Fighting games rely on three factors to truly stand out—gameplay, visuals, and, most importantly, a roster of characters that can appeal to players and build upon those other elements. Street Fighter has seen great success in the character department, keeping a core cast relevant for over 30 years and arguably giving those classic fighters their best showing in decades with Street Fighter 6.
For the legacy characters like Ryu and Chun-Li, it was a focus for the design team to ensure each of them carried over the core tenants that make up their “essence” while still modernizing them to an extent for a new era in SF6. Game director Takayuki Nakayama specifically said he spent countless hours studying every returning fighter to ensure they would all “look and play like past titles” but with clear enhancements.
“You might notice that even returning characters in SF6 have something a little more that is meant to maintain the essence of who they were [in previous games],” Nakayama said to Dot Esports. “We went a little deeper in terms of enhancing what makes each character special. I guess you can say we did look back at previous titles to see what worked and how we can move [those elements] forward in basically every aspect of the game.”
SF6 producer Shuhei Matsumoto noted that the team wanted to ensure that every player who used a character like Guile or Cammy in the past would feel right at home picking them up in SF6 while also fitting their classic moves within the new gameplay systems or giving them modern overhauls.
Nakayama mentioned that balancing the redesigns for existing characters was one of “the most challenging” elements of working on SF6 because they had to make sure not to add or take away too much. Implementing too many new things could have easily taken away from what makes a fighter special and overcomplicate their moveset for players at all skill levels.
That is why character design was partially done with SF6’s new game content and mechanics in mind.
The Capcom team knew they wanted to try something really fresh with a core system and came up with the drive system as SF6’s “universal game mechanic” that would make it stand out in its own franchise but also the wider fighting game genre. In the developer’s mind, this system paired with how they approached character design would translate to a perfect way for new and returning World Warriors to enter the game and eventually say “this is their play style.”
