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

Street Fighter 6 Designer Yusuke Hashimoto had an impossible task. Update the look of the classic SF characters without causing an all-out riot with the fans. I did a quick take on all the leaked designs last year, like Zangief for example. Mr. Hashimoto had impeccable fashion sense, knew how to work with color, and use fabric, and layers to tell a story with costuming. He worked on Bayonetta, and Bayonetta 2 previously. Those games had some amazing designs, turning witches, demons, angels, and other religious figures into a dazzling runway fashion show but with guns, and cheeky humor. I would argue that he approached each SF character with a certain level of respect. He wouldn't be turning them into Bayonetta characters, but preserve their roots as best as he could while trying to update them a little. He might have asked himself what did they wear in a formal setting? What did they wear when they weren’t fighting? I believe that half the SF6 lineup were wearing casual outfits on purpose.

We wouldn’t expect Chun-Li to walk around the city wearing 30 lbs. spiked bracelets on each wrist, and wrestling boots. So she was given a very casual makeover that still looked like classic Chinese costuming. The same applied to Luke, Jamie, Kimberly, and the other new faces. They each had fight wear, and street wear as alternate costumes or vice-versa. Mr. Hashimoto had probably gone through the Capcom archives to see what some of the concept art was for each character, and even abandoned characters like the Fighting Literary Master that was in the planning stages of SFV. The bearded professor archetype would be easy to apply to the Red Cyclone. Presenting Zangief an intellectual when he wasn’t wrestling perfectly captured his personality. Zangief was absolutely dedicated to his craft. When he wasn’t training we could expect to find him learning new subjects with the same level of intensity. In the game he finished books faster than he finished reps in the weight room.

The animation team was as insightful as Mr. Hashimoto. They dug into the archives when modeling the cast. The studio used concept art to create taunts, and victory poses from. They captured an absurd amount tiny details for each character that either was missed, or never created in the first place. For example Zangief was known for being covered in scars. This was because he wrestled bears in the Siberian tundra. However all of his scars were only on his front. As a trained wrestler he never gave his back up to an opponent, and never ran from a conflict. In canon he actually had one scar on his back, but this was from taking an assassin’s bullet for the former president of the Soviet Union. I think it was only mentioned in a novel, and never illustrated in any manga. This tiny, insignificant detail was modeled, and skinned onto the character. As I said previously, the amount of work that went into SF6 was absurd.

The SF6 art team also had to figure out what style, aesthetic, and proportions they were going to go with for the cast. One of the things that really made Japanese audiences upset was when the studio changed the look of Cammy between SFIV, and SFV. many Japanese gamers said Cammy looked ugly in Street Fighter V. They said the studio was trying to appeal more to European tastes, rather than keep her looking more like an anime character. I had covered the aesthetic debate previously on this blog. It was hard to make the visuals of a franchise stand out from the competition. Every now and then we would get a genius like BENGUS to create new looks for the character that were recreated in sprite form. The SFIV models were based on Daigo Iken's work, and SFV models were trying to use the BENGUS style. Unfortunately proportions that worked in 2D did not always work in 3D.

The models in SFIV, and SFV were getting bulkier, and bulkier, and it was hard to see relative heights between the fighters because they were so thick. Not to mention that the character models looked like they were made out of lumpy clay. The exaggerated BENGUS proportions that looked brilliant as sprites in Street Fighter Zero / Alpha were hard to recreate in 3D without making the characters look grotesque. The SF6 team went back to the more realistic proportions that AKIMAN, and Shoei used when designing the SFII lineup. These more lifelike designs were easier to read on screen, their moves, and animations flowed better, and the differences between fat, skinny, tall, and short body types really stood out.

Cammy got a similar type of ground-up makeover. I don’t know what the average Japanese or global reaction was for the cast. Based on the fan art I’ve seen online it looked like people on both sides of the Pacific were really digging her new look. She still had a youthful appearance, but her eyes weren’t too big, or cartoonish like with Lily. Her muscular frame was still there, as was her love of cats. For anybody that believed athletic women couldn’t have her model looks I would argue that she might have been based on Team USA weightlifter Samantha Wright. Her bright eyes, soft features, and naturally pursed lips beguiled that she could easily out lift many men in the gym. It turned out that it was possible to find a balance between realistic, and stylized aesthetics for the cast. In this way it could be argued that the developers were able to strike a look that could appeal to international audiences.

In my book Capcom had knocked Street Fighter 6 out of the park. Every element that went into the game was influenced by 35 years of the Capcom legacy. We're not only talking about the Street Fighter franchise but also Final Fight, Rival Schools, Tech Romancer, Vampire / Darkstalkers, Star Gladiator, Muscle Bomber / Saturday Night Slam Masters, and Warzard / Red Earth. It also allowed players to enjoy more than a dozen classic arcade games in a virtual arcade open 24/7. The studio was making nods to anime, manga, wrestling, and pop culture all throughout the adventure. Capcom was doing all of this while pushing the franchise into the future. Character design, plot, music, sound, animation, modeling, balance, level design, stage layout, world building, control, and balance were executed to perfection. Capcom did the impossible. They elevated the fighting genre, and put it on par with the best AAA adventure titles. The games that took 30 or 40 hours to complete now had competition from a completely different format. We did not have to play as Link, Mario, Spider-Man, the One-Armed Wolf, Kratos, or any other named character. Instead we could make up our own avatar and become the hero of the Street Fighter universe. I do not think that any other studio could have pulled it off. At least not nearly as well. In fact I do not think that any other studio did anything more revolutionary for gaming in 2023. Street Fighter 6 was an absolute master class in game design.

I’ve spent the past three months on this blog showing the individual elements that when combined made for what I consider to be the game of the year. What more could I say to convince you? When voting opens up on the various forums, and websites later this year I sincerely hope that you consider Street Fighter 6 as the best of the lineup. Thank you for joining me on this series. I appreciate every view, share, and comment. I put a lot time, energy, and myself into this series. I'm exhausted, and will probably rest for a few months before writing something new. Thanks for watching me massacre the English sentence structure. I wouldn't have done it without you. 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!