Street Fighter 6

About

Street Fighter 6 is an upcoming fighting game in the Street Fighter series. Since the game was announced in February of 2022, numerous aspects of the game revealed in trailers and announcements inspired parodies and memes as well as generated excitement for the game's 2023 release.

History

On February 21st, 2022, the official Street Fighter Twitter account posted a teaser video announcing Street Fighter 6 while offering a look at Ryu, who appeared larger and more muscular than he had in previous games.

The announcement led to jokes about Ryu's design as well as jokes about the logo for the game, which many felt greatly resembled a stock logo available for 80 dollars from Adobe.

On June 2nd, more information and a full trailer were revealed at Sony's State of Play stream (shown below). The trailer showed off some of the franchise's returning characters, including Chun-Li, whose design generated excitement among fans of the series. The new logo for the game in the trailer was deemed a slight upgrade from the previous iteration.

Shortly after the State of Play trailer, an alleged leak of the entire roster for the game began to spread online, along with the designs for each character. Though the leak was not confirmed by Capcom, the designs generated excitement on social media.

As of June 9th, 2022, there is no release date yet for the game, but it is scheduled to be released in 2023 on Microsoft, PlayStation, and Windows platforms. The game will also feature in-game commentary, a series first.^[1]

Online Presence

Wide Ryu

Wide Ryu refers to a nickname and jokes about the character Ryu's design in the upcoming Street Fighter 6, which depicts him as much beefier than he was in previous iterations of the series. In late February 2022 following the announcement trailer of SF6, Wide Ryu was used as an exploitable in memes, as well as in fan art depictions.

Game Face Feature

Street Fighter 6 Game Face Feature is an option in the upcoming fighting game Street Fighter 6 for players to have their character make various facial animations in the pre-fight or vs. screen of the game. After the feature was announced in June 2022, fans quickly began making parodies of the feature in numerous ways, including video remixes, exploitable parodies and giving still frames humorous captions.

On June 6th, 2022, the official Street Fighter Twitter account posted a video trailer for the "Game Face" feature, which allows players to have their character make facial expressions before the match (shown below). The tweet showed off the feature using the fighters Luke and Ryu. The tweet teases a player's ability to "confuse" opponents "with a mixture of rapid emotions," a feature that would later be a key part of many parodies.

Show your attitude with the Game Face Feature in #StreetFighter6 by pressing directional buttons during the versus screen.

Scowl at your opponent, act all smug, or confuse them with a mixture of rapid emotions!

🎭 https://t.co/TeNl2pTAbd pic.twitter.com/n15Dj50vlZ

— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) June 7, 2022

On June 7th, 2022, Twitter user @Murdoink posted an Average Fan vs. Average Enjoyer meme starring Luke and Ryu, gaining over 4,200 retweets and 26,000 likes in one day (shown below).

thanks capcom for all the meme material recently https://t.co/TRuY4NYqcn pic.twitter.com/FIpuTamZZm

— Murdoink.tv (@Murdoink) June 7, 2022

Sad Ken Masters

Sad Ken Masters refers to a series of jokes about the leaked design and backstory given to longtime Street Fighter character Ken in the 2022 video game Street Fighter 6. As opposed to his usually cocky and intimidating design, leaks about Ken in the game imply he is heartbroken, haggard-looking and "washed up." The leaks led to fan art and memes about the character's design, as artists depicted Ken as uncharacteristically depressed.

On June 3rd, 2022, after the release of the first full trailer for Street Fighter VI, possible leaked images of the full, unannounced roster began spreading online. The images showed a picture of the longtime Street Fighter character Ken Masters in a brown coat as opposed to his usual bright red gi and sporting stubble (shown below).

One Reddit commenter posted a rumor about the backstory Ken will have in Street Fighter 6, saying his wife Eliza left him and took his son Mel. A screenshot of the comment was posted to Twitter by user @BG_KOF (shown below).

Kimberly

On August 8th, 2022, Capcom announced the addition of two characters to the Street Fighter 6 roster. Kimberly, as seen in an art leak^[2] in early June 2022, officially joined the cast of playable characters after debuting at EVO 2022. She has been described by the official Street Fighter Twitter^[3] account as a "spunky new ninja" who is infatuated with 80's pop culture.

There has been debate amongst Street Fighter fans as to whether Kimberly is the first playable Black woman in the franchise, with a Kotaku^[4] article claiming the same having made the rounds in June 2022. Fans of the franchise drew attention to the capoeira-weilding Kenyan character from Street Fighter 3 named Elena, as well as canonically Afro-Brazillian character Laura and the Egyptian character Menat from Street Fighter 5. The author, however, doubled down on his assertion in the comment section of the article, claiming that his usage of the word "Black" referred specifically to African Americans and not Kenyans.

Search Interest

External References