Joseph Luster
February 22, 2021 
Street Fighter II has been such a staple of video games for the past 30 years that even the smallest of details are burned into our brains. One of those details is the iconic bathhouse background found in E. Honda’s stage, and an aspect of it has now been removed as of the latest port in the recently released Capcom Arcade Stadium on Nintendo Switch.
Everything about the background is as it was in 1991… except for the rising sun and its shining rays that were an instantly recognizable part of the background mural. Now the rising sun—which would shine in alternating red and yellow colors at the end of a round—has been replaced with solid colors.
A similar change was made to the stage when it appeared in modern form in Street Fighter V, opting instead for a solid sun without any rays. While Capcom hasn’t issued a statement at the time of this writing, the rising sun imagery carries negative connotations in many regions, including China and Korea, in which some groups are vocal about its association with World War II occupation and connections to the Imperial Japanese Army.
Despite the fact that the rising sun imagery isn’t seen as exclusively militaristic in Japan, Capcom’s scrubbing of it from E. Honda’s background mural applies to all versions of Capcom Arcade Stadium, including those released in Japan.
Via SoraNews24
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