The second year of Street Fighter VI is about to officially kick off, with the Pro Tour resuming and four new characters joining the roster over the next 12 months. But this time around, there’s something truly different going on: guest characters.
Crossover shenanigans are nothing new for fighting games, but Street Fighter has long resisted inviting characters from outside its universe to join its core numbered titles. That all changed with the announcement of Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui from Streets of Rage and The King of Fighters. At the end of Street Fighter 6’s successful and exciting first year, it served as an exciting turning point – and a sea change for the series.
We spoke with Street Fighter 6 director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto about guest characters, the return of M. Bison, the success of SF6’s bold, modern control scheme, and more. Here’s our full chat:
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iGamesNews: I want to start by answering the obvious question which is… why now, why cameos? Obviously Street Fighter has been resisting, and a lot of other fighting games have been doing this for a long time. So why is now the right time?
Nakayama Takashi: It’s not really a question of whether it’s the right time to do it… but the main reason we decided to include guest characters in Street Fighter 6 is that we want to reinvigorate and spread the love for fighting games and try to make the community as big as possible. We really feel like this is one of the ways to do that.
Shuhei Matsumoto: Why now? Because, well, we can. Now is the time to get people interested not only in Street Fighter, but in fighting games in general.
iGamesNews: As for challenges, I think… I’m a fighting game fan, yes. That’s true for any game, but I think the popularity of all the characters in Street Fighter is higher than in most other games. Every character is someone’s favorite; someone’s rooting for T. Hawk, Ingrid, or whoever. Some people think that with guest characters, and four characters per year, you can reduce the cadence of old actors coming back. So, is that a concern for you in terms of balancing satisfying existing fans and the characters they’ve loved in the past, and bringing in guest appearances to attract fans of other series?
Nakayama Takashi: So, first of all, I do recognize that when we include guest characters, it means there’s less chance for other classic Street Fighter characters to show up. But we also know there’s a selection process, and it’s not like we just include characters that we personally like… it has to make sense in the context of the whole. Even for guest appearances, there’s always a reason why we choose each character.
iGamesNews: Do you feel like you’ve opened up the biggest mess ever? When the news was announced, I saw Terry and Mai’s excitement, but I also immediately saw other fighting game characters start to become popular – like Sub-Zero – and people were speculating and talking about who else they wanted to crossover with. This will always haunt you, right?
Nakayama Takashi: I don’t see it as a negative! In fact, like you just mentioned… what about Sub-Zero? Well, there are probably some Street Fighter 6 players who aren’t as familiar with the Mortal Kombat IP. So if the goal is to get more people interested in fighting games, and crossovers like this get people talking about which characters should crossover…
I mean, obviously I can’t make any promises. But the fact that we’re having this conversation means more and more people are starting to get interested. The fighting game community has an opportunity to reach a whole new audience – so we think that’s a good thing and we encourage this kind of discussion and commentary.
iGamesNews: All characters are also joining World Tour, which is a great fan service tool. One of the best things about the DLC characters so far is seeing other characters play smaller roles in them, like FANG in AKI’s story and so on. So – will this be the case with guests as well? Might we see other Streets of Rage or King of Fighters cameos?
Nakayama Takashi: Unfortunately, we can’t go into detail about what the guest characters will be like in terms of the world tour. Especially because at the moment we’re obviously focused on M. Bison. But we hope you’re very interested and looking forward to it.
iGamesNews: You posted some great anniversary data for the game. I noticed about a quarter of people were playing Modern, right? A year later, how do you feel about the adoption of Modern control schemes? Is it 25% across all modes? I’m guessing Modern is being used more in World Tour and less in online, right? In line with that – how do you feel about the balance of Modern, especially with some of the Modern-specific changes you made in the recent patch?
Shuhei Matsumoto: In terms of the infographic data that we released for the first anniversary, as you mentioned, it showed that the adoption of modern controls among all players globally was about 25%. We didn’t release data for specific regions, but if you looked at the data, you would definitely see that certain regions were leaning more towards modern players. There were differences between different regions of the world.
You know, all of this will continue to be utilized. We’re seeing more and more modern players coming to the game. We hope and expect more modern players in the future.
In terms of balancing and ongoing updates – in the Akuma patch we made some changes to modern controls, especially for support comps – our goal is to continue balancing and catering to modern players, ultimately making it more accessible, usable, and fun.
iGamesNews: So you’re here primarily to talk about Bison. Let’s talk about him then. Story-wise, a lot has changed for him by the end of Street Fighter V. So… how do you strike the right balance between making the SF6 version of him fit his place in the SF universe, while also preserving everything that people think of him as an iconic character and love about him?
Nakayama Takashi: In terms of gameplay, we wanted to reach out to fans of Bison from past series and make sure those people wouldn’t be disappointed with him as a character. We had to keep everything that made him fun and cool to play. But at the same time, since SF6 has a brand new system, we had to design it so that any character made sense in context and was fun to play using the drive system.
In terms of story… For those of you who liked the general story of Street Fighter V – Bison’s story in SF6 is definitely going to tie into what happened with him there. You’ll learn more about it as you play his arcade mode and actually see him in the world tour. Beyond that, we also wanted him to look great and be exciting for people who are playing Street Fighter for the first time. These are all things we had to consider when designing and adding characters.
iGamesNews: Speaking of not confusing new players… I’ve talked to a few developers who worked on old Japanese games like Sonic Team because they had the same problem with games like Eggman and Robotnik… Don’t you want to say, forget it, just unify the name? Pick Vega or Bison and say that’s the way it’s going to be from now on everywhere?
Nakayama Takashi: So actually, I personally did want to unify the names so that they were the same across all regions. We were heading in that direction when designing and creating this character. But after thinking it over and over again… we came to the conclusion that Japanese players would want to call him Vega, and American players would want to call him M. Bison.
iGamesNews: And some people will keep saying dictator!
Shuhei Matsumoto: Yeah. And it was kind of hard. So we just kind of… gave up. [laughs]
It’s a bit difficult.
iGamesNews: What are your thoughts on the pro tour and the competitive state of the game? Are you happy with where it is right now? I mean in a broad sense – in terms of the competitive landscape, the audience, the tournaments, etc… How do you feel about it? How do you plan to move it forward?
Shuhei Matsumoto: In terms of whether or not we’re happy with, for example, the balance right now – we put a lot of effort into making sure it’s engaging and that all the characters play fairly against each other. Obviously, there are things we’ll continue to improve. But I do feel like we’ve done the best we can, and I would say the game is in a healthy state from a competitive standpoint.
When I see players winning with certain characters, it gives me peace of mind – like, okay, great – this character looks good, plays well, and is balanced. We want players to feel powerful when they win. So we take that into account and then look at things holistically to make sure that there are good character performances in the competitive scene, and we’re happy with the progress so far.
M. Bison, Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui, and Elena will appear in Street Fighter 6 Season 2. You can download and play M. Bison starting today!