Fighting Games Friday: The Kings of Fighters 2023

The purpose of this Fighting Games Friday entry, as the title states, is to highlight the fighting games coming in 2023. The year is bound to be a good one, following the trends of its predecessors. But contrary to some previous posts, there is no point to merely listing them.

Fighting games from big and even mid-tier publishers aren’t released by the bulk these days, and there are, thus, not many to highlight. Every publisher under the sun has embraced the model of sticking to one game for years on end and releasing occasional updates. Some publishers only release one installment per console generation, a somewhat mind-blowing fact considering how long they last these days (around seven years). That said, we’re still largely starting the newest generation thanks to a worldwide pandemic that hampered video game development for around a year at least.

The biggest upcoming title is — surprise, surprise — Capcom’s Street Fighter 6, the newest installment in the franchise that revived the 2D fighting game genre in big-budget form, which started with Street Fighter IV in 2008/2009. SF6 is an important title not only because it’s the newest release in one of the biggest 2D fighters, although that’s a big part of it, but due to how a new team within Capcom will be using this game to prove themselves worthy successors to those before them. Producer Yoshinori Ono left Capcom in 2020, leaving director and producer team Takayuki Nakayama and Kazuhiro Tsuchiya, respectively, in the lead positions. They got their start at the helm with the final season of Street Fighter V, but building and releasing a brand-new title is a tremendously larger task compared to releasing more content for an established game.

SF6 will feature a series of new characters taking over as the main faces of the roster, led by Luke (introduced as the final character in SFV), Jamie, and Kimberly. They’ll be joined by the likes of Manon (pictured above looking suave), Marisa, JP, and Lily among the new faces. But it wouldn’t be a new modern Street Fighter title without several more returning characters, like Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Blanka, Dee Jay, and more. The characters are coming alongside a new art style that does a better job of showing off stylized realism, and several gameplay features from previous SF games are returning to satisfy every flavor of fan.

SF6 will launch on June 6th. There are still a few more characters to reveal, but don’t be surprised if the roster additions coming as part of the first Season Pass are announced before the date, with potential characters like Akuma, Ed, and supposed F.A.N.G. gender swap A.K.I..

The other big fighting game nearly guaranteed to release next year is Bandai Namco’s Tekken 8, this generation’s installment in the series. The game has only recently been revealed, meaning the development team has plenty more characters to reveal. Nearly all the currently-known characters are returning faces from Tekken 7, like Jin Kazama, Kazuya Mishima, Marshall Law, and Paul Phoenix. The lone surprise is the return of Jun Kazama, making her first appearance in a mainline numbered Tekken game since Tekken 2. The game itself will have new gameplay features, one of which resembles EX attacks from too many 2D fighting games to count.

Tekken 8 is “nearly” guaranteed to release because, well, it’s not officially confirmed for 2023. But there’s a solid chance it will release this year at the pace Bandai Namco is revealing new information.

There’s a possibility that the next Mortal Kombat game is coming soon, though there’s no way to tell if it’s coming this year. Co-creator Ed Boon provided light teases for it throughout 2022. If it is coming this year, it was a missed opportunity not to announce it during the 30th anniversary last year, considering they had so little for it. This is perhaps less the fault of NetherRealm Studios and more the continued mess that’s Warner Bros. Discovery.

It sums up the state of modern fighting game releases when there may — may — only be three releases at most throughout 2023. There’s a chance for surprises, like the new Garou/Fatal Fury title from SNK, but it’s safer to bet against them. Recent fighting games will continue to receive support through patches and downloadable content, among them Guilty Gear Strive, The King of Fighters XV (mandatory to name considering the title of this post), DNF Duel, Melty Blood: Type Lumina, and (sorry, it counts) MultiVersus. Other games will receive patches to improve the online play, like Samurai Shodown and Dragon Ball FighterZ. Every fighting game is getting patched to add rollback except for Granblue Fantasy: Versus and Tekken 7.

The above should sum up why 2023 isn’t heavy for fighting game releases, but is heavy for fighting games per se. This isn’t even getting to indie titles, which I’ll focus on for next week’s post. I don’t tend to give indie developments and developers enough credit on this blog, which would be a solid idea considering the plenty of other websites and blogs read for the biggest news. I’ll get started on that… in a week.