One of the most common complaints with Street Fighter 6 is that there are so many good Street Fighter characters who aren’t part of the roster yet, and understandably so. The franchise has some of the most iconic characters in the whole fighting game genre.
We’ve already seen tons of lists of which characters we might be able to expect or which ones we want the most, but today I’m going to list something slightly different, although still in the same general vein.
Today’s list will focus on characters not just I, but many others, would like to see in the game, but with a specific caveat — there’s something that’s potentially keeping them from joining.
I looked through the whole Street Fighter cast of characters and while these are mostly based on characters I personally like but feel like they have obstacles, I also added in characters I think would fit well or have a strong fanbase but face difficulties.
These reasons can be lore-related, overlap with currently existing characters or anything else that makes them a hard sell to include, but I’ll specify on each character not just why I think they’d be great in Street Fighter 6, but also what I think might be the hurdle that’s making them difficult to add.
Because of this, any popular characters that don’t have any particular obstacles to being included such as Sakura or Vega were not even considered for the list — only characters that have some kind of obstacle in the way.
With that out of the way, let’s get into my picks.
I’m going to be frank, Eagle has the biggest obstacle of any character listed here and it’s for one simple reason — who the hell even knows this guy?
As one of the many Street Fighter 1 characters who never made a proper return (Ken, Ryu, Sagat, Adon, Gen and Birdie are the only ones from that game to properly join the mainline series after the first game), Eagle is a bit of a unique situation because he was chosen as an off-the-wall pick for 2001’s Capcom vs. SNK 2.
The glowup he received in Capcom vs. SNK 2 was amazing and he stood out as an incredibly cool character. Like many other Capcom vs. SNK 2 assets, his sprite was reused and added in later versions of Street Fighter Alpha 3, so while he technically returned in the main Street Fighter series, it wasn’t the version of Alpha 3 that most people played.
Due to this general absence from the series, he generally evokes a kind of “uh… who?” reaction from most people which is definitely a big obstacle to face when picking characters, especially ones for post-launch downloadable content.
Nevertheless, he is a very cool weapons-based fighter who has a lot of personality to him and was visually based on Freddie Mercury and incorporated some Queen references in his voice lines as well.
Largely a forgotten character to Street Fighter as a whole, it’d be a shame after his massive glow-up from Capcom vs. SNK 2 for him not to come back and get a chance at building a new fanbase, so I’d love to see him come back.
At the same time, like I said, his hurdle is the biggest of all since it’s him basically not being known or particularly popular, so I can’t really blame Capcom if they don’t want to take chance on him.
My personal favorite character on this list (she’s my second favorite Street Fighter character overall after Alex, even) who has generally been a series mainstay ever since her debut in Street Fighter 3: New Generation, returning in both Super Street Fighter 4 and the first year lineup of Street Fighter 5.
So with that attendance record and general popularity, what is this hurdle I’m thinking of when it comes to adding her to Street Fighter 6? Well, there’s actually a character in the roster which in my opinion makes Ibuki a much tougher sell — Kimberly.
Most people look at Kimberly and say that because of her Bushinryu style and being Guy’s self-appointed student, it makes Guy, Zeku and Maki unlikely to join Street Fighter 6 and while I agree that it does hurt their chances, I actually think that Ibuki’s chances get hurt even more.
Kimberly’s gameplay and lore might be connected to Bushinryu, but her general role as a character — a teenage schoolgirl ninja with a positive attitude and youthful flair is literally exactly what Ibuki has going for her as well, so with Kimberly essentially stealing her spot it makes it difficult to argue why Ibuki should be in the roster.
Also, while her personality isn’t like Ibuki’s, having another female ninja in the roster with Mai Shiranui doesn’t necessarily help her case, either.
The argument for Ibuki in this case is largely gameplay-oriented, because while Ibuki is typically a mixup-heavy character much like Kimberly tends to be with her spray can setups, Ibuki’s style of mixing opponents up tends to be quite different.
Add to that the fact that Ibuki’s gameplay can present radically different between games. She plays quite differently in each main title she appears in, with different moveset focuses in Street Fighter 3, Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter 5, respectively.
Nevertheless, having her “role” taken by a new character does hurt Ibuki’s chances a great deal in my eyes. I’m really hoping that she ends up making the cut eventually anyway and she definitely has the popularity to be considered by Capcom, but honestly? I really don’t think I can get my hopes up for her, even though I want her to come back.
