How about those Street Fighter 6 roster leaks?
As I’m sure most of you are well aware at this point, Street Fighter 6 is on its way and it’s looking fantastic. Capcom look to be learning from a lot of their past mistakes and the most recent couple of trailers were great sneak peeks into how the game is going to play. However, even though Capcom’s fighting game division finally looks set to return to their return to CapGod arc, they still hit a couple of speed bumps here and there.
The main bump we’re talking about today is the roster for the new game, which was leaked less than 12 hours after the initial trailer dropped during the recent State of Play presentation. And when I say the roster leaked, I mean the whole damn roster, and not just a couple of the characters.
So since that information’s out there now, we may as well take some time to go through them all. We’re going to break this down into three sections, and I’ll just give you guys my opinions on each of them: the world warriors, the returning fighters, and the newcomers.
The World Warriors of Street Fighter
One of my biggest concerns when Street Fighter 6 was first revealed back in February was the idea that some of the characters we know and love from the series were going to be replaced with newcomers. Luke was the last character added to Street Fighter V, and he was hinted at as being a “glimpse at the future of Street Fighter”, which then got a lot of people thinking he may take over as the main character or become Ryu’s apprentice or something. For many longstanding fans, it was slightly worrying.
Obviously, we knew Ryu was coming back once we saw the teaser trailer, but upon seeing Chun-Li in the gameplay trailer all my fears were gone, and I knew we were going to be getting something great, with all our favourite World Warriors intact.
The term “World Warriors” refers to the original eight characters that were available to play in the initial release of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. This roster was Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, E.Honda, Blanka, Zangief, and Dhalsim.
All of these original fighters are returning in Street Fighter 6, which is certainly a good thing, but if I’m to get my personal opinion involved then things get a bit uglier. Personally, I hate how a few of these original characters play: Zangief, Blanka, and E. Honda in particular are three characters I wouldn’t have minded if we never saw ever again. However, we continue on and I can put my biases aside for the fact that the OG’s are all returning in what could be Street Fighter’s biggest game.
When it comes to the character I’m most excited for out of these, it would have to be Ken. From his character art, it looks as though something really bad has happened to him, because he definitely isn’t radiant with that fiery passion he usually has. (Poor guy looks like a hobo – Ed.)
The returning fighters
Next up are the characters that first debuted in other Street Fighter titles after the original Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. You may be looking at some of the characters on this section of the list and thinking “b-but Cammy, Deejay, and Akuma were all in SFII!” and while you most certainly are correct, they first appeared in later versions of the game such as Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II and so on.
The three characters I previously mentioned are all ones I’m very happy to see a return: Cammy is a mainstay at this point and a UK representative so I can’t help but love her — and she’s finally wearing pants! (Boo! – your leotard-lovin’ Ed.) Don’t get me wrong, I love ass as much as the next person, but I love her new design.
Deejay is sporting a fresh new look, and I think this man has been away from the game for far too long — I just hope they treat him right this time around and not make him as bad as he was in Street Fighter IV.
Finally, Akuma! Everyone loves Akuma, and he looks so damn cool from the concept art — much better than that weird flower lion mane he had in Street Fighter V.
Rashid and Ed are returning characters from Street Fighter V, and while I don’t really think that Ed deserved a spot, with M. Bison gone I can see why they would want to keep Ed in the game for story reasons. Rashid was a great choice; he was a character that was truly unique in Street Fighter V and had an abundance of personality, so I’m happy to see him back.
JURI is back baby!! My girl will be returning to me as part of the base roster of the game, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. My only hope with Juri is that they give her something more interesting for her core mechanics, as I wasn’t the biggest fan of the storage system in Street Fighter V.
It would appear that no Street Fighter III characters will be returning in the base roster, which is a real shame. The feeling I got when I saw Juri on the roster was wonderful, and it really sucks that all of the people that finally got to see characters like Alex and Urien back in Street Fighter V don’t get to have that feeling for SF6. Hopefully, we see some Street Fighter III-focused fighter DLC in the near future.
The newcomers
Obviously, we don’t have as much to go off with these characters, as it’s the first time we’ve seen them. That being said, I do want to give my opinions and thoughts on what I think they might be with regard to archetypes and so on.
First up are Luke and Jamie, who were the two newcomers from the gameplay trailer intended to be modern reflections of the classic Ryu and Chun-Li. While not necessarily new — he was the last character to be added to Street Fighter V — Luke did feel like he wasn’t quite like the rest of the cast; rather, he felt like a sneak peek at SF6, and while I prefer how he looks in 6, I still can’t say I’m his biggest fan.
Jamie, meanwhile, looks absolutely amazing! The character is absolutely bursting at the seams with personality and charisma, sporting some really cool-looking attacks. Plus, he is a drunken master!
Next up are the Italian and French characters, Mariza and Mimi, who at first glance strike me as grappler-type characters — they want to get in close and make you guess every time they put on the ground. Mimi reminds me a lot of Abel from Street Fighter IV, whereas the Italian powerhouse could definitely throw us for a loop.
Then we have representatives of Mexico and America, Riri/Lily and Kimberley. Lily looks to be wielding some kind of weapons, which is pretty cool as we don’t have many characters in Street Fighter that use them, and something about this character just strikes as being top-tier from day one. Kimberley, meanwhile, looks absolutely amazing and is a character I will definitely be trying out. She looks to be something of a ninja-type character and might be the equivalent of Ibuki from past games — all I know is that she fights while listening to music, which I simply adore.
Finally, we have JP from Russia and A.K.I from China and these two are most definitely the biggest question mark characters for me. With regards to A.K.I, she could be a character similar to FANG from SFV in that she uses poison to assist her in battle. JP immediately makes me think of characters like G from SFV and Q from SF3 — characters who only have letters for names are always surrounded by mystery in Street Fighter.
Remember, at this point these are only speculations — we’ll have to wait and see what the real characters are like in action. But it’s fun to make predictions and think about what we might like to see, after all!
Which members of the new roster have caught your attention the most so far?
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