One thing that the video game world has absolutely done over the generations of its life is evolve. We went from basic consoles and arcade machines to some of history’s most advanced consoles and PCs. Every new generation brings something to the table that ensures gamers stay on board or potentially try something new. That goes double for the genres of gaming, which constantly have to evolve to meet fan demand and get something fresh into the genre as a whole. For Capcom, they’re focused on Street Fighter 6 and making it the best it can be. But the game’s director wants even more than that.
Takayuki Nakayama has done multiple interviews since the reveal of the franchise’s newest entry and has made it clear he wants this to be a special and welcoming game to new players. But in a chat with Oricon News in Japan, he revealed that he wants something even bigger. He wants to create a game that brings others to the mix, much like a certain title from the past: Street Fighter 2:
“I personally love fighting games and that’s not going to change, but in order to make it a boom in society once more we really need to make sure it’s a game that’s easy to recommend to others,” stated Nakayama. “For that we need to bring back that ’90s arcade vibe where you ask your friends to join you.”
But wait, there’s more. He believes that the genre as a whole has to grow beyond focusing on “wins and losses” and instead focus on having people want to play the game with others:
“Instead of a world that’s just about winning and losing, we want to say ‘You can play on your own, there are lots of interesting characters, you can travel in this interesting world too, don’t you want to try it out?’ That’s kind of what we’re going for.”
To his credit, he’s not wrong about many fighting games focusing on “just the wins and losses” more than anything else. Then you have a title like Super Smash Bros Ultimate, which was more about the characters and modes and became the best-selling fighting game of all time.
Street Fighter 6 is stacking up to be a special title to his credit. It has a good roster, multiple ways of controlling fighters, many things to do online, a robust character creation mode that ties into a new mode, etc.
We’ll see if they can become a phenomenon on June 2nd.
