10 Potential Street Fighter 6 Characters We’d Love To See

Is it too early to start wishing for who we’d like to see in Street Fighter 6? At the time of writing, it’s only been a few days since the next instalment of the biggest fighting game franchise was announced, and while most people are talking about how the logo sucks, we want to focus on what’s most important: what toys will we be able to play with?

As of right now, only two characters have been confirmed so far, with thick boy bearded Ryu and the final SFV DLC character Luke shown in the initial trailer, but two characters alone don’t make a completed roster. On top of that, Capcom possesses a wider array of characters to pull from than most other fighting game franchises, so why not fantasy pick a few favourites? Here’s the characters who we’d like to see added to Street Fighter 6.

 

1. Mike Haggar

The Street Fighter and Final Fight franchises have a unique relationship with each other, which is a flowery way of saying that one has seemingly been absorbed into the other. There hasn’t been a dedicated Final Fight release in nearly two decades, but that hasn’t stopped characters like Cody, Guy, Poison and other Metro City residents from appearing in the iconic scrapper. Still, there’s one character who’s yet to make an appearance: Mike Haggar.

Haggar’s fighting game resume is still exemplary considering the fact he’s never been a playable character in any Street Fighter game. He made an appearance in the Saturday Night Slam Masters series as a playable character, while also being featured in both Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite, but he’s never made the move over to Street Fighter. The time is right for a change. Besides, someone has to put Ryu’s new muscles to shame.

 

2. Dudley

The “boxer” is a staple archetype for fighting games in general. Typically, it’s a great way of offering something unique within a control system defined by punches and kicks. If you’re using a character who doesn’t kick, there’s an opportunity to do something interesting with a boxer character, even if it’s just more punch types. SF6 should continue the trend of including a boxer in some form, but let’s leave Balrog to one side and focus on Dudley, the infinitely better option.

An English gentleman, Dudley brings a sense of style and sophistication to a game about dudes smacking each other until someone off-screen shouts KO. There’s just something charismatic about a well-dressed man battering seven shades out of you, before throwing a solitary rose on your unconscious body and declaring you to be “guttertrash”. If we’re getting a boxer of some kind in SF6, let’s hope it’ll be Dudley.

 

3. El Fuerte

Street Fighter loves its wrestlers. Zangief is a series mainstay, and will likely be featured in the new release in some capacity as a way of appealing to legacy players. However, there’s still a good number of wrestling characters available to Capcom should they wish to add more than just Russia’s favourite grappler. Alex and Hugo are both excellent picks, but let’s show a little love to Street Fighter IV’s El Fuerte.

Wrestling is more than just powerbombs and piledrivers though, and El Fuerte represents the lucha libre style that could do with more showcasing in fighting games. Sure, R.Mika has the acrobatics to do a similar job, but sometimes you just want to experience some “Ultra Dynamic Cooking Time”. Just make sure you give him a projectile special where he throws a frying pan at someone’s head, just because I think it’d be fun.

 

4. Batsu

The Final Fight to Street Fighter pipeline has been long established, but Capcom have finally begun to incorporate other franchises into Street Fighter such as Rival Schools. Sure, Sakura made her debut in Street Fighter Alpha 2 before appearing in Rival Schools, but it took until Season 5’s DLC pass of Street Fighter V for that pipeline to go the other way, as Akira was added to the game. Hopefully, this trend will continue in Street Fighter 6 with Batsu.

Rival Schools’ main protagonist, Batsu has a bit of a bad boy exterior even if he possesses a real heart of gold. Street Fighter 6 could be a real opportunity for Capcom to showcase a new version of Batsu, possibly as a grown-up instead of a school student. If Ryu can grow a beard canonically, then time can pass and characters can evolve. Sakura doesn’t have to be a high school student her entire life, and Batsu can re-emerge in Street Fighter 6. It can happen.

 

5. Ingrid

Street Fighter V seemingly changed the landscape of the series and storyline, with noted big bad M. Bison finally getting killed off once and for all. The leader of Shadowloo used the mysterious Psycho Power to dominate his opponents, but with his death, there’s a power vacuum that needs to be filled. Why not fill that vacuum with Ingrid, whose power was once used by Bison to power his Psycho Drive?

