So, I talked to the SF6 devs...

Let's go. Let's get to the very first biggest piece of news and that is arguably Tifa in Street Fighter 6. Right. There's so there's three brand new characters in Street Fighter 6. Technically Bosch is now an actual playable character or will be a playable character. Yasmin, who is the first available character, is going to be not too far off. She's like very early August, right? So, she'll be not too far off from now. I wouldn't even be surprised if we're going to be seeing um gameplay of her in some form, some fashion. However, the weird thing of the the trailer, much less the reveal for Street Fighter 6 has sort of been the unknown mystery of where this game is going and what is happening because it seems that initial inspection, there is no brand new stage and there is no brand new content related to story mode. We thought that there might have been a replacement for that things. Maybe this is where Super Street Fighter 6 happens. Maybe this is like a different way to engage single player content in some way. And at the moment that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems like they are adding more characters to the game and more things are being added at the moment from this is from our perspective. The amount of historical stuff that they're adding outside of like costumes maybe is going to just eventually and most likely be how they continue Street Fighter 6 from this point forward. Like just maybe that's all we know. So that being said, I got an opportunity to talk to uh Matsumotoan and Nakayyama who are the resident big heads at Capcom. These are the guys responsible for all the Capcom fighting game collections. These are the guys responsible literally for Street Fighter 6. I got like a solid 30-minute opportunity to sit down with them and uh grill them a little bit about some of the ways this this game is going. One of the big first questions I had when I was discussing this with them as I'm recalling this in my head was Tifa. And my question to them was that Tifa is a character amongst Final Fantasy 7 characters that historically does not really show up in many things. like these characters are no pretty difficult to get into other games. So I asked them how challenging has it been to work with the Square Enix development side or uh Nurissan on making one of his characters fully come to life in a fighting game. Believe it or not, they said that the process which has been in the works for quite some time has been extremely non uh has not had any ounce of like push back. There's notes and things like that, but it isn't like it has been really difficult. It seems like in the past it might have been difficult to work with Sky, but they were surprised by how quickly they responded to stuff, how quickly they approved things, and how like they were very enthusiastic and able to like move forward, which is why this all happened. You know, historically there's been a lot of like mega friction between it seems like from the outsers perspective between Square Enix and other devs who might want to use their characters and stuff, especially from like a Smash Brothers perspective. Apparently not. According to the Street Fighter devs, they're like, "This is this was extremely smooth." And yeah, Tifa being in the game, they just want to do uh like proper honor to the character and they want to make sure that she's represented in a way that'll make everybody happy, including Final Fantasy fans and everything like that. They know it's a really big deal. I gave them the commenation that they pulled off a guest character in a fighting game the likes of which we really haven't seen since like Link and Soulcalibur 2. In my personal opinion, Akuma in Tekken is a big deal, don't get me wrong, but like a crazy crossover the likes of which we have not seen before, like Cloud and Smash, Link in Soulcalibur, it was like, wo, this is this is bonkers. So, I had to give them props for making that happen because this was a true um this was a true kind of like dream come true character. The other thing I wanted to discuss with them, the 40th anniversary of Street Fighter, which is going to be coming up pretty soon. I wanted to talk about how there is likely things happening like whatever is going to be happening for the 40th anniversary of Street Fighter in Street Fighter 6 or otherwise. Uh I I wanted to let them know and I was curious um if they knew that there is a little Street Fighter game called Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. It does not really have a reliable official release from Capcom that we can kind of like play online with each other. Uh, so I sort of question them. Um, because this is such a formative game in the Capcom fighting game history, at least for it seems like you guys, Street Fighter 6 and many games. I was asking like is there any possibility of like bringing back Street Fighter 3 online edition? Is there any chance that like that they're like aware that there's not many ways for the community to officially play Street Fighter 3 Third Strike outside of a 30th anniversary collection which is going on near 10 years old with like delaybased net code and all that stuff. All they did was just look at each other and look back at me and the translator said they we are aware. Like that was it. That's all they gave me. So they just went we are aware. So that's all we got. That's I don't I don't know what it's going to lead to, when it's eventually going to happen, anything like that. But they know that 3S is a game that has a a big audience and stuff, and they seem to be pretty pretty aware that it's difficult to enjoy that game in an official capacity in some way. So, I hope so, man. I really hope so. I'm a big personal fan of Street Fighter 3 online edition. I don't think it plays the best out of all of them. think it plays really good. But Street Fighter 3 online edition is a game that um is got a ton of features in Third Strike that the game never had before between more colors and better audio and all that stuff. So, it's like, man, I really hope that kind of stuff is preserved in some way. These guys made impossible [ __ ] happen where, and I even gave them credit for this where I was like in another like question/ comment I got to make to them. I said, "You guys managed to put PSP alpha characters into an arcade version of Street Fighter Alpha. You