While I do think that Dudley has a much better chance than Ibuki since no character has really stolen his general role, there is an obstacle present for him as well, which I’d say is the quick in-and-out boxing style of Ed in Street Fighter 6.
Of course there can be multiple boxers in a fighting game (Street Fighter has had more than one plenty of times too), but as an added complication we’ve seen Shadaloo take more space in the story with the return of M. Bison, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see Balrog come back too at which point Dudley’s inclusion would mean he’s the third boxer.
That isn’t impossible either, but when he has little to no plot relevance and Ed already takes some of his “quick boxer” style moveset and makes it his own, Dudley’s spot becomes a big ambiguous.
He’s a popular character and his moveset definitely hasn’t been implanted on a different character in the way that Lily kind of took T. Hawk’s general moveset, but there are just these several small things that add up to make Dudley a more questionable choice.
Especially when you look at the Street Fighter 3 cast as a whole which includes the absolute powerhouse in popularity Makoto who really has nothing holding her back from inclusion and Dudley seems less likely than I’d like him to be.
That said, I do think Dudley has a decent chance of making it in, but there might just be enough small things going against him to force him to sit out this round as well, just like he had to in Street Fighter 5. I really hope that’s not the case, though.
Hugo is an interesting one because while him and Zangief shared the spotlight with no issue in Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter X Tekken, the fact of the matter is that Zangief has been developed into a very different character since then in how his gameplay works.
Many of Zangief’s current approaches which include big, swinging hits and command grabs that do devastating damage but have no oki are kind of things you’d expect to see from Hugo.
There’s definitely still unique Hugo things they could incorporate like his clap loops, but the wind has definitely been taken out of his sails as far as “big guy with big damage” goes. Zangief was always of that archetype as well, but his Green Hand shenanigans and light combos gave him a different niche which Hugo didn’t quite fit in.
Now, they are a lot more similar than they were in the Street Fighter 4 days and while they’re not exactly the same, plus the fact that Capcom could just slightly reinvent Hugo as well to differentiate him from Zangief, the question is whether they consider it worth the effort or not.
Hugo isn’t exactly the most popular character around even though he has his fans, so they might not even give him a second look when deciding on characters to add, or if they want another big guy could simply opt for Abigail instead since he’s more readily different than the two of them already based on his Street Fighter 5 moves.
For Hugo, though, he had an implied rivalry with Alex back in the Street Fighter 3 days which I’d love to see a return to.
They missed each other when Hugo was in Street Fighter 4 but not Street Fighter 5 and Alex had the opposite of missing Street Fighter 4 but joining Street Fighter 5, so now that Alex is making his return again in Street Fighter 6, it’d be very nice to see Hugo come back for a rematch with him.
Kolin is an interesting character because while she’s been around since Street Fighter 3 in a lore sense, established as one of Gill’s closest allies, she didn’t debut as a playable character until the second season of Street Fighter 5.
Wielding ice powers granted to her by Gill, Kolin was a force to be reckoned with throughout Street Fighter 5 in no small part due to her extremely strong V-Trigger 2 and she developed a solid fanbase both due to her personality, her looks and her gameplay.
What makes her a hard sell for Street Fighter 6, in my opinion, is the fact that the Illuminati are basically entirely absent from the game. Even though it takes place after Street Fighter 3, Gill gets nary a mention and the focus seems to be squarely back on Shadaloo, with JP being a newly established Shadaloo member and M. Bison returning.
If Capcom decide to do a story mode expansion or something similar which makes big moves in the game’s narrative and move forward to reintroducing Gill and the Illuminati, then Kolin seems like a no-brainer choice. But right now? That seems to be the furthest thing from anyone’s mind in the actual game world of Street Fighter 6.
Kolin was a popular character in Street Fighter 5 and probably delivered more than most newcomers in that game. However, the fact that she’s so intricately tied to the villain faction from Street Fighter 3 which has been quietly swept aside (at least for now) makes her a hard sell because of the whole box of worms you need to open up with her return.
Capcom could opt to do that, but as of right now they seem a lot more interested in dealing with Shadaloo and Neo Shadaloo and their inevitable conflict based on both the new and returning characters we’ve seen.
I hope I’m wrong though, because Kolin was definitely a success and got a solid fanbase. It would also be interesting to see how they design her without any V-Trigger system, considering she was built so heavily around it in Street Fighter 5.
And those are my picks for characters who have clear obstacles to making it into Street Fighter 6, but who I really, really think should be in the roster. Do you agree? Disagree? Think I missed someone? Let your opinions be known in the comments.