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What does the path to Street Fighter 6 look like?
We played a lot of Street Fighter V over the last few years. With a new title on the horizon, how did we get here, and where are we going?
After 6 eventful years of Street Fighter 5, a new era is on the horizon with the impending release of Street Fighter 6. Over Street Fighter 5’s lifespan, the fighting game landscape has evolved into a new scene. With new games like Guilty Gear Strive grabbing the attention of players, the Street Fighter franchise took a bit of a backseat in the public’s eye. With the general hype for a new Street Fighter game reaching new heights thanks to a great beta test weekend, fans of the franchise are looking toward an amazing future for the game and what it could mean for the fighting game community as a whole.
Started with a stumble
With Street Fighter 6, it was clear from the start that Capcom had learned from its mistakes in how it handled the launch of Street Fighter 5. Initially, there was nothing that would cause any major concerns, well almost nothing at least. While the gameplay reveal during Sony’s State of Play did a lot to calm any fears and worries about what the new Street Fighter will look like, the initial teaser left a lot to be desired and wasn’t received too well by most of the community. Luckily, Street Fighter faithfuls like content creator Michael “Rooflemonger” Townsend weren’t too concerned by that initial teaser just because it didn’t show anything of major substance.
“I guess unimpressed would be [how I felt], but neither was I particularly scared because there's just no gameplay to be shown, just the models and I thought the models look pretty so that was good. But compared to the [State of Play reveal] where they showed off the battle hub, world tour, here's actual gameplay, and all that kinda stuff. That was, I feel mostly universally positive.”
Apart from their stumble out of the gate with the initial teaser, Capcom has been firing on all cylinders with Street Fighter 6 and has shown that this game could be bringing the fighting game genre into the next generation.
Something for everyone
One of the biggest improvements in Street Fighter 6 will clearly be the experience for casual players. Whereas Street Fighter 5 launched with nothing except the most basic features, Street Fighter 6 will have plenty to play around with including what appears to be a fleshed-out story through the World Tour mode.
“This is something new for Street Fighter you can get really inventive with it,” Rooflemonger said. “The only other thing that's even remotely comparable is Mortal Kombat Deception’s Konquest mode and the character played in that was Shujinko and he would learn moves from the characters and he would do them in the overworld. So I hope it's like that I want to learn all the Street Fighter moves, I'm just really excited for that”
Past the World Tour mode, Capcom is making sure that the game can be taken as seriously as a player would want to take it with a great “modern control” scheme and a variety of chaotic modes to allow players to just pick up the game and screw around.
“I'm very excited. Actually, I love stuff like that. I used to play so much Tekken Ball, which was like a volleyball thing in Tekken three and in the Street Fighter 4 days, me and a bunch of friends who play what we will call Rose ball, or one person would throw a projectile. And then you take rows and just keep reflecting projectile back and back and back. And the person who gets hit loses. Silly modes that we would self-invent in the game are now codified,” said Rooflemonger. “Are those EVO quality Main Event games? No, of course not. But even for someone like me, who's more competitive, I would definitely play a lot of that. I like modes where you can just screw around they're very fun to me.”
A lot of experimenting ahead
Of course, talking about any fighting game wouldn’t be complete without also discussing the competitive side of things. On that end, the biggest topic of discussion within the community is the drive system. With all the possibilities the Drive system presents, players like Alexander “Mortsy” Morton, one of the top players in Canada, are excited to breakdown the system.
“I'm really looking forward to how people are able to interact with that system, it just seems so interesting,” Mortsy said, “It’s not something that we've really had the opportunity to mess with in Street Fighter.” Ultimately with the complexity of the Drive system, Mortsy feels that while a common use for the system may be figured out, there will never be one perfect way to use it.
While it’ll be interesting to see what the pros are capable of once the game officially releases, the competitive community will be will also be continuing to thrive thanks to rollback netcode and the continuation of the Capcom Pro Tour. With all that, Mortsy does have a pretty big item on his competitive wish list for Street Fighter 6: “I want to have Canadian tournaments where we can all play against each other, and we are one region, that would be wonderful, I would love that.”
Along with the hopes for a Canada-wide tournament from Capcom instead of the country being split into separate regions, Mortsy also hopes to see more promotion of tournaments, especially through the new Battle Hub.
“If they can highlight tournaments within the game, that would be really cool. [For example] in the battle hub, they've got the big screen up there, maybe they could show tournament matches like actual streams of tournament matches, that would be really cool.”
Is the king back?
So now the real question is whether Street Fighter will be able to take the crown and once again become the king of fighting games? Well according to Rooflemonger that is exactly what’s about to happen.
“I have complete confidence Street Fighter takes the crown back with Street Fighter 6, I don't have any doubt in my mind.”
While some of the pains from the poor launch and handling of Street Fighter 5 are clearly still lingering for some members of the community, everything Capcom has shown so far of Street Fighter 6 has shown that they have learned from the past and have made significant improvements from it. Along with the game just looking amazing overall and setting the bar for what’s expected from fighting games going forward, Rooflemonger also believes that the time is right for the game to be released.
“A lot of the other games minus Guilty Gear Strive are old in the tooth,” he said. “Tekken 7 is an old game now, Mortal Kombat 11 they dropped support for it and there's not much in the way of competition.”
And while the next games in these franchises are well on their way, the fact is Street Fighter 6 will have a huge headstart. “Street Fighter 6 is going to have a long head Start. Tekken 8 is happening obviously, but that's far away in a future that ain't happening anytime soon, same with Project L,” Rooflemonger said. “So not only is there positivity just from the game itself, it is going to drop uncontested cause everything else is old or waiting on the new game and that's very much to Street Fighter’s advantage.”
So while fans will have to eagerly wait for the game’s official release in 2023, it has become fairly clear that once Street Fighter 6 drops, many within the fighting game community will be welcoming the return of their king.
