I've had Street Fighter on my mind lately. In the past month, I bought the complete edition of V on PS4 and have played that a bit. I've played a bit of Ultra IV as well, and I've also played some of the games in the 30th Anniversary Collection. Finally, I watched this 3 hour video on the series' lore and that got my brain going. While I've already written a review of Street Fighter 6 around a month back, this post will go over additional thoughts about its lore, roster, and future.

---

EVO

To start, some thoughts about the EVO fighting game tournament. The number of people that've registered for this year's Street Fighter 6 tournament is the most number of entrants any game has ever had at EVO, so that's bonkers. My question is, what can they announce there? Showing off A.K.I. with a release in early September would keep their schedule in check (she has been confirmed for Autumn), but it seems too early for her as Rashid was released just about a week ago. Previous EVO announcements have included multiple characters at once, like G and Sagat duo, or the Poison, Honda, Lucia triple, so it is possible, but isn't it better for them to spread the characters out as evenly as possible? If it isn't A.K.I., however, the question then is, what will they show off if not her? The only thing I can think of is Costume 3 for all characters. It feels like the release of the first costumes are just around the corner, but is that a good enough announcement for EVO?

Freebie comic available at EVO. Make note of A.K.I. on the cover.

---

Roster

The roster as is is fine, but at the same time it is rather boring. The original 8 World Warriors (WWs) from II, plus fan favorites Cammy and Juri, producer's favorite Dee Jay, and the newcomers (including Luke). With year 1, there's an additional character from II, two from V, and newcomer A.K.I.. If you didn't know, that means there's not a single character from either Alpha or III. V's roster at launch was pretty barebones, but it at least included 4 Alpha characters from the get-go, with an IV rep and three from III launching in the first year.

In my opinion, the biggest problem with 6's roster is the 8 WWs combined with a small base roster. Had the year 1 characters been included in the base roster, that would've been good enough. In a way, the WWs are Street Fighter's version of the Kooplaings from Mario in that you can't only have a few; it's all or nothing or else it feels weird. The three big games in the series are II, IV, and 6. All included the 8 WWs from the start. I'm not saying there's a connection, but maybe there is. Anyway, there are 7 newcomers so while some of them could've been returning characters instead, I'd rather put the blame on the WWs.

As for characters I would like to see added in the future, C. Viper and Abel are good picks. Viper has been seen working with Juri in V, so that connection can be built upon. Abel has been seen with Guile in V, so build upon that as well. Remy seems to have absolutely ZERO appearances in anything official (comics, games, etc) aside from his appearance in 3rd Strike, so he can basically be seen as a newcomer again. Other cool characters include Birdie, Eagle, Makoto, Dudley, and Fei Long.

Launch roster for Street Fighter 6.

---

Lore

This section is basically a continuation of the Roster section, but with a focus on characters that could be in the game because of lore reasons. 6 is the game that is the sequel to III chronologically, so one would've expected at least some characters from that game from the start as there are many plot elements from that which can be expanded and/or concluded.

The Secret Society and what they've been up to. Established in III, expanded upon in V, but so far basically nowhere to be found in 6. Gill, Urien, Kolin, Alex, and Ibuki seem to be connected to this. At the same time, G and his doomsday event, and his connection to Q, with G appearing in V, and Q appearing in III together with the G-files. Finally, the experiments done with Necro and Twelve.

Related to III, Sean was Ken's apprentice and Oro is potentially Ryu's master. Having them return would continue those story arcs.

Based on where 6 takes place (Metro City), the game definitely needs reps from Final Fight. Sodom has his truck in town and Abigail's Scrapyard is there as well, bring them back. Cody is still the Mayor so he could return despite being in V. On the other hand, Haggar is free from that role, maybe he can return to the street fighting scene and make his Street Fighter debut? Damnd is pretty important in 6's story, so he could also make his playable debut. Finally, Maki seems like such a cool character, it's such a shame that she's only appeared in Alpha 3 MAX for the PSP.

