionable American-like clothing was scrapped. While still performing similar moves in
Street Fighter 6, Ken and Ryu were designed to play different; Ken became more aggressive and dynamic whereas Ryu was more defensive and strategic.
Gameplay Ken and Ryu shared the same moves despite their different races as a symbol of being rivals and fellow students but was given a more competitive personality than Ryu. The special technique energy wave attack was based on the wave motion gun from the titular spacecraft in the sci-fi
anime series
Space Battleship Yamato, which Nishiyama watched during the seventies. Ken and Ryu's other two techniques from the first
Street Fighter game, and were inspired by actual martial arts moves, which were exaggerated for the character. These three moves were reused in
Street Fighter IV by master Gouken but stronger based on Kamei's desire to make the master more skilled in comparison. Ken and Ryu develop stronger versions of the Hadoken due to a desire of Akira Nishitani and Akira Yasuda in regards to the size of the move in
Street Fighter II. Shoei Okano animated the new Hadoken. The Karate duo which coined the term Shotokan for sharing the same moves and similar designs. Shotokans were created in other franchises and more in
Street Fighter follow ups. This includes the antagonistic
Akuma, the young
Sakura Kasugano and the parody character
Dan Hibiki. Despite being an aggressive character, Ken is unnotable for aerial combat, making him weaker to Dhalsim, Sagat and Guile in this occasion. He becomes more offensive with the
Alpha series. For
Street Fighter III, Capcom, had planned to add more moves for Ken, but his special was already qualified as Shoryuken so strong, he kind of became a "one-trick pony character". Even if players had problems with him, he was still strong enough to defeat several other characters. Capcom noted Ken and Ryu have a more American style of Karate, so they created fellow fighter
Makoto to have a more Japanese style. They tried to make her moveset and controls reflect that, too. Ken remained as one of the most requested characters in location tests of the games. ==Appearances==