Image: Capcom
Capcom’s upcoming Street Fighter VR game lets you fight it out with Ryu and Zangief in first-person.
A first-person Street Fighter VR game sounds like a dizzying nightmare, but Capcom is forging ahead with a new one anyway. The games publisher released a trailer for an upcoming Street Fighter VR game, which has just entered an early testing phase in Plaza Capcom, Hiroshima, Japan. The game will also launch in an Aeon Mall in Japan later in April.
Here is the game’s Japanese announcement trailer:
The game’s English title appears to be ‘Street Fighter VR: Shadaloo Enhancement Plan’, according to Capcom’s website. Instead of spinning out of the franchise’s latest installment Street Fighter 6 however, the VR game reuses assets from Street Fighter 5, including character models for Ryu and Zangief. The player seems to battle Ryu on a rooftop, while the Russian wrestler Zangief gets a more traditional arena indoors to show off his moves.
Combat takes place from a first-person perspective, and it looks about as chaotic as one would expect. Fighting doesn’t exactly take place in real time, with both Ryu and Zangief seemingly slowing down at points so players have enough time to attack targets that pop up on their bodies. Both fighters retain their most iconic abilities, like the hurricane kick and of course, the Hadouken. Interestingly, both Ryu and the player seem to be able to use the latter in battle.
The earliest part of the trailer teases an overarching story involving M. Bison, who recruits the player into his secret society, according to a hands-on impression piece from GAME Watch. The player will then be pitted up against various Street Fighter 5 fighters as they fight their way up the ranks to become the strongest face on the roster. The game is available for play on the HTC Vive Pro 2 in Plaza Capcom, where it’s currently in testing.
The report also reveals that the game has eight different endings depending on how many matches the player manages to win. All in all, this sounds like a pretty meaty game for what it is - even if it doesn’t entice fighting game fans who might prefer Street Fighter’s much better 2.5D perspective. While first-person fighters aren’t necessarily a bad idea, a better implementation of VR in Street Fighter 6 might be to turn players into arena spectators, where they can watch multiplayer fights between their favourite fighters unfold before their very eyes.
That’s not what we’re getting, but it would be a lot of fun. Street Fighter VR currently has no firm release plans outside of Japan, but there’s a strong chance that the game will launch on the PlayStation VR2 someday.
