Street Fighter 6: A master class in game design, part 27

The Street Fighter 6 World Tour was building to a crescendo in the tiny fictional country of Nayshall. You would be battling combatants from all over the world, and try to secure your spot as a legend. The Resistance was hiding in the shadows, waiting for their moment to strike. JP would be in attendance, along with the Royal Family, dignitaries, and NGO leaders. Fight fans, and tourists from around the globe had made the trek to this far off place. Their money was welcome to the locals, however a tremendous amount of dark money had also been flowing into the country. Special interest groups were getting their claws into the nation. Their mysterious leaders would be betting on, and taking a slice of the competition as well.

The Suval’hal Arena was one of the most breathtaking stages ever created for a fighting game. The ancient temple was shaped like a colosseum, with seating around the perimeter. The royal family had a throne, and gallery where they could spectate from. A freshwater moat separated the attendees from the fighters. There were bridges, and a multi-story platform in the center for the pond. This arena had been host to the local tournament for centuries, and was now drawing the attention of the world. The question was whether you would be able to win the competition, and see that JP answered for his crimes.

The Resistance had managed to infiltrate the secret treasure room where the Suval’hal championship belt was stored. They packed the ornate trophy with explosives. It could be activated by pressing the red stone in the center, and then a few seconds later it would explode. Sharp-eyed people would notice the serpent Ouroboros was clearly seen on the face of the belt. It was an ancient symbol that took on many meanings, including the infinite, the soul of the world, and the more common; life, death, rebirth. I had a strong feeling that somebody was going to die at the end of the game, and it wasn’t going to be JP, or the player.

Speaking of JP. He noticed that you were taking a keen interest into the belt. He introduced himself, welcomed you to the competition, and told you to prepare for the ceremony. I had already talked a little bit about JP’s design back in 2022. I believe that the Street Fighter 6 developers were fleshing out the Street Fighter V characters that didn’t make the cut. That seemed to be the case with Manon, Marisa, and Jamie, as they were do-overs of Abel, Hakan, and King Cobra respectively. The idea of a Fighting President was in the planning stages, and I don’t think they were happy with the way G, the President of Earth turned out, so they gave it another go. 

Once you left the trophy room a cinema played out where you got a chance to see the other competitors, including the Cardboard Combatant. The children of Nayshall were dressed in traditional clothing, and performing traditional dances. Among these were Bosch’s sister Yua, and her best friend Kina. The Cardboard Combatant wanted to reach out, and tell her that he was safe, but that would have exposed his true identity. He would have been outed as a member of the Resistance.

You returned back to the locker room underneath the stadium to prepare for the preliminary matches. After winning a few rounds we could see the Cardboard Combatant was also tearing through the competition. In the quarter finals he showed up in the locker room to give you a warning. Whatever had been done to him in order to increase his strength, and speed, was also destroying his mind. He was a rage filled monster, and couldn’t control what he was becoming. He warned you that if he fought you in the finals that he wouldn’t have any idea it was you. Any friendship you had wouldn’t mean a thing. He knew he couldn’t ask you to withdraw from the competition. Whether he won or loss he planned on activating the championship belt, and blowing up JP.

You managed to get through one more time to Bosch. You wouldn’t stop fighting, but you would be there with him through the end. You said your goodbyes, and he left the locker room. You could already see the writing on the wall. The end was never going to be pleasant for your rival. After getting through the semifinals it turned out to be you versus the Cardboard Combatant in the final. He was much harder to beat than at any other part of the game. Yet in the end you would triumph. During the awards ceremony the media was there, broadcasting the events for the world to see. There were also the same group of kids that were there from the opening ceremony. JP took the belt in his hands, and called Yua over to deliver the belt to the winner. He made sure that you could see that he had pressed the red stone before giving it to her. Time was ticking.

If you ran out to Yua to deactivate the bomb then you would have been exposed as a terrorist in front of the world. If you let yourself, and Yua to be blown up then you were a coward, and worse yet JP would go to the media and say that the Resistance was willing to sacrifice children. With only a second to go the Cardboard Combatant ran to Yua, grabbed the belt, and threw it at JP. Sadly it was too late. It exploded closely to Bosch, and the blast incinerated him. JP was safe, and the world had just witnessed a terrorist attack. It was the worst possible series of events that could have happened. That tournament victory felt hollow in the end. Surprisingly the World Tour continued. How would Capcom be able to find life after death? We will dig into it on the next blog entry. I hope to see you back for that. If you are a long time fan of Final Fight, or Street Fighter then I would like to hear your impressions of SF6. If you have never played any game previously then tell me your experiences in the comments section please. As always 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!

