Fighting Games Friday: The Old Themes Have to Return in Street Fighter 6

The Street Fighter fanbase will never come close to agreeing on anything regarding the gameplay and even the audio and visual presentations each game comes with. The art styles for Street Fighter IV and, to a lesser extent, Street Fighter V have (ostensibly) equal groups of fans who think they look fine or hideous, with a small number of them in between. (I didn’t like IV’s, but I like V’s, in case you wanted to know.) But despite fans having a variety of opinions regarding the soundtracks to those previous games, I’ve never seen big arguments about them outside those thinking they were inferior to Street Fighter III 3rd Strike’s. But that number of fans in itself was small considering SFIII’s cult classic status.

That’s changed with Street Fighter 6, a game set to have the most divisive soundtrack to grace the series yet, which isn’t surprising. As I mentioned in an earlier post as part of a Recommended Soundtracks preview, all the tracks for the returning characters are brand-new, similar to the Street Fighter III games and Street Fighter Alpha 3. (Luke only somewhat dodges this because he was originally planned to be introduced in SF6 before SFV’s fifth season was green lit.) Just as 3rd Strike’s soundtrack featured hip-hop (late 1990s hip-hop, at that) and SFA3’s focused on techno, SF6’s has a funky vibe to it. You know where I’m going with this: Not everyone is impressed.

The tracks released by Capcom thus far have divided the fanbase into hyperbolic halves, which started when the earlier tracks were released but only intensified when Guile’s was uploaded — notably after the post I linked to above. I don’t think Guile’s theme is on par with his original theme, and few actually are, but I like it. This hasn’t improved with the releases of Kimberly’s theme and Juri’s theme, the former a fitting fusion of funkiness and hip-hop while the latter sounds like a K-pop theme without the lyrics. It also applies to Ken’s theme and Blanka’s theme, though the latter is admittedly catchy.

(I want to note that SFA3’s soundtrack would have severely divided fans like SF6’s had the internet not been in as “primitive” a state when the former game released in 1998. Think about the good times we had before social media arrived.)

It’s okay, though. There’s a way for Capcom to satisfy every party involved here. There is no way the older themes won’t make their way back into this game through some method. I would be surprised if there weren’t multiple options for the themes players want to hear in the main game, even if they won’t all be there at launch.

Just as the older outfits for characters like Ryu, Chun-Li, Guile, and Cammy via leaks, were confirmed for the game, there will be some way in which their older themes find their way in. The real question is how that will happen. It’s possible for them to be attached to those older outfits, but that could get complicated for anyone playing who would rather use the older outfits with newer themes, unless Capcom adds a treasure trove of options in the menu. The features might be tough to implement.

The easiest way for them to do this would be to attach the older themes to stages. Both SFIV and SFV (and Marvel vs. Capcom 3) have separate themes for the characters and stages, with options to switch between both. These options will very likely be retained for SF6. Remixes of the older themes could return while attached to redone versions of classic stages, similar to how they were in SFV, despite the game already remixing older themes for the returning characters.  This led to several characters like Ryu, Sagat, Vega, M. Bison, and E. Honda having two different remixes for the same themes in one game for SFV. But having old remixes and newer themes in SF6 would significantly increase the number of options available.

If they did this, I’d prefer it if they redid character stages that weren’t previously redone for SFV that will still have the older themes attached, like, for instance, Ryu and Sagat’s stages from Street Fighter Alpha 2. Heck, maybe they could even try to recreate Ken’s cameo-stuffed SFA2 stage in 3D with his classic theme attached. Ken’s story-related reasons for needing to keep distance from his family shouldn’t apply here.

The most cynical option would be for Capcom to simply have players pay for all the older themes, whether separately or in a bundle, with options to replace them in the game. This is by far the most boring solution, but the chance of this happening is too high for me to ignore.

It would be nice, on the other hand, if the characters came with alternate remixes of character themes made for SF6, particularly from Capcom’s internal Cap-JAMS group consisting of Yoshiya Terayama (bass), Taisuke Fujisawa and Yasuyuki Tsujino (guitar), Shinya Okada and Yasumasa Kitagawa (keyboard), and Ryo Hirai (drums). They provided solid remixes of themes from SFV’s final season. Compare Dan’s Cap-JAMS theme compared to the in-game one, and Oro’s Cap-JAMS compared to his in-game one, and Luke’s Cap-JAMS version compared to his in-game one. The group also provided great tunes for the Capcom Fighting Collection. They’re bound to have some input in this game, and I hope it’s significant.

This post has somewhat turned into a Recommended Soundtracks one, but that was all part of the plan. There should be several more performances from Cap-JAMS in the near future, even if members of the band are shuffled in and out.

I’d be shocked if the older tracks weren’t implemented in the game somehow over time. I just hope they don’t do so in the priciest and lamest way possible by stuffing them in a DLC pack. Keep in mind that I cannot be held responsible if that last scenario comes to pass.