You would complete the side missions of the various masters, build a friendship with them, and challenge them in order learn new techniques. Past a certain point Luke recommended entering the amateur fighting tournament in the Haggar Stadium. It seemed like a logical conclusion to the World Tour. You would be competing against other fighters in this contest. I assumed that the game would end after this point. I mean up until that point I was blown away with how everything had turned out. As a fan since the original title I couldn't ask for anything more. Once you had signed up for the tournament you were allowed to continue exploring, but once the tournament began you wouldn't be allowed to leave the stadium. I had a lot of butterflies about competing so I decided to wander around that side of Metro City, and do more exploration. There was a massive industrial building next to the Chanko House. I decided to check it out.
I had the eeriest feeling of deja-vu as I explored the building. I felt that I had been here before, but couldn't quite place the context. As I wandered behind the building I saw some people playing basketball. This was where one of the part time jobs was, the Ball Breaker Blitz, with Baller Mando. People that remember SFIII could recall the bonus stage where Sean was teaching how to parry. He would throw basketballs at you, and had you block them. Capcom had recreated that stage, including the color correct backboard, and graffiti on the wall but in 3D. Again the detail in this game was absolutely insane by any standard.
I still couldn't shake the feeling of deja-vu. It wasn't just the basketball court that reminded me of something. As I poked around the factory I kept thinking to myself there was no way a building this massive would just be taking up space in Metro City. That the developers must have placed something inside. Yet all the doors, and gates were closed. I thought that maybe it would open up at night. As I circled the building I found a ladder. As I climbed it I didn't expect to find much. Thankfully a side door was open near the top. That was when the SF6 team again showed why they were the best team for this project.
The factory may have looked abandoned, but it was very much still in use. The furnace was burning away, but the workers were nowhere to be seen. Capcom was letting you figure out what had happened inside. As you explored the massive complex you discovered there were Rampaging Drones, and Rampaging Hyoombas hiding in the corners. The robots that were already causing trouble elsewhere in the city had gone completely haywire inside the building. The rampaging models were overheating, they were sparking, smoking, and much more aggressive than any of the other AI robots in the game. They could be found exclusively inside the factory. I could imagine that the workers were too scared to enter the building once the robots had taken over.
As I made my way through the steel grates, and battled the whirling machines of death I was instantly transported back to 1991. Capcom had recreated the Industrial Area from the original FF as a stand-alone adventure in SF6. This was the exact same Factory that was featured in Final Fight 3 a few years later. As I went floor-by-floor beating up the various robots, and occasional construction gang members waiting outside I was astounded by how much I recalled from the earlier games. Even though I played through the series once or twice I year, many of the details were burned into my memories decades ago.
Seeing the massive machine door at the end of a corridor filled me with delight. I recognized all of the features of the building. I was calling them out to my daughter. She wasn't even born when FF came out, and was barely one-year-old when FF3 debuted. She wouldn't have any context or emotional connection to these things, but was happy that I was happy. I had been explaining to her that the game was very much a love letter to the genre. There was no feature that the studio overlooked. As I climbed up each floor, and fought robots, and workers it captured the spirit of FF just as well as the subway had. When I finally reached the control room for the factory I saw that it was packed with all sorts of robots. They must have easily overrun the workers, and forced them out. Upon defeating them you were able to lower the metal grate over the furnace, and unlock the front doors to the building.
As I walked out of the room, and onto a metal grate industrial elevator I started freaking out. I knew instantly that it was the same elevator that you rode, and fought Rolento on some 35 years prior. There was even a ladder right next to it, the same one that he climbed while throwing grenades at you. As the elevator descended my heart started racing. For just a moment I thought that the Mad Gear general was going to appear. I was disappointed that he didn’t show up given how many cameos the developers were pouring into the game. Instead it was the one place in the city where you were guaranteed to get two android Copy Fighters to appear. After opening up the Red Steel Factory my adrenaline was pumping. The game had me prepped for the tournament now. I reported back to the Mike Haggar stadium, and told the host that I was ready to begin.
There were a handful of unique characters created for the amateur tournament. Sort of like “light” versions of Street Fighters. They looked like the generic characters that would turn up in an Udon comic book to fill out an encounter with the stars. You were expected to battle a few of them in order to reach the finals. Eternity, the host of the Battle Hub was also on hand to interview the participants before each match. Something that stuck out to me, other than the great arena design, were the floating 3D logos in the background. They rotated to show both the letters SF, and VS, in between matches. Again this was something that could be considered a throw away detail, but was something the team had planned with some forethought.
The final match in the tournament featured you versus a large brawler named Rewancha from a country called Nayshall. It was the same place that Bosch was from. This fighter was dressed in traditional clothing, and was determined to win it all. I figured he must be related to Bosch, perhaps a big brother. Maybe he would be able to tell me what happened with my sparring partner. He was as tight lipped, and intimidating as a mob enforcer. You weren’t getting any information out of him, aside from he was planning on destroying you in the fight.
As I said at the start of this blog. I honestly expected the World Tour mode to wrap up after this tournament. After all the SF6 developers had already done a tremendous amount of world building, storytelling, and cameos from the various games. What else could they have hidden up their sleeves? It turned out that I had barely scratched the surface of the game. The next half of the adventure was going to be even deeper. I’ll talk a little bit about the road that brought us here in 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
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