Street Fighter 6: A master class in game design, part 26

The developers at Capcom managed to keep a consistently high level of work throughout the entirety of Street Fighter 6. The last portion of the World Tour story was brilliantly presented. I had to salute the team as they were bringing together multiple plot lines together, and doing so without making anything feel cheap, or rushed. Our avatar was trying to find the meaning of strength. Up until that point we assumed that being the best fighter in the world meant you were the strongest. You had already proven your worth in Metro City, and the Nayshall underground fighting tournament. The last stop on the journey was taking on the rest of the world in the Suval’hal Martial Arts Tournament. This contest would be taking place at the peak of Mount Vashal. A holy place for the people of Nayshall, and home for their warrior god.

It took me a moment to take in the beauty, and scale of this fictional place. The massive temple looked like a fortress. It had been carved by hand on a mountain outcropping a thousand years ago. It was a jaw-dropping sight that very few locations in any game could match. The closer you got to the peak the more you would discover. In fact it was an entire journey just to reach the arena. Near the peak there was a cave system that framed a massive waterfall. The fighters, and even security guards posted there had said they were hearing voices at night. They swore up, and down that the place was haunted.

You would discover that the ghost rumors were started by unscrupulous guards that were trying to loot the temple. Solving that mini Scooby-Doo mystery wasn’t your only side mission in the stage. The cave system was hiding something more important to the plot. The Resistance had a secret base of operations behind the waterfall. After all what would a video game be if something wasn’t hidden back there? It would be your chance to meet once more with Kalima, the leader of the Resistance. She was joined by Rewancha, and a handful of other operatives.

Aside from having a fantastic design, Kalima explained the stakes. She connected the dots for the player in case they weren’t paying attention to the clues that the Nayshall residents gave them. A bunch of NGOs had moved into the country, and were forcing their agenda onto it. This was creating a quick divide with the haves and have nots. The outskirts were being turned into a trash pile, where the people would end up digging through scraps in order to survive. It certainly was not much of a future for the kids of Nayshall to inherit.

In order for JP to achieve complete power he couldn’t have any competition for the direction of the tiny nation. This meant he would have to get rid of one of the NGOs that had moved in. This was Ken Masters, and the Masters Foundation. Ken was one of the tournament sponsors, and competitors. JP used an assassination attempt on him to frame Ken. He claimed that Ken was trying to depose the king. Ken was close to the explosion when it happened, and Luke who was working security had spotted this as well. Luke even fought Ken as he was getting away. This speculation forced Ken to resign from his company, and go into hiding.

With Ken out of the picture JP moved full force on turning Nayshall into a tourist destination for their ancient fighting tournaments. This meant building an entirely new infrastructure on top of their ancient mountain. His construction partners were flattening temples, and destroying the legacy of the nation. All of this was for a few roads, and a parking lot on the site of the old stadium. These things were brought up by protestors surveying the Suval’hal Arena. They knew that this was all happening with the approval of the King. They were afraid that the NGO’s had his ear, and had cut off the influence from the people.

The construction workers on site lamented what they were doing. They knew full well that they were destroying their heritage. They also had to provide for their families. If they weren’t doing the work their neighbors would, or the NGOs would even bring in foreign workers to do the work. Absolutely nothing was going to stop them. This was confirmed when we spoke to one of the contractors. He essentially admitted that capitalism worked by exploiting poor countries. I certainly didn’t have Capcom radicalizing its audience by showing them how things were handled by massive corporations, and NGOs in poor countries.

The next stop for the game would be the tournament, and the final showdown with JP. Or so I thought. After all, this was what every fighting game had taught audiences to expect over the past 35 years. We were going to expose the main villain in front of the nation, and take him out before he could do any more damage. We would be the heroes, and prevent the rise of the next Dictator. What actually happened was something I never could have guessed. We will dig into it on the next blog entry. I hope to see you back for that. If you are a long time fan of Final Fight, or Street Fighter then I would like to hear your impressions of SF6. If you have never played any game previously then tell me your experiences in the comments section please. As always 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!

