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Street Fighter 6’s Shuhei Matsumoto (Producer) and Takayuki Nakayama (Director) visited Gamescom Asia this week, and we were lucky enough to sit down and spend some time with them. Though we only had a chance to ask one question, it was still a fantastic experience to hear what two of the minds behind Capcom’s latest fighting game smash hit had to say. Sportskeeda's Angshuman Dutta was on site to ask my question, focused on the cast.
Though both Shuhei Matsumoto and Takayuki Nayakama were fairly silent on the topic of Street Fighter 6’s upcoming characters, this isn’t a surprise. However, their thoughts on the roster were pretty interesting.
Street Fighter 6’s Shuhei Matsumoto and Takayuki Nakayama stay silent on upcoming characters
While covering Gamescom Asia, we spoke to Street Fighter 6’s Shuhei Matsumoto and Takayuki Nakayama, where we asked the developers the following question:
“Speaking of characters, I know many were surprised to see guests like Terry and Mai added to the roster. If you had complete creative control, and nobody could tell you no, who would you add from the Street Fighter universe to the next season? Maybe Former-Mayor Mike Haggar, or someone from Darkstalkers?”
After some thought, the two developers responded through a translator. While we were certainly hoping to hear specific characters brought up as favorites that they would like to see appear in Street Fighter 6, Shuhei Matsumoto and Takayuki Nakayama kept quiet on specifics, other than it would almost assuredly be a Street Fighter character and not a crossover. Combining both their opinions, the translator said:
“So the director and producer are pretty much united on this front in terms of saying that first of all, if they were to bring back a character with no upper people saying no to them, it would definitely be a Street Fighter character because they just have so much love for the series in general.”
Sorry, Darkstalkers fans - we tried to fish for them! It’s likely if they could just pick anyone they wanted, it would still be a Street Fighter-specific character, instead of someone from Final Fight, Darkstalkers, or any of the other amazing Capcom fighting games.
Unfortunately, when pressed to name anyone specific, that was much too difficult. This wasn’t a shock, considering how many fantastic characters there have been, even in just the last two or three Street Fighter games. Ultra Street Fighter IV, for example, had a massive roster of memorable fighters. If they did live in a world with pure creative control, they’d still want to pick carefully, as to try and keep the fanbase happy with the picks:
“But as to which character, there's literally so many characters that they want to bring back that they cannot possibly choose. And if they were to just choose a random one, they kind of are afraid that people will then think that they're going to bring that character back, which we don't live in a world where there's, you know, where they have total creative control.”
It makes sense that neither Shuhei Matsumoto nor Takayuki Nakayama wanted to pick a specific name for Street Fighter 6 - that way, people either don’t get their hopes up or get angry about the choice. However, fighting game players are a fickle lot - no matter who joins a game, someone out there will be upset.
So, while neither developer can state for sure who they’d like to bring to the game, they are united on the front that it would certainly be someone who already has a presence in the Street Fighter franchise:
“So they do choose to plead the fifth on this one, and they can't say at this point, but it's safe to say that if they were to bring back the character, it's definitely somebody from Street Fighter.”
Who could we possibly see in the future? The possibilities are endless. If I had my way, we’d just bring back Dan Hibiki, because he’s the best. Though, I’d also like to look at the roster, and the lack of grapplers, and say that maybe it’s time for Hakkan to come back.
It’s also not really a Street Fighter game without Sagat, so maybe the King could come back in Street Fighter 6? This is all speculation of course, but who knows what the future could hold?