Ingrid’s canonical status within the world of Street Fighter has been up for debate for years now, as the all-powerful character only made their original debut in the crossover fighting game Capcom Fighting Evolution. She was then added to Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, the PSP port of one of Capcom’s finest fighting games, but she’s never been added to another Street Fighter game since. Never say never, though.

 

6. Laura

Street Fighter V introduced plenty of new and interesting characters to the world of Street Fighter, so if you feel like you’d rather see one of those characters added to Street Fighter 6, feel free to swap this one. Shout out to Rashid, because he’s a great addition to the series, but I’m personally crossing my fingers we’ll see Laura back in the series once again, just because she’s so damn fun to play as.

The older sister of Street Fighter 3’s Sean, Laura is the sole heir to the family’s Matsuda Jiu-Jitsu fighting style, which is heavily based on the real life Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu style. With the success of the UFC and MMA in general, including a character like Laura represented a modernisation for the series. Instead of focusing on traditional styles, Laura brought something new and relevant to the series, only Capcom improved it by including electricity powers too.

 

7. Q

One of the more elusive characters in Street Fighter history is Q, who was first introduced in Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. A masked enigma, not much is known about Q within the series, aside from the fact that he’s been spotted near some murders, but Street Fighter 6 would be a good chance to see one of the most mysterious characters in the series make a triumphant comeback.

The form in which he makes his comeback could be interesting, though. In SF V, a DLC character by the name of G bore a lot of similarities to Q. While G’s powers add a bit extra to his moveset, his normal attacks are carbon copies of Q’s, leading to speculation that G is a pre-transformation Q. It’d be cool to explore, or maybe even debunk that theory with Street Fighter 6, though so long as Q has his taunt buff, I’m happy.

 

8. Elena

Capoeira is one of the most visually pleasing martial arts ever made, so it’s no surprise that fighting games have adopted the fighting style practically wholesale. Tekken were arguably the first with Eddy Gordo, but Street Fighter were pretty quick to follow suit with Street Fighter 3’s Elena, a Kenyan warrior with a cheerful demeanour and devastating kicks. With any luck, she’ll be making a return in Street Fighter 6.

After making her debut in SF3, Elena made the transition to 3D with Ultra Street Fighter IV, the final DLC pack/re-issue of the series’ reboot. Elena made a huge impact when she landed in USFIV, with perhaps the most notable moment being the fact she managed to befriend Akuma in her Arcade mode ending. Her potential gameplay will be excellent in Street Fighter 6, but Capcom should stop being cowards and show Elana and Akuma being besties.

 

9. A Guest Character

These days, it feels like fighting games are made on their guest characters. Seeing franchises cross-over in new and interesting ways is a great way to build hype for a game, and perhaps Capcom would be wise to implement this strategy with Street Fighter 6. The question is, who would it be? The fantasy pick would be something silly like Scorpion or Sub-Zero to build up for a Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat, but that isn’t happening anytime soon.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t options available to Capcom, though. Realistically, there’s two possibilities (if there are any). We could see a Tekken character move over to Street Fighter 6 as a payoff for Akuma appearing in Tekken 7, or SNK could loan out a character to Capcom, building on their renewed relationship of porting old Capcom Vs SNK NeoGeo games to new platforms. While the Tekken one would be cool, SNK is more likely, even if that’s just because SNK loves it when fighting games use Terry Bogard.

 

10. Literally Anyone From Fighting Layer/EX

Okay, this one is purely a wish at this point, but it would just be nice to see it. Arika developed the Street Fighter EX games, which incorporated classic Street Fighter characters and gameplay alongside some brand new, interesting characters, though the development behind the scenes was interesting. While Capcom allowed Arika to use the Street Fighter licence, Arika were given free rein within their contract to use their own developed characters however they wished.

This contractual freedom led to Arika developing Fighter Layer alongside the SF EX series and then, nearly two decades later, Fighting EX Layer. FEXL has become a pretty successful fighting game in its own right across multiple platforms (and even crossed over with SNK in multiple ways), but a deal with Capcom to include any EX character (probably Skullomania), would just be a nice way of acknowledging some fighting game history. It’ll probably never happen, but it’d be cool all the same.

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