Street Fighter 6: A master class in game design, part 25

In previous blogs I talked about how good storytelling was about showing, rather than telling. In order to do this you had to fill a scene with relevant details. In a novel you would try to appeal to the five senses in your descriptions. This would make the reader be able to think a little bit harder about what was happening. In a movie this would be done by how the director framed a shot, what important details were in the picture, and what supporting elements were in the background. Street Fighter 6 worked because the developers populated the world with thousands of layers of detail. The player could walk by them, and not give them another thought. For example in Metro City these might be NPC’s having lunch at Beat Square. Some were talking on their cell phones, some were shopping. They made it look as if this was living, breathing city. In Old Nayshall it would be vendors at the market, people digging through trash piles, or even tourists taking selfies with the ruins.

I thought that the best NPC animations were the ones that told a story. The ones that reinforced the world that SF6 took place in. To me the most important animations were the ones that were not used anywhere else in the map. For example in Nayshall there was a little kid doing a traditional dance. His family, and friends were gathered around, clapping, and cheering as he danced. It was easy to run past this scene and not give it another thought. After all this kid, and the people around him didn’t have anything to do with the side mission or main plot. However the SF6 developers did not want one corner of the city to feel empty, to feel abandoned. There had to be some sort of life, some sort of movement everywhere you looked. It didn’t matter which direction you were approaching from. Immediately in front of you, in the corners, as well in the distance there would be something that caught your eye. Even in the most sparsely packed corners of Nayshall there was always some movement. It might be rats scurrying between buildings, a kid playing hopscotch, or a resident fanning themselves in the heat.

There was a secondary type of NPC animation that the developers used for a greater effect. These were the ones telling a story having to do with the martial arts. In the early part of this blog series I mentioned that everyone in Metro City was down to fight. It was a tradition that went back to the days of Mike Haggar. There were a few corners in Metro City where we could watch NPCs awkwardly trading punches. The same fighting tradition in Nayshall went back centuries, and it showed. Instead of random citizens battling we were watching actual masters doing combat. The named characters in the SF series, Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and Guile represented the absolute peak of a certain fighting style. We knew these were the best of the best. However that did not mean that they were the only ones who had mastered a particular fighting form.

In a couple of places in Nayshall you could actually see NPC characters who could throw fireballs, perform dragon punches, and even grapple like Zangief. The fights between these masters were like the legends of the ancient world. They didn’t happen in front of a camera. They took place on a dark alley at night with only a few witnesses. Word of mouth was the only way people would have ever heard about these encounters. Even the ones that happened in broad daylight could only be seen if you were a fellow fighter in the Lowlands arena. There were no cell phones, and no social media to expose these people. The same thing couldn’t be said if you were willing to throw down in the middle of the street. People would come out of the woodwork with phones in hand. They wanted to share what was happening, to blow up a culture that had existed in myth for centuries.

Street Fighter 6 took place in the near future, but the series was always a celebration of the martial arts myth. There had been traditions in each country of underground fighting tournaments. Hollywood, and Hong Kong cinema made them much more exotic than they really were. It was the legend of the fighters, the masters of lost forms that always sparked our curiosity. Who were these men that could run across water, throw fire out of their hands, or defeat 100 opponents in a day? The stories of these fabled martial artists were like Bigfoot. Everyone knew about them but the proof was elusive, second-hand, and just out of focus. Maybe centuries ago there was a magician in India that knew the secrets of stretching his limbs, breathing fire, and levitation. But these accounts were just rumors. There was no proof, no documentation other than a story told by an ancestor. Scholars had been searching for proof of levitation for centuries, such as the case of one of the most recent mystics Bhaduri Mahasaya.

The Street Fighter universe celebrated these fables. The designers wanted audiences to believe in the impossible, even if just for a moment. They wanted us to have hope that someday we might be at the right place, at the right time, and see a miracle with our own eyes. These were represented on the NPC battles, where we saw that someone out there other than Ken, and Ryu actually had the ability to perform a hadoken, a fireball. There was another NPC story that the developers told in Nayshall, specifically in the foothills of Vashal. There were monks training to be warriors in honor of Suval’hal.

