Street Fighter VI’s director dishes on the upcoming fighters

Street Fighter VI announced its roster of new characters coming to the fighting game’s second season during Summer Game Fest, and it got a lot fans (including me) excited.

The season will start with the debut of series villain M. Bison later this summer. Then we’re getting Terry (fall) and Mai (winter) from Fatal Fury, the first guest characters in Street Fighter history. Then Elena from fan-favorite Street Fighter III debuts in the spring.

While at SGF, I got a chance to chat with Street Fighter VI director Takayuki Nakayama about these new characters and the partnership with SNK. Below is a transcript of our conversation via translator.

Bison’s back

GamesBeat: Now that you have the season two characters announced and you’ve seen the reaction, how do you feel about the excitement for this round of characters?

Takayuki Nakayama: We’re super excited to see all the great reactions from everyone. Luckily this was the first time for everyone seeing it, without any major leaks. It’s great to see an organic impression, an organic reaction from everyone.

GamesBeat: Was there any hesitation about bringing back Bison, since he was killed off? Or was it only a matter of time, since he was such an iconic, important character?

Nakayama: Obviously Bison is a very iconic character, a fan favorite, and one of my personal favorites as well. There wasn’t a lot of resistance to bringing him back. If you pay attention to some of the storylines within the year one characters, some of them are associated with Bison themselves. We created a path that led to the reveal and the ultimate release of Bison himself. We had him in mind in the early stages. We wanted to see how he played and what he would feel like with the Street Fighter VI system. It’s something we’ve been planning for quite a while.

GamesBeat: I wanted to ask about the horse. That’s a striking horse, a striking entrance he has with it. Where did the idea for that presentation come from?

Nakayama: In terms of the context and the reasoning behind the horse itself, that’s something you can learn more about when you play World Tour. That will give you more insight into that. In terms of how he gets on the horse and how he gets off, that’s something we had to think about. How would a character like Bison ride a horse? A man of that strength, what would that look like? Understanding his background, we came to the conclusion that he should fold his arms when getting on top of the horse.

GamesBeat: This is a character that’s been around a while. What are older fans going to notice that’s new about how Bison plays in Street Fighter VI?

Nakayama: In terms of new moves, he has a new move called the backfist combo, where he can land a Psycho Mine against the opponent. When that mine is set on the opponent, they have to hit Bison to deactivate it. That creates a mind game. It forces the opponent to play a certain way. We wanted to emphasize that in this new version of Bison. However, he also does retain some older moves like the Psycho Crusher and the double knee press. In the past those moves were only executable through charge motion inputs. Double knee press is now executed with a fireball style command motion. We decided to make him into a kind of hybrid character to differentiate him from past iterations. Overall, we wanted to keep and enhance some of the old legacy moves while making it more suitable for a Street Fighter 6 context.

Capcom welcomes SNK

GamesBeat: Getting Terry and Mai in the game is really exciting. It’s the first time we have guest characters in a main Street Fighter outside of the extended Capcom universe. How did that partnership come about? Was it always your hope to get these characters specifically?

Nakayama: How we came to the conclusion of introducing Terry and Mai in Street Fighter VI, to give you some background, two years ago, when EVO had their first event post-pandemic, we decided to celebrate that moment by working with SNK to do some collaborative posters. We each drew our own characters and characters from the other IP. That led to more conversations about the inclusion of these characters.

But not only that, if you look at it in the context of the story, the original creators of Fatal Fury and Street Fighter–some of the same people were involved in both IPs. They both share a connected history. Even though they’re from two different game series, it still makes sense that they indirectly share the same universe, in a way. We felt it was the right fit. They mesh well within Street Fighter.

GamesBeat: There’s a new Fatal Fury coming out as well. Is the favor going to be returned with their game?

Nakayama: We’re very much looking forward to the new Fatal Fury game, and it would be amazing if something like that happened. But we’ll see.

GamesBeat: In the past we’ve had Capcom vs. SNK as a whole series. Is there room for something like that, or do you think this is a better approach, instead of having to make something separate?

Nakayama: We see it as two different things, the inclusion of guest characters in Street Fighter 6 versus making a completely new Capcom vs. SNK game. The intention of including these SNK characters is to invigorate fans of fighting games in general, to get them excited about this, so more people will be interested in trying a fighting game. If we were to make a brand new CvS game, that would need a whole different approach, a whole different meaning. It’s two different goals.

New, old generation

GamesBeat: I’m a big Street Fighter III fan, so seeing Elena in there is very exciting. Was there a conscious decision to wait this long into the process to introduce Street Fighter III again?

Nakayama: We don’t really focus on exactly what title that characters came from when it comes to deciding who to introduce and who to add into the game. We look at the characters individually, seeing what kind of fighting style they use, their countries of origin. Elena is an African character who uses capoeira, which is very unique and different from the rest of the lineup. It’s not really an intention of creating a balance and making sure there are characters from each individual title, but more the individuality of the characters. That helps us decide who’s appropriate.

GamesBeat: Is it difficult to make those decisions in light of the pressure from outside? You’ll always have people like me who want Final Fight characters and Street Fighter III characters, even though you have your own idea of what’s best for the game. Do you have to tune that out, or do you have to stay in touch with the loudest voices from your fans?

Nakayama: We’re not tuning out the comments we hear on social media. We encourage people to be vocal about what expectations they have, what they want to see in the future. That’s a good reference for the team. But ultimately our goal is to get as many people excited about fighting games in general. That’s our north star. Who are the right characters to incorporate into this game to reach an audience that might never touch a Street Fighter game? For year one and year two we had four characters each.

Obviously, we want to make as many characters as possible. We’re creators at heart and we love doing that. But if we want to meet the quality benchmark we’ve set for ourselves, that’s the maximum. Obviously certain characters won’t make the roster because of those limitations. These kinds of conversations, it’s not just from outside of the company. These are conversations we have within Capcom and within the team itself. Arguments about who belongs and who doesn’t. That’s very familiar to us. We totally understand the comments and feedback and dreams of our players.

GamesBeat: Since you do encourage people to let their voices be heard, I’m going to say that Mike Haggar would be pretty sweet.

Nakayama: Noted! Everyone has the right to vocalize their desires.