Image: Capcom
Street Fighter 6 has a whole bunch of game modes, a packed roster and new gameplay mechanics. Here’s the lowdown.
Street Fighter 6 is coming! Capcom’s latest entry in the iconic fighting game franchise is a colourful one, expanding the roster with new faces and adding gameplay tweaks to keep things fresh. This is also the most newcomer-friendly Street Fighter game yet, with a whole new set of controls for anyone who can't quite keep up with the series' button-mashy combos and just want to execute flashy moves with ease.
Not to mention, the game’s story campaign now includes a free-roam mode that lets you explore Metro City, make new friends and take the fight to the streets. Here’s everything we know about Street Fighter 6 so far, including all the leaked fighters we know are coming to the game!
The roster
Street Fighter 6 brought back the usual suspects in its reveal trailer: Ryu and Chun-Li, along with Luke, who was Street Fighter 5’s final DLC character. Ryu is travelling the world to find worthy opponents after the events of the last game, while Chun-Li runs kung fu classes and looks after a student named Li-Fen. In the meantime, Luke teaches mixed martial arts with the help of his military background. A new character was also shown off in the new trailer: Jamie, a self-styled Chinatown peacekeeper who looks up to the Twin Dragons Yun and Yang.
Guile was also revealed in a recent State of Play presentation, still sporting his wacky hairdo after all this time. Having just dismantled Shadaloo and avenged his friend Charlie, he now enjoys spending time with his family when he’s not beating opponents to a pulp. These are the only five characters revealed for Street Fighter 6 thus far, but we’ll likely see a whole assortment of new fighters get announced in the leadup to release day.
… And that’s where this section would end, if most of the fighting roster hadn’t already leaked online! Right after its big reveal, concept art for 22 characters from Street Fighter 6 leaked online, revealing a whole bunch of returning characters and a few new faces to boot. Returning fighters include Cammy, Ken Masters, Zangief, Dhalsim, Akuma and more sporting redesigned looks for the sequel. Marisa, Mimi and A.K.I. are just a few of the new faces.
Here’s a list of the leaked fighters:
- Ken Masters
- Zangief
- Dhalsim
- E. Honda
- Blanka
- Cammy
- Dee Jay
- Rashid
- Juri
- Ed
- Akuma
- Marisa (new)
- Mimi (new)
- Lilly (new)
- JP (new)
- Kimberly (new)
- A.K.I (new)
This makes for a pretty diverse roster, with characters of many different nationalities coming together to beat each other up. That’s what the World Tour is all about!
Game modes
Street Fighter 6 offers the usual spread of modes fans have come to expect: a story mode and a versus battle mode. Fighting Ground is the classic Street Fighter experience, allowing you to quickly jump into matches locally or in online multiplayer. Fighting gameplay has been given a do-over this time around with new mechanics like the Drive Gauge and simplified controls - but more on that later.
The story mode is called World Tour, which Capcom calls, “a completely new experience that defies genre labels.” Judging by the teaser, it looks like World Tour will let players explore an open-world environment for the first time. You’ll get to strut around the streets of Metro City and other locations Capcom has yet to announce. In the teaser, we saw the player challenge random NPCs in Metro City after vandalising some dustbins with an uppercut. We’ll probably meet iconic characters from the franchise in these environments as the story unfolds. And then we'll beat them up.
While Fighting Ground allows you to join multiplayer matches, Street Fighter 6 has a third multiplayer game mode: Battle Hub. Capcom isn’t ready to fully reveal what this mode has to offer yet, but the teaser seems to hint that it’ll contain a social hub where players can meet up and watch fights unfold in real-time on a big screen.
Gameplay changes
This iteration of Street Fighter is changing combat up with the introduction of the Drive Gauge. In practice, this is just a new bar you have to keep track of during a match, giving you access to a handful of useful techniques to fight with. The key to winning a match is knowing when to spend your Drive Gauge and which techniques to spend it on. The gauge fills up automatically over time, so you can choose to be conservative with it, or gamble big chunks of it at opportune moments.
You can spend your Drive Gauge on five different moves. Drive Impact lets you absorb an incoming attack and when performed against an opponent backed into the corner, turns into a wall splat. Drive Parry not only lets you parry an attack, but replenishes the Drive Gauge if performed successfully. You can also turn a special move into an Overdrive Art, which powers a move up much like EX Special Moves from past games. Drive Rush makes a character rush forward, while Drive Reversal lets you perform a counterattack while blocking.
All in all, that makes for five different ways to spend the Drive Gauge. Mastering the gauge will give you a leg up in any fight, especially the parry system. If this seems a little intimidating, don’t worry! Capcom wants Street Fighter 6 to appeal to players new and old everywhere, which is why the game now has two control modes.
The ‘Classic’ control type is the traditional Street Fighter experience, allowing players to remap buttons so they can execute complex combos on the fly. The ‘Modern’ control type makes gameplay feel almost Super Smash Bros.-like in its simplicity. Button combos are simplified enough so new players can get into the swing of things more easily, and even execute abilities like the Hadoken with a single button push.
Finally, Street Fighter 6 also adds real-time commentary during matches, with actual esports commentators talking over your plays as they happen. These commentators include Jeremy ‘Vicious’ Lopez in English and Aru in Japanese, with more to be announced later. If you want the EVO experience in the comfort of your own home, this might do the trick.
Street Fighter 6 is currently set for a 2023 release window on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. The game will support crossplay and feature rollback netcode at launch - and fighting game fans everywhere breathed a sigh of relief.