The majority of these monks were found in the Foothills of Mount Vashal. They were all different body shapes, and abilities. Some were seated, some were standing, all were meditating. Depending on how dedicated they were to the arts you could find them in all sorts of precarious positions. Some were balanced on one foot at the edge of a cliff. Some were clinging to the side of the rock walls. If you looked closely you would notice that the ones hanging on the faces of the rocks were trembling in fear. They would look down, and begin shaking, trying not to lose their grip. The fear of falling could not be overcome with meditation. Still others weren’t as dedicated to their studies. You might find them breathing heavily, talking about returning to Old Nayshall for one more feast before climbing Mt. Vashal. Some were hanging out at the river, or even chilling with a radio.

There was another one of those “throw away” details that I thought was absolutely brilliant. In a corner of the foothills, overlooking Old Nayshall there were three monks. Two were balanced on one foot, and the one in the middle was seated in the lotus position, and levitating. It was no trick, no beam was supporting him from behind. No gimmick was being used here. It was one of those honest to goodness miracles. The only other person that we knew of that had reached this type of enlightenment in the SF universe was Dhalsim. While Rudra may have all of the basic attacks of Dhalsim he could not levitate. I do not think he had reached absolute enlightenment.

What the developers did with this background character was nothing short of genius. Most tourists NPCs would walk by him, but every now, and then somebody would stop to take a picture. The miraculous was just something to post on social media. Think about it for a second. “Here was my trip from Nayshall. I ate local food, saw an underground fight, bought some hand woven clothing, oh yeah, I also took a picture of a guy that could float…” It was definitely some commentary from the development team. There were amazing people in the world, and we were simply too busy to notice them, or believe in the extraordinary.

The final climb to Mount Vashal wouldn’t happen until the end of the game. The local authorities had closed off the roads because they were too dangerous to take by foot. When the paths were opened you would ride a donkey to reach an entirely new environment. This new place looked much colder, and windswept. We were clearly in the Himalayan range now. Tibetan Prayer Flags were blowing violently in the wind.

The further along you went the more concentrated the monks became. They seemed to be in better shape, and more capable than the monks closer to the Foothills. They were on a pilgrimage to their old temple. They were joined by professional fighters from all over the world. They were making their way to the Suval’hal Arena. There were also security forces from Buckler, the company that Luke was in charge of. As well as security provided for the NGO leaders. The most extreme of the monk trainees could be spotted in a dangerous position. Located high above a crevice was a monk hanging onto an overhead rock face. He just swung there, legs crossed, in a deep state of meditation. I returned during the night looking for him, and the monk was not there. I certainly hoped that he could levitate.

Near the peak a handful of monks were joined by one spiritual tourist. They were meditating at the edge of a cliff. It was very apparent that while a lot of tourists talked about finding their spirituality in Old Nayshall. They said that they felt a strong connection with the culture, and the people of that remote corner of the world. They were determined to climb that path along with the rest of the monks, and prove their devotion. In the end few made it to the top. One of the monk leaders was quick to point out how their culture was becoming a commodity.

Of course you understood how difficult it was to reach this place. It had taken you two major tournaments, and hundreds of smaller fights in order to prove that you belonged here. By this point in the game you were the further from home than you’d ever been. You had gone through countless trials. Defeated hundreds of opponents, and still didn’t have anything to show for it. Not one trophy, not one championship, not even an official record. The only thing that was pushing your character to continue was to find out what strength was.

The Resistance had already reached out to you. They warned you that they were going to do whatever it took in order to win the championship. Not for the honor of the prize, but for the survival of their country. They needed to get to JP who was the host, and organizer of the event. What they had planned for him would be revealed in the 11th hour. The final portion of the game was going to be some amazing storytelling. We will dig into it on the next blog entry. I hope to see you back for that. If you are a long time fan of Final Fight, or Street Fighter then I would like to hear your impressions of SF6. If you have never played any game previously then tell me your experiences in the comments section please. As always 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!

