Cammy gets an entirely new look for Street Fighter 6, let's see how

In the previous blog I mentioned that Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama, Producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya, and Designer Yusuke Hashimoto had decided to redo the costumes of every returning character in the franchise. Some of the designs are obvious, but work in the context of the fighter, like Zangief having red pants, instead of red wrestling trunks. Even the ones that look the same, like Juri, and Rashid, are actually new fits. The changes to the cut, and color for their uniform that I think makes for better overall designs. However I cannot say the same for every returning character. The more casual designs I think hurt the impact of a classic fighter. This was the case with Ken, as his tee shirt, jacket, and boots seemed out of place from his previous red karate gi. I think the same argument could be made for Cammy White.

Cammy as you may know is a member of Delta Red. A super secret British military strike force. Despite her diminutive size, she is actually quite strong, and exceedingly fast. Her uniform consisted of a green leotard, red beret, red gauntlets, red socks, and combat boots. Also she wore camouflage paint on her legs. Like the other women in the cast she also had a unique hair style. Hers were two long blonde braids ran the length of her back. This was usually her outfit when she was on missions with her team. The new design of Cammy has her wearing something closer to modern street wear. She has what appears to be workout leggings, and a sports bra. Over which she wears a cropped blue jacket, with a long belt. She also has one full-arm gauntlet, and one red glove, with red combat boots. Her trademark hair has been cut short. Her somewhat military inspired look has pretty much been stripped away. The only connection to her training goes to a small Delta Red pin on her jacket. Many fighting game fans said there was little setting her apart from the more recent design of Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat.

If you remove the character, and just look at the costume you’ll see a stark contrast in her design. I argue that color is one of the most important things you can assign any fighting game character. The ones that had solid colors, and a complimentary second color withstood the test of time. I said that this was a sort of happy mistake. Because game consoles in the ‘80s couldn’t have too many colors on the screen, then sprites were assigned bright primary colors so they could stand out from the backgrounds, and their opponents. This started a trend that at least Capcom stayed with through most of the ‘90s. The artists stayed with solid primary colors for each fighter even when they had hardware capable of presenting thousands of colors on screen at the same time. The original design for Cammy was no exception. She had a lime green associated with her uniform, this was a lighter shade than the green assigned to Blanka. Plus her red, and black accent colors were different than the rest of the Super SFII cast. Some of the returning characters in SF6 have perhaps a new accent color assigned to their outfits, while others have entirely new color pallets assigned to them. Cammy falls into the latter category.

Cammy has had different variations of her uniform through Street Fighter Zero / Alpha, Street Fighter IV, and V. In every instance it was military inspired, even if it was a “sexy” version of spy gear. Without her long hair, red beret, and military look is she still Cammy? I think it’s fair to ask what the SF6 designers think defines the character? For that matter, what do you think makes Cammy unique? I think the changes they made were counter to the spirit of her original design, similar to their approach to Ken Masters. Also why were most of the blonde characters (Ed, Ken, and Cammy) all given jackets? Was Mr. Hashimoto even aware that he did this? I suppose as long as Cammy still plays in a similar fashion that she used to then she will be well received. I’d like to hear your thoughts on hew new look in the comments section. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!