Scooting up to the playable demo of Street Fighter 6 at Summer Game Fest 2024, I was struck by what an exciting anchor I was hitching myself to for the next half hour. I had not played the game for months, even though it is still one of my favorite fighting games on the market right now. I was also still buzzing from being told that SNK fighting game royalty Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui would be coming to the roster in the next character batch.
But right now, in this moment, I was going to bust some heads with M. Bison.
Bison’s combination of speed and strength was immediately apparent and most of the usual suspects of his storied past are here. I messed around with his primary attire — tattered hooded cape with faded, beaten pants — but had to switch it up to Bison Classic, too. Ridiculous, knobby chin and featureless eyes accented now by a glowing, pulsating Psycho Energy scar on his face pull me into the past and sink me into the present simultaneously.
I’m having a blast, but I begin to fixate on my strongest memories of Street Fighter.
I really love the “return to the streets” vibe of Street Fighter 6, from the locales to the primary attires of every single playable character. No one is really missing the assignment in this department and it brings an air of new beginnings to a series that really needed one. Perhaps it’s not as seismic as Street Fighter III‘s roster, tone, and mechanicals shifts were, but the game has a fresh life and everyone feels it.
Even with some great new character designs — some of the best in the entire series — I’m struck by how thoroughly the series has failed its recent big bad villains. Street Fighter IV‘s Seth was abysmal. Pregnant Dural from Virtua Fighter-ass character. G wasn’t terrible despite looking like a character rejected from Bioshock Infinite for looking somehow too over-the-top. His problem was that, much like Street Fighter 6‘s JP, the game had very little interest in showing us he was a threat. JP simply looks like Hulk Hogan in Santa with Muscles, a real film you can watch right now, AD FREE (hey like this website!) on Tubi.
Don’t believe me?
When the roster for Street Fighter 6 was revealed, I was actually very excited that we were getting away from the villains of yesteryear. Aside from Sagat, there wasn’t, in my mind, much reason to dig up the Vegas and the Akumas and the Bisons of it all. Let the past die. I became a late in life convert to Street Fighter III‘s weirdness! Hell, even the non-canonical Street Fighter EX stuff scratched an itch for me.
After sitting with the new roster for a few months, however, I began to grow cold on killing the past. I’m not an Akuma person so his recent inclusion didn’t move the needle much for me. I like Juri as the frothing psycho she is but the series doesn’t have much interest in elevating her to Main Bad Guy status.
But JP and G? Even the way they play doesn’t inspire fear. Facing Bison at the end of an arcade run used to put the fear of God in the average American child. We used to be a real country. He pushes, pushes, pushes. No space, no fear, no mercy. And wow I think the series has missed that.
Seeing and, more importantly, playing with M. Bison again at Summer Game Fest reminded me how much Akira Yasuda and Ikuo Nakayama absolutely crushed it with the original design back in 1991. Psycho Crushers are still incredibly satisfying and can close space fast with a bang. His double knee attack — once the same input for Crushers but with Kick — is now a snappier quarter circle. Terrifying! I love it. I speak as someone who cares little for the competitive side of Street Fighter aside from EVO week, so view everything I say through the lens of the kid who watched his neighbor smash his Super Nintendo with a hammer when he lost thirteen matches in a row to Bison in II.
I don’t care if the aesthetic was lifted part and parcel from Riki-Oh and UWF, everything they built around the character was effective. In fact, that entire pantheon of boss characters stood the test of time. So forgive me, I want to go back. We have Punished Bison. Give us the rest of his motley crew and put some stank on it.
