At the season final of the Capcom Pro Tour, and following a week-long teaser campaign, Capcom finally announced Street Fighter 6. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the greatest fighting game series in history (sorry Mortal Kombat fans) and six years since the release of Street Fighter 5, one of the more divisive entries after the almost universally beloved Street Fighter 4.
The teaser campaign ended with... a teaser trailer. It's not quite up there with the Ryu versus Ken throwdown that announced Street Fighter 4, this time showing Ryu and Luke preparing to battle and glowering moodily at one another. The art style is notably more 'realistic' than previous entries, though Capcom's idea of realistically proportioned humans is of course quite unusual, and it still retains some of the 'ink blot' aesthetic first introduced in SF4.
Ryu's looking as hunky as usual, while Luke is a relative newcomer to the series, appearing at the tail end of Street Fighter 5 as a DLC character.
There is also a ludicrous toe animation where they kind of tense up like knuckles.
That was more or less it for the announcement, though the news came hand-in-hand with the reveal of a great collection of older Capcom fighting games:
Capcom Fighting Collection brings together 10 classic fighters with Online Rollback Netcode, coming June 24th, 2022!🦇 Darkstalkers (all five games!)👊 Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix💎 Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo🦁 Red Earth... and more!🕹️ https://t.co/prOT8yT6Xz pic.twitter.com/7HbE8nt1G0February 21, 2022
Capcom Fighting Collection will be out on June 24 and, while this is not the all-in reboot that fans of the Darkstalkers series are always praying for, it includes the whole series plus two Darkstalkers games that haven't been released in the west before. The collection includes these games:
- Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors
- Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge
- Vampire Hunter 2: Darkstalkers’ Revenge
- Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire
- Vampire Savior 2: The Lord of Vampire
- Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition
- Red Earth
- Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix (Pocket Fighter)
- Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness
- Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
Street Fighter 6 arrives at an odd time for fighting games. Capcom gets a lot of criticism from this community, but it's also become much more involved with live events over the last decade and supporting the pro scene. The publisher always has to thread the needle with these titles, delivering the hyper-skilled and precise competitive experience that the devotees demand while ensuring the game has enough mainstream appeal and accessibility to appeal to a wider audience.
Street Fighter 4, the grand reboot of the series, managed this feat with aplomb, though it had the advantage of launching with Street Fighter 2's iconic roster. I'm not sure what side of the fence Street Fighter 5 ended up on. It eventually sold over six million copies and has been running for six years as a live service title with two major updates and a constant stream of content: Nevertheless, some fans still resent the 'platform' business model and didn't forgive a launch period beset with server woes.
Capcom says more info about Street Fighter 6 is coming this summer.
