Street Fighter 6: Everything we know

Fill those drive gauges and trim those beards: Street Fighter 6 has entered the ring. After Street Fighter 5's tumultuous launch, stakes are high for the next entry in Capcom's flagship fighter. Luckily, Street Fighter's latest iteration seems up to the challenge. SF6 is a contender. 

Early impressions for SF6 locked in some very high hopes: a stylish art direction, an 18-strong release roster, an ambitious-looking campaign mode, and rollback netcode had fans hyped. And now that Street Fighter 6 is released and playable, it looks like all those high hopes were justified. Here’s everything we'd learned in the run up to Street Fighter 6.

Street Fighter 6 release date

What is the Street Fighter 6 release date?

Street Fighter 6 released June 2, 2023, with simultaneous release on PC and consoles. Sadly, it's missing EVO Japan 2023 by a few months, but it'll be ready for competition later in the summer when EVO returns stateside.

Read our Street Fighter 6 review

After the stumbling of Street Fighter 5, we're happy to be able to write in our Street Fighter 6 review that we've entered a promising new era for the landmark fighting series. Street Fighter 6 is colorful, welcoming, and just damn fun for fighter players of every skill level. With SF6, Capcom's working with a new high watermark.

Street Fighter 6 trailers

Here's the final Street Fighter 6 showcase video

Capcom's final showcase stream before SF6's launch, this 30-minute, Lil Wayne-hosted event had plenty of details for Street Fighter 6's World Tour, Battle Hub, and Fighting Ground modes. It features plenty of gameplay footage, and had some new announcement for the upcoming demo release and eventual DLC fighters.

Check out some of these SF6 dev matches

In January, Capcom uploaded a series of full SF6 matches between developers to the Street Fighter YouTube channel. Featuring new and returning characters, the first gave us a look at a face-off between Marisa and Manon. There's also a match between Dee Jay and Dhalsim, and finally: a Blanka vs. JP match, if you want to see a buff wizard beat up a... whatever Blanka is.

Here are a bunch of other Street Fighter 6 trailers

If you wanna catch the characters in action, there’s lots to choose from. Capcom's been busy handing out sampler videos for a while now, kicking off with the State of Play announcement trailer from the PlayStation event in June.

Later, at Summer Game Fest, a Guile trailer started a steady stream of character previews, continuing with a Kimberly and Juri trailer from EVO 2022. And thanks to the Tokyo Game Show trailer, we got a look at one of SF6's flagship modes with the World Tour overview.

We got our release date in the 2022 Game Awards trailer, which showed off some of the training and side activities you'll be able to undertake with your custom fighters, as well as some gameplay from Dee Jay, Manon, Marisa, and JP—everyone's favorite beefy grandpa punch-wizard.

Street Fighter 6 character roster

Street Fighter 6 roster: All the confirmed and leaked characters

Street Fighter 6 feels like a homecoming in a number of ways, not the least of which is its initial release roster. It features 18 characters at launch, the first eight of which are the crew from Street Fighter 2: 

• Ryu
• Ken
• Chun-Li
• Dhalsim
• Blanka
• Zangief
• Guile
• E. Honda

Then we have two other longstanding mainstays:

• Cammy
• Dee Jay

Joining them are two younger returning fighters: 

• Luke, the MMA fighter / undercut hairstyle master who rounded out Street Fighter 5's cast and serves as Street Fighter 6's protagonist 
• Juri from Street Fighter 4, who's giving off goth Jinx vibes with her new design

Rounding out the roster are 6 new characters:

• Jamie
• JP
• Lily
• Manon
• Marisa
• Kimberly

Jamie is a drunken boxer and breakdancer, supposed to be a rival for fellow undercut enthusiast Luke. Kimberly embodies the new entry’s vibe head to toe. She has a neon '80s ninja style replete with a Walkman, Naruto dashes off the walls with her super, and she chucks spray paint cans like ninja stars (at least in the trailer!). I was waiting for her to bust out a smoke bomb in a Bubble Yum canister.

Four DLC characters have been confirmed

Announced during the final SF6 showcase, and surprising nobody, Capcom will be releasing characters as DLC following the Street Fighter 6 release. Coincidentally, the announced DLC fighters line up exactly with a leak from last year in June. We don't have any details yet about pricing and monetization, but we expect a season pass option as well as being able to purchase fighters individually.

Here's the initial roster of DLC characters, and when we can expect them:

• Rashid — Summer 2023
• A.K.I — Autumn 2023
• Ed — Winter/Early 2025
• Akuma — Spring 2024

Street Fighter 6 gameplay info

Street Fighter 6 has a new World tour mode, and more 

Street Fighter 6 revolves around three sections: Fighting Ground, World Tour, and the Battle Hub.

