Fighting Games Friday: Back to the Street, Fighter

Capcom first announced Street Fighter 6 at the end of the Capcom Pro Tour, though didn’t reveal much outside confirming that Ryu and Luke, the latter Street Fighter V’s final character, would be part of the roster. The teaser provided a first look at them and the game’s art style, one embracing stylized realism compared to fusion between realism and anime styles from the last two Street Fighter games. The full reveal was presumably being saved for Evo, the biggest destination for fighting game news alongside its main focus of being the biggest fighting game tournament destination. Capcom proceeded to own everyone who thought that (it wasn’t just me) by revealing it in a June State of Play. They got the memo that it’s not-E3 game announcement month.

The newest trailer crammed a bunch of new information within a three-minute timespan. Chun-Li was confirmed for the roster, to no surprise considering she goes with Ryu to nearly every game, including crossovers and guest appearances outside the first two Street Fighter III titles and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. But even with those, she eventually made it to 3rd Strike and was including in Ultimate in literal Spirit. Here, she has the first new default outfit since the Street Fighter Alpha days, one fitting for this game’s art direction and her apparent age. She also has a new English voice actress: Jennie Kwan, likely in response to the good trend of getting Asian actors to play Asian characters.

Joining Chun-Li is another new character named Jamie, a peacekeeper in Chinatown who aspires to walk the same path as Yun and Yang. His style combines his skills as an expert dancer with martial arts, who can unlock additional moves when he takes a swig of his drink to strengthen his ki. Jamie looks good in action, but has an extremely normal name by Street Fighter standards. It’s very Tekken, which means Street Fighter x Tekken finally makes sense. It’s still not too late to finish and release Tekken x Street Fighter, so hopefully someone (not me) sends a notice to Katsuhiro Harada. It doesn’t quite count as asking him.

Meanwhile, there’s an apparent leak for the initial roster. It’s tough to tell if Capcom intends to add every character here, but there’s a good chance of that considering the sketches for the four characters already revealed match the artwork here. The game debuting with 22 characters would suggest that Capcom has learned from their mistakes with SFV’s launch.

It wouldn’t be a brand-new Street Fighter game without a bunch of new features to distinguish this game from its predecessors, and SF6 is set to have this in spades. One of the biggest as far as the actual matches go includes the Drive system, which can be used for five techniques with up to six stocks. This sounds like a lot, but it’s simpler than it sounds.

The Drive Impact is somewhat of a counterattack performed after absorbing the opponent’s technique, which can wall bounce them if done close enough to the corner. It’s reminiscent of a modified Focus Attack from Street Fighter IV. The Drive Parry can repel an opponent’s attack when performed just before it connects, replenishing a Drive bar if it successfully lands, which makes it sound risky and difficult to pull off. The Overdrive Art is an enhanced version of a special technique, similar to EX attacks in previous games. The Drive Rush involves a quick rush forward following a Drive Parry or normal attack, the latter of which costs three bars, ostensibly similar to Focus Attack Dash Cancel (FADC) in SFIV (which required two bars out of four in that game). Lastly, there’s a Drive Reversal, a counterattack performed after blocking, similar to an Alpha Counter or V-Reversal from the Alpha games and SFV. They’ll have to show these in motion to demonstrate how well they’ll flow in actual matches.

This is coming with a simplified control scheme option that will allow for the game to be played with a mere four buttons. The key word there is “option,” as this is in addition to the old school six-button scheme. My guess is that some newer players will use the former, but most dedicated players will stick to the latter, depending on how practical the simplified one is.

The biggest new feature revealed in the trailer is what looks to be a grandiose single-player World Tour mode, in which players who’ve created their own character can openly explore Metro City to communicate and battle players and other opponents — perhaps including Final Fight’s Damnd. This means you’ll have their opportunity to be a real street fighter. The trailer only showed glimmers of it, and Capcom themselves isn’t providing too many details about it just yet. But it’s already clear that anyone who likes having single-player modes in fighting games will get what they’ve always wanted here.

Another neat new feature is tournament-style commentary, assuming it’s implemented well. Both previous Street Fighter games have included announcers who’ve provided light commentary, but that will reportedly be more involved with fighting game community faces doing the commentary this time around. Jeremy “Vicious” Lopez and Aru are confirmed to be two of them, but more will be announced in the near future. There are already plenty of calls for Yipes, but maybe they should save him for a new Marvel game that they must work on. It’s long past time for Marvel Games and Capcom to patch it up.

Capcom’s post couldn’t have made it clearer that there’s plenty more to show, even following a trailer stuffed with info. But they’ll have much more time to show it considering they still haven’t provided a release timeframe beyond “2023.” They’ll have one very clear opportunity to demonstrate the game in front of a crowd, at an event already mentioned in this post. (That’s Evo 2022, by the way.) The game will release for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series (returning to Xbox after SFV skipped the ecosystem), and PC.