Sagat and his Satsui no Hado plot. Now that Ryu has finally gotten rid of this inner demon, Sagat has been plagued with it. How will he handle it, and how would Adon or the Four Kings react to it?

Ed is coming, and he has ties to both Balrog and Falke, and Bison and Seth in a way as well.

From 6's World Tour, we also have Bosch and Rudra. In the story Bosch primarily uses Luke's moveset and Rudra uses Dhalsim, so I don't know how their movesets can look if they're turned into actual characters, but they're cool and would be cool to have them playable. From the recently released Fighting Pass focusing on the series' 36th anniversary, you can get items referencing C. Viper and Hugo/Poison. A hint on what's to come, or a deconfirmation?

Image I found of someone's suggestion for how Street Fighter 6's Year 1 roster should've been. A good representation of my line of thinking: Fewer newcomers, more (any) characters from III, a few more characters in general.

---

Legacy: Characters & Costumes

These are thoughts I have regarding characters unlikely to return and other legacy stuff. For IV, the legacy aspect I'm thinking of is how 15 of the 17 playable characters in II were playable in the original console release. Seth was also comprised of moves from each of the WWs, so he was throwbacks galore. I know there were at least one costume in the game that referenced other characters, being the Charlie Nash outfit that Guile has access to. For V, basically every returning character has a Nostalgia outfit based on their classic appearance. There were also a ton of crossover costumes, like a Captain Commando one for Nash, or Lillith for Juri. About half of the game's stages were also remakes, with around 3 being based on stages from Alpha and at least 6 being based on stages from II.

With that said, how can 6 tap into the series' legacy? I'm not interested in returning stages. Similar iconography maybe, like how Sagat's Alpha stages still featured the statue lying on its side, but from a different angle. Bringing back old Street Fighter stages as-is is definitely something they can do, but it just feels lazy in a way. Like, compared to layouts of maps from FPS games, fighting game stages are just rectangles, and for that reason I'd rather see new stages instead.

Regarding costumes, all returning characters' Costume 2 are already based on one of their prior appearances, and this will likely continue for all upcoming returnees. But let's look at Nash for an example. He's canonically dead again, so he's unlikely to return. In Alpha, his moveset was identical to Guile's, so I'm thinking give Guile a Nash costume, similar to IV. However, instead of having Guile wear Nash's costume, change the entire model to be Nash, similar to how Yang was originally a palette swap for Yun in III, or how Bowser Jr. works in Smash Bros. Face, hair, glasses, everything looks like Nash would. Or for potential crossover costumes; instead of it being like Ed cosplaying as Demitri, just change the entire model to that of Demitri. Model Demitri's face and physique so that it looks like him and not Ed. Have the UI still say Guile or Ed and use their typical icons, but just make the character models the actual character they're based on. This of course only works if those characters don't appear as separate characters. Urien in V has a costume that looks like Gill, but then Gill appeared in the game, and maybe as a result of Urien's costume Gill's stance has him showing his back to the camera, as opposed to Urien showing his chest.

If they don't want to do this for costumes, might I suggest Echo Fighters? This is one thing I want other fighting games to copy from Smash. Essentially clone characters, they're slightly modified versions of other fighters. In Street Fighter, this could be taking Ryu's moveset and altering the stats to creat a new character, e.g. Dan, which is also similar to how certain characters in World Tour work. I know that this is basically what Street Fighter was in the 90's and something they're moving away from (you need look no further than 6, where Ken and Ryu are wildly different compared to how they started), but I think that as long as it's clearly defined that these Echo Fighters are clones in one way or the other, mostly everyone will be okay with it.

---

Season Passes & Conclusion

A quick thought I had about Season Passes for 6. Going back to V first, it was released in February 2016, with 6 characters in its first Season Pass. At the finals for that year's Capcom Pro Tour, which were held at the start of 2017, Akuma was revealed alongside Season 2. With 6 however, the game launched in June 2023, with 4 characters in its Season Pass. Akuma is releasing in Spring according to the estimates, but maybe they'll move his release up to release before this year's Capcom Pro Tour finals, and then have 6 characters in next year's Season Pass. I guess the pricing would have to be changed unless they change what's included, but I assume this is just wishful thinking. I'm just a bit upset at there not being 6 characters in the current pass as that could mean 6 has fewer characters than V in the same span of time and for the same if not higher price.

