It was 6:30 this morning when I woke myself up and grabbed my phone, remembering that Capcom’s mystery countdown timer would have hit zero by now. For those who hadn’t been following the news – on February 14th Capcom tweeted out a link to a page with the URL “capcom-games/countdown” – the page itself had a dark background and a timer counting down a number of days and hours. A quick bit of maths revealed that the countdown was scheduled to end at what would have been the end of events such as Capcom Cup and the Capcom Pro Tour; had those events not been cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was likely that they would have ended with whatever this reveal was. Since these events are focused on competitive gaming, a few people assumed that this would be some kind of fighting game announcement. However, nobody knew if the fighting game in question would be Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, Rival Schools, MvC (or another “vs” game entirely), Power Stone… the teaser site and countdown didn’t give away a lot. Street Fighter VI seemed like the announcement most deserving of this kind of build-up, but there are plenty of other franchises that are worthy of a revival.
Capcom Fighting Collection reveal
Eventually, everyone was satisfied. Well, sort of. After the countdown expired we were treated to a back-to-back of two different reveals: Capcom Fighting Collection – a compilation of various “vs” games – and a short Street Fighter VI teaser. The Capcom Fighting Collection features Darkstalkers, Night Warriors, Vampire Saviour, Vampire Hunter 2, Vampire Saviour 2, Red Earth, Cyberbots, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Hyper Street Fighter II and Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix. In addition to arcade modes and local versus play, the games will feature online play, training modes, galleries of music and art, and some welcome quality-of-life features such as quick button customisation. It’s a smart response to those who have felt that other Capcom fighting games get neglected as the company focuses on Street Fighter, but I can imagine that some people might be disappointed that the announcement wasn’t of a fully-fledged sequel to one of those neglected games.
Street Fighter VI teaser
Meanwhile, the Street Fighter VI teaser wasn’t prepared to give anything away. A dimly-lit CG scene that showed Ryu and Luke squaring off against one another isn’t really much to go on, and people even found the new logo disappointing – instead of the traditional red-yellow gradient of the full name, we have a white hexagonal “SF” logo with a small 6 in the corner. I remember that the Street Fighter V “Rise Up” trailer was similarly vague, but that at least had brief flashes of gamplay in between its shots of arcade activity and gamepads in hands. A quick visit to Capcom Unity isn’t that much more revealing; only promising that more news will be shared in the summer. (The Capcom Fighting Collection, meanwhile, will be released on June 24th.)
I’m not as invested in fighting games as I was during the height of my frequent Street Fighter V content updates, but the Street Fighter VI teaser leaves me keen to know more about the new gameplay systems and what the approach to netcode and testing might be (let’s not forget the news of Altimor’s patch that fixed Street Fighter V’s online issues in a matter of days, or the unfinished state of Street Fighter V at launch.) I never really got into Darkstalkers and so the Capcom Fighting Collection didn’t do a whole lot for me, but I did enjoy the inclusion of Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix in the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology. If you have any thoughts on the Street Fighter VI teaser or the Capcom Fighting Collection, feel free to leave a comment below.