It’s like two old friends seeing each other again after a long time.
Street Fighter 6 recently announced their Year 2 characters with the big bombshell being that they have a crossover with fellow game developers SNK. Forever villain M.Bison makes his return together with Street Fighter 3’s African capoeira practitioner, Elena. On the SNK side, we’re getting the ultimate fighting game protagonist Terry Bogard, and the sensual female ninja Mai Shiranui.
M.Bison and Elena returning is already exciting but Street Fighter 6 getting guest characters has quite the historical significance. The first and foremost, this is the first time in the series’ 30+ history that they’re getting characters from a foreign intellectual property.
I say ‘foreign’ because Capcom, Street Fighter’s developers, have never been shy with crossing over their own IP’s. Characters and events in their multitude of games frequently reference each other and even appear in their games from time to time. This is very apparent in Street Fighter 6 where you can’t even call it a crossover anymore when they share the same universe.
Now with year 2, this is the first time a mainline Street Fighter game will welcome characters from another developer. A rather funny irony considering that Street Fighter characters have found their way into other IPs. It’s also fitting that their first guests are SNK, which leads us to the other significant thing about this crossover.
Hope for the New Millennium
At some point in the ’90s and 2000’s, Capcom was considered the kings of crossover fighting games. They were the pioneers of what people call the ‘versus’ series of fighting games and each have their own following.
Capcom and SNK were the two most popular 2D fighting game developers at the time so it was inevitable that they would clash in their own series of versus games. The Capcom vs. SNK games are some of the most iconic games for fighting game fans. Each one was oozing with personality and seeing each franchise’s characters interact with each other was such a treat.
Unfortunately, the last game in the series came out in 2003 and Capcom hasn’t made a versus game since 2017. The arrival of Terry and Mai however has ignited the hopes of fighting game fans worldwide. Maybe Street Fighter 6 hints at a more robust crossover project between the two developers in the future?
All we can do is hope and patiently wait for what the future has in store for us.
Banner image from SNK.
Related Stories:
A Need for Speed: Are Modern Fighting Games Too Fast?
Fight in Style with These Fighting Games-Inspired T-Shirts
Why Capcom Cup’s Million-Dollar Prize Pool is a Big Deal for Fighting Games