Fighting Ground contains your standard game modes for throwing down. Arcade, Online, Training, and Local Versus are all found here. This is your spot to get straight into the action whether you want to battle the computer, your buddy, someone online, or just train.

World Tour is a new game mode that features heavily in the latest marketing. An open world experience, you get to create your own custom avatar and roam around Metro City doing… stuff? There’s not a lot of detail just yet, but the highlight from the trailers so far is training with some of the series’ longstanding characters. Sifu Chun-Li teaching you the spinning bird kick, wildin’ out with Blanka, and meditating with Ryu all look like awesome Street Fighter moments. I mean, if you’re gonna try and get stronger, you gotta hang with Ryu. He’s been roaming the earth doing exactly that since 1991. You'd think he’d have figured it out by now, actually.

The Battle Hub is SF 6's social space. Here you can cruise around with your avatar, interact with other players, and launch Fighting Ground matches. Each Battle Hub can hold up to 100 players, and you can play some classic Capcom arcade games like Final Fight (or perhaps minigame versions of them) and complete with other players for high scores. The Battle hub will also let players set up tournaments and spectate on competitions.

The Drive Gauge is Street Fighter 6's big new mechanic

Capcom has tossed out Street Fighter 5's V-Trigger and built a new meter system that combines bits and pieces from just about every Street Fighter before it. The beating heart of Street Fighter 6 is the Drive Gauge, a system that influences everything you do and pushes the action forward.

The Drive gauge has six bars (one for each Street Fighter, these guys thought of everything!). You spend the bars to do cool stuff, and lose it by blocking attacks or getting caught in a punish. If your gauge ever runs out, you enter Burnout mode and lose the ability to do Drive mechanics until it refills. In addition, you take chip damage from everything and get stunned if you get caught in a wall splat. Burnout is no bueno.

To keep from burning out, you have to stay on the offensive. Throwing attacks and having them blocked by your opponent refills your bar, as does catching them in a Punish Counter—a new term for landing perfectly timed hits. If your opponent has started an attack but yours lands first, or if you catch them in a whiff recovery, you get a Punish Counter for extra damage and more Drive.

Drive Mechanics

In addition to keeping you away from burning out, your Drive Gauge can be used for all sorts of cool stuff.

• Drive Parry: Perhaps one day you, too, will have a Daigo moment. Drive Parry lets you parry your opponent’s attacks by pressing both mediums. It costs half a bar up front, but if you successfully parry your bar replenishes. Use this for timing counters, but watch out—if you hold it too long it’ll drain your gauge, and can be punished by throws.
• Drive Rush: Use one bar to execute a Drive Rush, which is a dash that can be used out of a normal cancel and is the heart of most of Street Fighter 6’s sickest combos.
• Drive Reversal: Similar to a V-Reversal from 5, this counterattack can be used after a successful Drive Parry.
• Drive Impact: A powerful wind-up attack with a couple hits of armor, this one looks satisfying. With pushback against blocks and armor up front, this move that costs 1 bar is the ultimate turtle solution. If your opponent tries to catch with a normal and your armor absorbs it, you get a huge slow-mo knockdown and a splat if they’re in the corner. Thump.
• Overdrive: A replacement for EX, this two-bar move powers up your specials and other attacks.

Street Fighter 6 has built-in commentators

In a move generally reserved for sports franchises, Street Fighter 6 will feature in-game commentators from the FGC. Confirmed appearances include FGC commentators like Jeremy “Vicious” Lopez and Tasty Steve, and even commentary from other notable Street Fighter enthusiasts like pro wrestler Thea Trinidad and Japanese musician His Excellency Demon Kakka. Here's a preview of the real-time commentary feature, in a gameplay video with commentary from Tasty Steve and James Chen.

You can find the full list of announced in-game commentators on the SF6 website.

Modern controls will hopefully make Street Fighter 6 more accessible to new players

Finally, the game includes a simplified controller setup for newer players that Capcom's calling “Modern.” Simplified from six buttons to three, it also gives the player input shortcuts for Drive Impact, Drive Parry, Throw, and Special. It also has a combo assist button. This feature seems like a great way to learn the basics, but will be limiting for more advanced players.

There's an even more casual control option that Capcom's calling the "Dynamic" control scheme. The Dynamic controls mode features auto-attack buttons that'll automatically select attacks and combos based on opponent positioning. Don't worry, purists—Dynamic controls are limited to specific offline modes. As Capcom describes it, the scheme is intended for "when you have friends and family over for a quick, casual game, or want to learn the basics of a character for the first time."

Here are the PC system requirements

Oh, and you can punch a bull

Yep.