Anyway, those are my current thoughts on Street Fighter 6 and how they may proceed with it in the future. It's still a very good game, I can still see it being supported for a decade, I just want more characters. The series has tons of great characters I want to see the return of, and that doesn't even include any potential newcomers that will undoubtedly appear in future passes.

---

Bonus: 3D Fighters Bundle

As a final note, see this as a request for a Capcom Fighting Collection featuring essentially their remaining few fighting games that haven't been re-released. I'm talking 3D fighters, mainly Rival Schools, Final Fight Revenge, and Power Stone. As someone who have never played those games, I'm very much interested in trying them out. They could be sold on their own, or they could be bundled together with all the Street Fighter EX games, plus any other fighting game they may have missed (Capcom Fighting Jam, *cough*StreetFighterAlpha3MAX*cough*, more?). They've been very good at releasing their older games, what with the Mega Man collections, the fighting and beat 'em up bundles, and Capcom Arcade Stadium. Their early 3D work is what I feel is missing right now, so that's what I'm bringing attention to.

Final Fight Revenge roster.

---

Addendum 8/8-23: EVO Announcements

EVO is over and AngryBird won the Street Fighter 6 tournament, well done on his end. With that, I want to discuss the announcements that were made. During a panel on Friday, they showed off concept art of Outfit 3 for Guile, Marisa, Juri, and Dee Jay, so while they did announce costumes for some, we still don't know when they'll be released or how their 3D models will look. In addition to this, they made two other announcements during the SF6 finals: They showed of A.K.I. in a teaser trailer, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collab was shown off. Regarding A.K.I., when they add characters, they're also added to World Tour, where they have cutscenes for their introductions. I hadn't thought of it before now, but these do work well as teaser trailers. It might have been too early to see A.K.I.'s gameplay, but we got to see a glimpse of her model, manners, and personality. Since they didn't have these cutscenes in previous games, they couldn't/wouldn't show off a trailer until the character was closer to completion. Now they can have two trailers for characters without them being repetetive, and can therefore be used to build more hype and/or to show things off earlier than before. Neat.

As for the TMNT collab, I'm okay with it. It's costumes for your Avatar, so they're pretty harmless. When I first saw this announcement I was afraid that they were being added as guest characters, which is something I don't want, although an announcement like that would have been a double-edged sword in a way: It would mean more than 4 characters added per year, but that would includes guest characters. Guest characters in fighting games really bug me, as it destroys the game's integrity in a way. Taking Mortal Kombat as an example, I see MKX as the game where you can play as the Terminator and not whatever other characters the series has. I also don't want to see non-SF-universe characters in SF, as it would mean taking a slot from a potential returnee, and with the standard SF roster hovering around 40 characters, having guests when there are more than 40 characters I'd like to see return in some way would just deflate the hype around the game for me. If Capcom want to dabble in guest characters, I'd rather see them do so in a hypothetical Capcom VS Capcom game, where the roster is a crossover event from the start. These TMNT skins are fine, however. Avatars are custom characters and the ones that exist already look like all sorts of characters, so who cares if there's a turtle there. Everyone is happy: People who want crossovers get them, and people who don't want guest characters don't get them. With these crossovers, I can see more people buying the game, leading to more sales and a longer life for the game, so once again I can see this game lasting for 10 years. I hope it does, so that it can have more fighters than ever before.

I'll end it there, but here's a behind the scenes fun fact about this addendum: I wrote most of it on my phone as I didn't have internet access on my PC at the time. It wasn't a fun experience, though. Writing the HTML elements requires so many more inputs than on PC, so it's not something I'll do again unless necessary.

Image from A.K.I.'s teaser trailer (left) and art for the TMNT collab, drawn by Shinkiro (right).