While it hasn’t been easy to predict what Capcom is going to do with their downloadable content for Street Fighter 6 (let’s be honest — nobody was expecting guest characters Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui from Fatal fury), there’s one trend that some fans have started to pick up on.
It’s difficult to call something a pattern with limited data, but now that we have three full seasons with their rosters announced, there might be room for reading into the tea leaves and seeing if we can notice any commonalities. One that sticks out is this — each season so far has seen a Street Fighter 2 boss return.
It’s hardly new that Capcom place a heavy emphasis on Street Fighter 2 when making a new Street Fighter game and Street Fighter 6 is no different.
With all eight World Warriors — Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Dhalsim, E. Honda, Blanka and Zangief — available at launch along with two of the Super Street Fighter 2 New Challengers in Cammy and Dee Jay, there was more than enough nostalgia packed into the game’s initial 18 character lineup.
Of course, this also means that there aren’t that many Street Fighter 2 characters left to pick from when adding characters… though, looking back at it, it’s interesting to see that the specific ones left out were boss characters, namely the four kings of Shadaloo and secret boss character Akuma.
Now, however, we have several of these characters either in the game or on the way. Akuma was added at the tail end of the game’s first season and shortly after him M. Bison kicked off the second season.
In the near future, we’re going to have Sagat, the original Street Fighter 1 boss who moonlights as one of Street Fighter 2’s four kings as well, signing up for the fight as well.
The fact that we’ve had one slot each season seemingly reserved for these Street Fighter 2 bosses definitely makes me raise an eyebrow and not only that, but the two remaining holdouts Vega and Balrog have already been shown in Street Fighter 6 to be open to returning to Shadaloo once more.
It would hardly be surprising to see Vega and Balrog lining up for the game’s fourth and fifth years, respectively. Vega has always been a popular character and frequently ranks high in the polls, though one does wonder how they’d handle his return since they made a massive overhaul to him in Street Fighter 5, making him a stance character who no longer used charge moves.
As for Balrog, while his popularity tends to be on the lower end, he has a lot more story significance due to being the father figure to Ed, who is already in the game. Balrog was typically an extremely one-note character, so seeing his loyalty tested between the monetary value of working for Shadaloo and his paternal bond with Ed would actually be an interesting conflict for the traditionally morally dark character.
Also worth noting is that even if this is a pattern, it might be a different pattern than we think it is. It’s possible it’s a pattern of Street Fighter 2 characters rather than bosses, though I personally find this possibility unlikely.
The only other Street Fighter 2 characters currently missing are Fei Long, who wouldn’t be a bad pick (whose return to Street Fighter seemed in jeopardy until later being cleared up) and T. Hawk who seems highly unlikely as newcomer Lily seems to have essentially taken his spot by stealing some of his move set.
Another possibility is that it’s not Street Fighter 2 bosses, but rather boss characters overall. This would open the gate to other characters with high plot relevance like Street Fighter 3’s boss Gill, who is still something of an enigma but would absolutely tie in well with Alex’s return.
Of course there’s also the chance that it’s not a pattern at all and that the Street Fighter 2 bosses simply returned one at a time so far out of pure happenstance.
While it does seem like Street Fighter 2 bosses are the only true pattern so far, it only takes one instance to break a pattern so we won’t really know if it holds up until about a year from now when we’ll get our Season 4 reveal.
For now, Season 3 is just about to kick off with Sagat, who will be followed by returning fighters C. Viper, Alex and then Ingrid who is essentially making her debut to the series.