Almost two weeks ago, we got the announcement of Street Fighter 6’s third season of characters which included fan favorite veteran Street Fighter characters Sagat, Alex and C. Viper as well as the mysterious Ingrid, who has technically appeared in the Street Fighter series but may as well be a newcomer.
Ingrid has been requested for a very long time and regularly done respectably well in polls, especially in Japan, when asked who people like from Street Fighter. Given that she’s barely been a Street Fighter character until now, that’s quite impressive. So what exactly is the history of Ingrid and why does Street Fighter 6 feel like her actual debut as a character? Well, let’s take a trip down the annals of Capcom history.
Back in the early 2000s, Capcom had plans to make a Capcom vs. SNK 3 because of the huge success that Capcom vs. SNK 2 proved to be, which is no surprise considering even today it’s considered one of the absolute best fighting games ever made.
However, these plans were shattered because of SNK’s financial situation at the time. With the company facing bankruptcy, Capcom had no choice but to move on to a different project. A team of about 20 people from SNK actually joined Capcom and tried their hand at developing a fighting game called Capcom Fighting All-Stars.
This was a 3D fighting game featuring predominately fighting game characters from Capcom like Ryu and Alex from Street Fighter, Batsu and Akira from Rival Schools, Demitri from Darkstalkers but also non-fighting game characters like Poison from Final Fight (who later became a fighting game character in Street Fighter many years later) and Strider Hiryu from Strider.
They even got the green light to include SNK’s Kyo Kusanagi as a guest character since many former SNK developers were working on the project.
Embedded within this project were four original characters as well that were made specifically for the game. Three male characters called D.D., Rook and Death as well as the sole original female character — Ingrid.
Unfortunately, the game never got off the ground properly. Arcades had location tests for it sometime in 2002 or 2003 and received poor reception with players simply not finding it very fun. After a few months of further troubled development, it was cancelled all-together.
Normally, this would be the end for the original characters, but for Ingrid in particular, that wasn’t the case.
Yoshinori Ono, later famous for being the producer on Street Fighter 4, in one of his earliest gigs as a game producer worked on a game called Capcom Fighting Evolution in 2004.
This game was similar to the canned Capcom Fighting All-Stars in concept, being a crossover of Capcom fighting games, but not in execution since it was a pure 2D fighter and featured specifically characters from Capcom fighting games.
Presumably due to the similar nature of the projects, developers decided to make a sprite for Ingrid and include her a special character among the rest of the cast, thereby solidifying her as a legitimate Capcom character.
However, it was in a strange game that very few people played (it’s available in Capcom Fighting Collection 2 if you want to give it a try, though) and essentially existing outside of the boundaries of the crossover itself.
A few years later, Capcom made a PlayStation Portable port of Street Fighter Alpha 3 which was called Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX in which they included extra characters they had sprite work for, which included Yun from Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike, Maki and Eagle from Capcom vs. SNK 2 and finally Ingrid from Capcom Fighting Evolution.
Now, technically, this makes Ingrid a Street Fighter character, but unlike the aforementioned three who were legitimate presences in the Street Fighter universe already (Maki had never been playable, but as a Final Fight character she was established to be in that universe at least) she really had no connection to it.
The story for her was bizarre, talking about how she was actually the origin for M. Bison’s Psycho Power which seemed far too important of a plot point for a character who was dubiously canon to begin with and only in a very niche version of an old game.
Since then, almost 20 years passed without Ingrid ever appearing properly in Street Fighter since, but now that’s about to change with her coming to Street Fighter 6.
“The Street Fighter Alpha 3 story is a bit irregular. [Ingrid] appears in three different games (one of which is unfinished), each with a different background. So what does that mean?” — Takayuki Nakayama
In recent comments from Street Fighter 6 producer Takayuki Nakayama, he said “The Street Fighter Alpha 3 story is a bit irregular. [Ingrid] appears in three different games (one of which is unfinished), each with a different background. So what does that mean?”
Basically, the fact that Ingrid never got to debut properly as a character and that she’s only been in various projects which are simply not canon. The only one up for debate is her Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX appearance, since Capcom Fighting All-Stars and Capcom Fighting Evolution are most certainly not canon to any story.
What this most likely means is that Ingrid, a character who came from a game that never was released but still managed to resonate both with Capcom’s own developers and their games’ fans, is finally about to get her actual debut as a real character in Street Fighter 6.
It’s possible that Capcom will follow up on the Psycho Power connection mentioned in Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, but honestly it seems much more likely that they’re simply going to bring her in on a clean slate and basically give her a fresh start here. The start she would’ve gotten back in Capcom Fighting All-Stars that never ended up happening.
She’s a very unique case of being a character with an already built-in fanbase but also basically a brand new character with which Capcom can basically do anything they want. The fact that her new costume is such a massive departure from the look people know her for already seems like an indication that the Ingrid we’re getting is going to be something completely new.
Honestly, that’s probably for the best. Ingrid has basically never been more than an easter egg. It’s time to see her become an actual character and despite never caring for her in the past, I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing what Capcom has planned for her inclusion.