Fighting Games Friday: About Street Fighter 6’s Cover

Capcom revealed the cover to Street Fighter 6 alongside four new characters during The Game Awards, and the response to the former has been one of disappointment. A good portion of the internet community thinks it’s garbage; hell, some would even say it’s “shitty.” I’ll just say that it’s not their best effort, as one of the calmest and nicest people you’ll find on the World Wide Web.

The cover features new protagonist Luke in what I assume is a mid-victory pose position, given the scrunched look on his face and the location of his fist. Maybe he’s in the middle of doing one of those not-a-Shoryuken uppercuts, though he doesn’t look focused enough for that. If anyone looked at it and held out hope that maybe the Japanese version’s cover was better, know that it’s exactly the same. At least they’re getting reversible cover options, depending on whether it’s purchased from Amazon or local retailer Geo.

The cover reveal gave the opportunity to social media’s wonderful community of fan artists to try their hand at creating a better cover, and there are far too many examples for me to cycle through here.

SF6 BOXART! Here's the finished product! The point of this exercise was to show that you can stay within modern marketing trends while still tapping into the attitude of a given game (instead a single fighter on a plain background, which does a disservice)#StreetFighter #SF6 pic.twitter.com/bdQ58YUZzt

— Matt McMuscles – Hungry Wolf Back on The Prowl! (@MattMcMuscles) December 21, 2022

The most popular one is from Matt McMuscles, in a cover that features new characters Luke, Jamie, and Kimberly at the forefront, the new Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li according to SF6 art director Kaname Fujioka. The latter three characters are in the background of this art, as if to hammer this home. This one is indeed a step up from the official one, but it’s a little boring and generic. That was the point, as McMuscles explained: It’s an expected cover for a new fighting game. The cover does its job in hammering home the kind of game this is and who’s in it to anyone passing by it in an in-person or online store.

This is when I put on my tinfoil-looking cap and started considering that perhaps the “ugly” cover is that for good reason. Communities across social media and message boards would be unlikely to heavily discuss a cover to this extent if it was prettier, or more conventional like the above one. But look at all the discussion it’s created instead. It even caused me to remember that I had a Cover Art Chronicles feature that I regularly posted new entries in (the last one is from 2019), with a banner now broken for some reason.

There is a very good chance that Capcom has seen all the criticism directed at the cover. Just as they changed the logo after the initial one was deservedly raked over the coals for being too similar to an Adobe Photoshop stock variant, the cover too could change before the game’s release. It’s anyone’s guess what they could change the cover to, but expect Luke to still still be a prominent face considering his status as the new main character. They could give him 3D art that looks less awkward, or the aforementioned Fujioka could provide a nice piece of artwork. They could also think that most of the potential audience will buy it digitally and not care about the cover, and leave it as is. We’ll see.

All that said, it’s still startling to see this much focus on Luke, the new Chosen One from Capcom. As I mentioned in a prior post, this isn’t the first time they’ve sought to introduce a new protagonist or main face that they believe will appeal to westerners. Alex was intended to be the main character of the Street Fighter III series, and was the clear focus in the promotions and opening sequences for New Generation and 2nd Impact. 3rd Strike, however, didn’t have a single main character. There was also Abel in Street Fighter IV, who wasn’t introduced as the main character but as someone the developers felt the west would relate to, though did not to the extent they expected. There’s a trend among these three: They’re all blonde-haired Caucasian males.

Whether audiences will be seriously enamored with Luke remains to be seen; it’s a considerably more important position to be introduced as the new face in SF6 compared to being released as the final character for Street Fighter V. But perhaps the western audience doesn’t relate to them as much as Capcom wants to believe. It’s tough to tell precisely what will be most attractive to them, but the general audience is largely online these days. From my, um, research, they might be more enamored by Juri’s feet than Luke. Or Manon’s. It sure feels like SF6’s character designer has a type, huh.

Street Fighter 6 isn’t due for release until June 2nd, which leaves Capcom plenty of time to change the default cover in addition to holding at least two more beta sessions. It shouldn’t take long to see whether the company feels it’s worth their while to make alterations.