Capcom has finally unveiled the last fighter to join Street Fighter 6’s roster for Season 2.
Elena was introduced in Street Fighter III: New Generation, as one of the proverbial new generation of fighters. To be clear, Elena isn’t really the first playable black character in fighting games. Capcom themselves added Storm to X-Men: Children of the Atom before Elena a full five years earlier.
Capcom also took several creative liberties in her creation, so there’s not much of a case for her as an ‘accurate’ depiction of a video game character from the African continent. In the end, what we’re left with is still one of the most popular black female fighting game characters in the genre, who’s been brought back multiple times to expand to her backstory.
Story wise, Elena is a friendly fighter who loves to dance, which belies her upper class status as a Kenyan princess. As the events of Street Fighter 6 happen after the Street Fighter III series, we see she’s gotten a little older, and perhaps a little more streetwise after years of traveling the world.
Elena rounds out the cast of Season 2, which included the heavyweight SNK crossover characters and in-laws Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui, as well as the controversial return of the supposedly deceased M. Bison. Because Street Fighter 6: 1-2 Fighter’s Edition comes with all Season 1 and Season 2 characters, new players can get Elena alongside the rest of the 25 character roster at the gate as part of this edition of the game.
And it’s a particularly big showing, because Street Fighter 6: 1-2 Fighter’s Edition is coming out alongside the launch Street Fighter 6 on the Nintendo Switch 2. As we recently reported, the Switch 2 port of the game seems to be doing so well that it even runs better than the PlayStation 5 version.
What this all means is that Elena gets to make her debut as a selling point for the Switch 2 version of the game. But of course, the existing FGC and more casual player community were also looking forward to seeing her on their respective platforms as well.
At least for now, we can see that this trailer is her introduction cinematic for World Tour. We have yet to see how her exclusively kick based moveset will be carried over and balanced for Street Fighter 6. For that matter, does Elena bring back her Healing super, and how will that be balanced with the other characters for a fair fight? But that’s precisely why the fans are looking forward to this return.
In the meantime, you can watch Elena’s introduction trailer below.