Street Fighter 6: A master class in game design, part 24

Street Fighter 6 was bringing multiple themes together in the climax of the World Tour story. The main plot was seeing your character get into the national tournament. At the same time we had the disappearance of Bosch, and the emergence of his alter-ego the Cardboard Combatant. We had the promise of his safe return to his sister. We were also dealing with a resistance movement building in Old Nayshall. The tourism market was booming, at the same time a large portion of the country was living in abject poverty. Corporate raiders were setting up shop, and rapid industrialization was happening all around. Believe it or not all of these things were connected.

For the past 30+ years fighting games mostly told us the story. We would get to see various possible endings when playing through the story mode. They never showed us all of the events that caused a bad guy to come to power, and take over a nation. When Street Fighter II came out we had no idea how Vega / M.Bison / Dictator had risen to power. We just knew he was a very powerful villain that was running a Thai-adjacent country called Shadowlaw / Shadaloo. All of the exposition would be explored in comic books, and manga. Fighting games in the early ‘90s were not ready to explore a deep plot. It just wasn't technically feasible with the technology of the time. Thankfully the hardware, and software had caught up to the vision of an inspired team. Street Fighter 6 was actually placing audiences on the ground floor.

A government coup d'état, the takeover of a country did not happen overnight. A lot of things were required in order to destabilize a nation. We're talking about no jobs, money being worthless, grocery stores running bare, no fuel, an angry, and despondent population, etc. More often than not the forceful transfer of power happened from within. In SF6 a bunch of Non-Government Organizations had moved into Nayshall. They were promising to give everyone a better future. In real life NGO’s were often a force for good. They delivered medicine, and relief to war torn nations. They helped refugees rebuild their lives in a new country, helped communities recover from a hurricane. Some even tried to raise awareness about cancer, heart disease, and help families struggling with medical issues. However the largest NGOs also lobbied world governments for contracts, and by extension more power. It would be possible to mask criminal activity behind the guise of an altruistic company.

A takeover could happen gradually from any number of sources. Sadly it often happened with the favor of the people. In SF6 there was a ringmaster named Johann Petrovich aka JP pulling the strings in Nayshall. He was controlling the narrative, the media, and painting himself as the best thing that could have happened to the country. He was asserting control in secret at the highest level. He had gotten the NGOs to invest in the nation, and begin exploiting its resources, and people. Sadly most of the residents didn’t really understand the long term damage that he was doing to the country. The former nomadic sheep herder community were being distracted with all of the technology they suddenly had access to. It felt like many of them were willing to trade their sovereignty for free wifi.

Unfortunately for JP the country, and people of Nayshall were very resilient. Their ancestors were warriors, their king was descended from a long line of warriors, even their god was a warrior god. His name was Suval’hal, and he resided in the mountain baring his name. We could see carvings if this deity in the Foothills of Mount Vashal. I believe that the inspiration for this myth, and this character came from Lord Surya, the Sun according to Hindu mythology.

The people that worshiped the old god knew that they were warriors at heart. They were willing to fight to protect their countrymen, and their way of life. The idea of a warrior monk was alive, and well in Nayshall. It wasn't restricted to the hot-headed Retsu. A large portion of the monks could be found meditating, training, and fighting on the path leading up to Mount Vashal.

The Foothills of Vashal was the third unique area in Nayshall. Old Nayshall, the Lowlands, and Foothills of Vashal each had their own theme. They were connected by a few rocky paths, and stone stairs. Tourists wandered freely between the areas. Some just sightseeing, some looking for deals, and some were looking for spiritual enlightenment. There was something to be said for spiritual tourism. It was a big business. At night you would see actual businessmen from the big city, the “New Nayshall” visiting as well. They all looked like foreigners. They may have been contractors that followed the NGOs into the country. These “suits” were mostly obsessed with bodybuilding, and looking for new business avenues. They didn’t seem to be as powerful, or intelligent as JP.

The resistance was building strength in numbers. The signs of which were all over the streets. They manifested as the graffiti of the Lowlands. This was where the resistance members met in secret. Enormous murals depicting their warrior heritage, and a goddess were among the best pieces created for the game. Other pieces created for Nayshall were more playful, such as the curry plate that doubled as a graffiti throw up.