somehow managed to retroactively add versions of Capcom fighting games um of arcade Capcom fighting games that have never had releases before into collections, right? So that all sides of the fandom can be like sort of fulfilled." I deeply thank them for doing that because it's never been done before. I asked them like how tough was that to do and they pretty much exclaimed it was really hard. like it. They pretty much just broke it down to a simple thing. It was it was really not easy there. There was a lot of post-release effort that went into the MPC collection and Capcom Fighting Collection, too. That is genuinely insane. Like actually insane. So, that wasn't done very easily. You know what I mean? It it definitely took a lot of effort. The last one is kind of the big one. I asked the devs about the shakeup. I specifically asked about Street Fighter 6. It was something along the lines like like Street Fighter 6 currently has more players than it's ever had. It is one of the best performing fighting games they've had since Street Fighter 4, right? And it's doing even better in many ways. The game is being widely accepted as being like one of the GOAT fighting games by many accounts, right? Um, however, and as as I said, they're probably aware, there is a vocal outcry from uh different audiences, like different regions of Street Fighter fans, especially the Western audience that has been uh curious or asking for the game to get sort of a mechanical adjustment because the majority of those systems have been extremely refined. Uh, and I I told them that Street Fighter 6 has arguably one of the most polished fighting games I've ever played at launch because we are still playing the majority of those systems untouched from uh like 2022, 2023. I commended their efforts in that way where it's like I've never seen a fighting game this polished before because we and many of the community especially dedicated Street Fighter fans have been playing the same thing in the game operating in the same way for the longest time. There was a lot of requests to change things and I asked them is there a possibility of that happening and how difficult is it to sort of balance a global fighting game where one side might be doing incredibly good and one side might be like asking for like adjustments and changes and costumes and all of this kind of stuff. So, uh, they pretty much responded that they are also very much aware that Street Fighter 6 has been a game that has been mostly untouched for a very long time, mostly refined, right, where they've been able to add a bunch of things, quality of life and all these elements to Street Fighter 6, like over this time. And they specifically told me that it's not like we're being unheard. It's more like this is a matter of timing. They said they they can't really mention anything that's happening right now. They cannot discuss anything specifically in the moment right now. we're here to celebrate like Tifa and all these other characters, but they wanted me to echo the idea that that those concerns are not falling on deaf ears. So, they they mentioned that the future of Street Fighter 6 and what might be happening in the future with changing certain things on it is a a matter of timing more than anything. Starts to make a lot of sense to me that uh that they are not turning a deaf ear to this. It's just that the earliest inclination we got of Tifa being potentially an SF6 is that this has been like even from uh like the Square side they they were talking this could have been years in the works, right? It could have been a hell of a long time that this was starting on the back end that characters like even from Final Fantasy show up in the game. This is the thing, right? Um when you have a game that has that many people, things are in the works, if not large things for a very long time. It is the nature of current game development. So, why change something that's already working, right? But there is also of all the Street Fighter games that have ever released, right? From their initial conception, their initial vanilla release to later versions, Street Fighter 6 has gone the longest unchanged in this time frame. For older games, there might have been two or three different versions of the game since then, but we're in a much different scenario now. We're in a much different game environment than there was before. Yeah. Yeah. And they start talking about timing and it's like, oh, there is also a Street Fighter 40th anniversary next year. And this is me like saying this. I'm like, okay. Them talking about timing and them talking like we're aware of people requesting Third Strike, them all discussing these elements is that they can't make any announcements right now. But the idea is that like this isn't a complete negation of like, oh, we haven't heard that, you know? So anyway, um, it leaves me pretty confident. At least I'm pretty confident that there might be some interesting stuff happening next year. And yeah, I get it. People want things now. People want things to immediately take place like right now. I would not be surprised if Street Fighter 40th anniversary is not just um gone by the wayside with an in-game event or something like that. It might be something pretty big. They might have a lot of stuff planned for that. So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if it includes something with Third Strike, if it includes something with Street Fighter 6 as a game, all that kind of stuff. with context. That is probably the best type of non-answer you can get. Yeah, exactly. Cuz they they're not going to be able to reveal anything. So, long story short, I wanted to uh let them know how good of a job they're doing on these collections. Congratulate their on them on their success because they are doing a goddamn incredible job making like a fighting game that's supported and enjoyed across the world. It's crazy to see fighting games in this spot right now. but to let them know that there are things that a lot of the community has been like curious about and wondering, including myself. I hope that stuff changes. I hope that there is an opportunity for things to, you know, move around a little bit. But there's almost no doubt in my mind once Tifa hits this game, dude, those record numbers are uh are going to get blasted out of the water. Oh my god, man. That shit's going to be crazy. Heat. Heat.