Street Fighter 6’s future will look this past game in the franchise

Jon & Kate +8 on Block episode 1 presented in 4K resolution

Street Fighter 6 is going to evolve to resemble one of the most beloved games in the entire franchise, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. This is the case that Cujo Kate and I make on the first episode of Jon & Kate +8 on Block.

Parries didn’t start out as a dominant force in Street Fighter 3 initially, as it took players multiple years to understand how to use them and for the designers at Capcom to improve them in the third iteration of the game.

Once that happened and players got used to this core mechanic and the timing and knowledge needed to utilize it at a high level, the game changed dramatically, which helped lead to the most iconic moment in the entire fighting game community, Evo Moment #37.

While Parries and Perfect Parries are still very much evolving in Street Fighter 6’s meta, we’re already seeing a number of players regularly implement them into their overall gameplans, and I think this will only continue to grow and be a larger part of the game over time — much like what happened with Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.

One of the reasons that the Parry mechanic was removed from Street Fighter 4 was because Yoshinoro Ono and the team at Capcom wanted to simplify the game, and make it easier for players who weren’t at the highest levels of performance to perform moves. Parries had become so strong in Third Strike that players who could regularly perform them could easily outclass players who couldn’t.

Street Fighter 4’s Focus Attack essentially became the replacement for Parry. However, both the Focus Attack (Drive Impact) and Parry would return in Street Fighter 6, but with some variations on the prior games.

Most notably with the Perfect Parry in SF6 is that there’s 50% damage scaling on the initial hit after successfully performing this technique, which limits its overall effectiveness. Also, you need to have the proper amount of Drive Gauge, 1 bar, to even perform this maneuver, which means there are times throughout a match where this tactic is unavailable to players.

A couple of the advantages are that players no longer need to choose to Parry a high or low attack, as this distinction no longer matters in Street Fighter 6. Also, players can hold down the Parry button(s) to perform a lesser version, greatly reducing the precise timing required to counter an attack, but also not gaining all of the same benefits.

With these things in mind, Kate and I make the case for why we feel Street Fighter 6 will evolve to more closely resemble one of the past games, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.

We also discuss the latest Street Fighter 6 patch note changes that were released with Ed and how they will impact many of the cast members and how the game is looking overall.

This video is presented in 4K resolution (3840×2160) and the match footage featured throughout was captured by a GeForce 4090 with max in-game settings. We’re still dialing in the technical details and future episodes will improve in visual fidelity in terms of the footage where it shows the hosts of the show.

The 4K match footage showcases top players all regularly utilizing Parry and Perfect Parry at a high level. Viewers can take a close look at frame data contained in this high resolution footage to get a better idea of how the moves work and which situations the characters would be plus or minus on hit or block. Hence why our show is called +8 on Block.

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