The absolute best resistance propaganda in the game was hidden in plain sight. One of the things that most every player would notice in Nayshall were posters for a fictional movie. It was another one of those things that people might think was a throw away detail. After all it looked like a typical Indian action movie. There was a long-haired guy with a mustache holding a gun, and posed in front of a woman. A helicopter was in the background, along with soldiers, and explosions. A banner of the film was in the center of the Lowlands arena. There was even a large billboard for the movie in the heart of the city. The Street Fighter 6 developers actually put a message in the poster. The movie was titled Desh Ka Badla. It meant “Revenge of the country” in Hindi. On the top of the ad there was a tagline that translated to “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” The enormous billboard had another phrase painted over it. I think that it said aazaadee, or freedom, but I couldn’t quite make out.

Capcom was doing more for the sake of storytelling, and world building than any of the rival studios. The amount of work that went into SF6 was absurd. I thought I was obsessed with detail, but the senior team was on another level. Reaching the climax of the World Tour meant climbing a literal mountain. There would be many obstacles along the way, and many revelations. We’re going to start our ascent on the next blog. I hope to see you back for that. If you are a long time fan of Final Fight, or Street Fighter then I would like to hear your impressions of SF6. If you have never played any game previously then tell me your experiences in the comments section please. As always 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!

Street Fighter 6: A master class in game design, part 23

Nayshall was a relatively unknown country when a bunch of Non Government Organizations (NGO) moved in, and started changing the direction of the country. They promised residents that every school would be modernized, the internet would be accessible even in the most remote corners of the nation. Children would have a competitive future with the rest of the world. Drone technology was going to make their rail system obsolete. Everything would be much better for them once the transition was complete. Wandering the streets of Nayshall, or rather Old Nayshall in Street Fighter 6 gave us a chance to see what people thought about all of this.

There was growing resentment among the people, and a resistance was forming. The game up until that point was teaching you how to be a better fighter. The reason why was because you were going to compete against, and for the members of the resistance. The difficulty would be ramping up in the various side missions. You had to prove that you could be trusted to meet with the resistance leader. In order to do that you had to secure a secret password, and only then would the NPC Juniper allow you to enter the Lowlands.

This was an entire city built in the gutter of Old Nayshall. It was a shanty village where the poorest of the poor managed to carve out a living. This was also ground zero for gangs that had traveled to Nayshall from all around the world. They were competing in an underground tournament, looking to secure a spot in the upcoming national tournament. It was a rough area to explore. Filled with rats, trash, and countless blind corners where gang members were waiting to ambush you. I could imagine that Ryu had to fight his way through places like this while traveling the poorest countries.

The poverty in the Lowlands was a stark contrast to the joyful Old Nayshall. I appreciated what the SF6 developers were doing when they designed this environment. They were showing audiences how the smaller parts of the world lived. It was necessary to show both sides of the same coin. We got a taste of it in Metro City. The difference between the neon lights of Beat Square, and the dark alley where the Crows hung out was a stark contrast, yet both were mere blocks from each other in the same city. The tourists got a sense that everything in Metro City was better in the post-Haggar era. However in the shadow of the Haggar Memorial Stadium there were still places that would be considered slums.

The thing that really brought the Lowlands to life was how it was presented. Some of the residents griped about the rise in gang activity. But the majority of them were not only surviving, but they were thriving. There weren’t beggars in the game, lamenting their lot in life. These people were holding tight to their dignity. They were carving out a living. Families had settled in, kids didn’t know they were disadvantaged. They were too busy playing. They were too busy dreaming of becoming the next star fighter. There were even small shops that had set up in the Lowlands, a scrap yard, a restaurant, and clothing store. The details layered in each business celebrated the cultures from the other side of the Pacific.

I thought that there couldn't possibly be any other Easter Eggs that the dev team could sneak in here. Especially not in Nayshall. This country had never been mentioned in any other title. The pigtailed restaurateur Dora had a small diner in the Lowalnds, and I spotted an item on her menu that made me genuinely laugh out loud. In the original Final Fight you fought a crooked officer named Edi E. He spit out his gum before he started to fight you. Of course in order to recover health in the game you had to pick up whatever food you could find by kicking over trash cans, and barrels. I'm almost certain that the Capcom team hid this detail in the game, thinking that nobody would try to pick up the gum. I would never have guessed that this tiny detail would be brought back 30+ years later. Bravo Capcom!

