Street Fighter 6’s big launch is just over two weeks away now, and fans have been clamoring for every bit of information they can before it’s even released. Capcom, recognizing this, recently held a Live broadcast question and answer They addressed many questions from people about the upcoming title.
These pre-selected questions ranged from asking if Capcom would include a jukebox mode in Street Fighter 6 to who the developers’ mains were, and during the session, game director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto also discussed the development process. One question asked which character was the most difficult to design, and luckily, they provided an answer for both returning fighters and newcomers.
As far as newcomers go, Street Fighter 6 has some very complex characters in its roster. A fighter like JP harnesses psychic strength and fights with a stick, using abilities such as full-screen command grabs, spikes that appear from the ground, and voids that can be placed on the screen and not only act as projectiles, but allow him to teleport to their location.
Despite the presence of JP, it seems that the development team really struggled with a different and unexpected character instead.
“Among the new characters, Kimberly’s design was particularly challenging,” the developers said through a translator. “The concept had been around from a really early stage, but it was hard to get a specific direction [for her]. This concept of the American Ninja character, and [we] Even thought a cyber ninja for direction would work, but ultimately ended up with Kimberly that we have now.”
Now, among the returning World Warriors is a fighter like Dee Jay who still has many of his trademark tools at his disposal, but almost has an entirely new gameplay and bunch of things to do in Street Fighter 6. You’d think he could have been Well the hardest to design, right? no. The actual answer to this question is Street Fighter’s classic rival Chun-Li.
The developers said, “In terms of legacy characters, Chun-Li was probably the toughest because so many people like her and like everyone Chun-Li is a bit different from each other.” “Many designers had their own ideas, but it was hard to come to an agreement for Chun-Li.”
This iteration of Street Fighter sees Chun-Li with a fresh approach added to her gameplay. Although she is still able to hit Spinning Bird Kicks and shoot Kikokens, Street Fighter 6 Chun is now a character with a much steeper learning curve than what players are generally used to with her.
Chun-Li being the hardest of the returning characters to design is certainly surprising, but we actually heard something similar from Street Fighter 6 art director Kaname Fujioka back in December. In an interview with GameInformer, Fujioka noted that creating Chun’s new look was particularly difficult because one of her original creators was one of his mentors – likely referring to legendary Capcom artist Akira “Akiman” Yasuda.
“She was probably one of the hardest characters to design with this title, especially since one of my mentors is one of the original creators of Chun-Li,” Fujioka said via Game Informer. “I definitely want to honor that and make a proper version of Chun-Li for Street Fighter 6.”
Capcom shared other interesting tidbits about the game’s design process during the Q&A stream, such as how Jamie was originally a completely different character than he ended up being. In the early stages, Jimmy could have been a fighter much like Lee Wolong from Tekken or Jackie Chan, but he ends up being a drunken young boxer/dancer who wants to keep the streets safe.
Street Fighter 6 is set to release on June 2, 2023. It will be available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and Xbox Series X | S and PC.