Capcom was able to give a lot of dimension to the people in the Lowlands. The story they showed was not meant for us to pity them. Instead the plot was going to focus on how they were going to stand up to exploitation. This was not going to be the story where you were a magical savior, and I am glad Capcom did not use that old trope. The layers of storytelling was much more complex than that. The strongest fighters in Nayshall had joined a resistance. It was better organized than any local, or international gang. They were determined to send their best fighter to the national competition. This was where you came in. As the best from Metro City, you also owed Mad Gear a favor because Bosch had stolen their money. You still had to prove yourself against their talent.

The Lowlands had their own arena. It looked more like a maximum security prison yard than a coliseum. It certainly wouldn’t be as extravagant as the Haggar Memorial Stadium. As I was exploring the Lowlands, and in particular the arena, I noticed a guy in the corner counting some money. Given all the details Capcom hid in Metro City I knew for certain that there would be something to this guy. I turned on the camera mode, and got as close as I could to the bookie. What I saw surprised even me.

The bookie was counting $100 Zenny bills. It featured an engraving of Dr. Light from the Mega Man series. The Zenny had been the official currency of the Capcom universe going back to Black Tiger in 1987. I wondered how many of the millions of SF6 players had even bothered to take a close look at these things. As I said previously there were no throw away details in the game. Everything was planned with some forethought. After getting the screenshot of the Zenny bills I thought about some gamblers in a back alley of Old Nayshall. I went back to take some more screenshots, and sure enough, there was a table covered in Zenny coins.

There were other details that the game snuck in. Some people were playing cards in the same alley. Every few seconds one would pull an ace, and slap it on the table. Again I turned on the camera mode, and managed to get a fairly clean picture of the Ace of Hearts. On it was Karin Kanzuki, the rival of Sakura. She had debuted in Street Fighter Zero 3. Was it a hint of a character return? Or just a random cameo from the team?

As far as world building went it was amazing how Capcom was able to put Old Nayshall, and the Lowlands side-by-side, and give you two completely different vibes. Both parts of the city still featured the dark-skinned locals, but if you were paying attention you would notice subtle differences. In Old Nayshall the majority of residents still wore traditional Tibetan fashion. In the Lowlands they wore more western attire. Mostly tank tops, and pants. The third unlocked area called the Foothills of Vashal featured mostly tourists, and monks. In Old Nayshall the NPCs that you fought didn’t have a lot of Zenny on them. Money was something you could easily get in a fight on the streets of Metro City. Instead the people of Nayshall had dyes, and crafting supplies for outfits. If you fought a tourist (who were mainly white) you would end up with an energy drink, a prepaid phone card, or bag of cucumber chips.

It was easy to get lost in the Lowlands, as there were many dead ends, and alleys that went in circles. You could always bring up quick travel, and have a tuk-tuk, an auto rickshaw take you to another part of town. To help out players that insisted on searching for a way out Capcom put graffiti guide markers on some boxes. The boxes lead to roofs which gave you another path to explore. It may seem like a cheap way to help lost players, but believe it or not it was something that had real world precedent.

I had a friend that took a trip to Japan many years ago to do some skating, and meet up with some graffiti artists. He was with one of them when some cops tried to bust them for tagging. They took off running, but he got separated from his friends. He was lost in a foreign country with no cell phone, and no idea where to go. It was maybe 2-3AM, and everything was closed. He wandered for a little bit trying not to panic. Suddenly he spotted some tags on a street sign. His friends had left subtle tags with his nickname, and some arrows to random places. They knew the spots to paint on that a fellow artist would see, but not necessarily the authorities. He followed them, and sure enough they lead him back to the apartment he was staying at. Capcom was doing essentially the same thing for visitors to the Lowlands.

As more of the map opened up you eventually could start climbing the Foothills of Mt. Vashal. There would be another vibe in this part of Nayshall, one that was starting to show a conflict between the old world, and the new. We’re going to dig into it on the next blog. I hope to see you back for that. If you are a long time fan of Final Fight, or Street Fighter then I would like to hear your impressions of SF6. If you have never played any game previously then tell me your experiences in the comments section please. As always 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!