M. Bison will soon be arriving in Street Fighter 6 on June 26. He’ll be joined later by Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui, and Elena via the Year 2 Character Pass.
Though M. Bison’s return to Street Fighter 6 might seem like a surprise considering his “death” at the conclusion of Street Fighter 5’s main story mode, M. Bison has had numerous revivals throughout the Street Fighter series. As indicated during an interview with Famitsu, the developers have apparently been planning for M. Bison’s return for a long time now.
Apparently, work on M. Bison began after development on the 18 launch characters had concluded. The developers even added characters via the Year 1 Character Pass that had a connection to M. Bison.
Of course, this all seems to suggest that the hints alluding to M. Bison’s return via the post-launch questline were planned for from the beginning. By acquiring a certain document in-game, a notice about a person of interest reviving a dying horse can be found.
It also turns out that Shuhei Matsumoto, Street Fighter 6 Producer, is a big fan of M. Bison himself. Needless to say, it’s implied that this may have fast tracked M. Bison’s return in Street Fighter 6.
Check out this part of the interview thanks to Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor’s translations below:
Famitsu: Let’s do some unique questions for each character. So starting with M. Bison, when did you decide to include him?
Takayuki Nakayama: Since making one character takes around one and a half to two years, we began work on him right after we finished the 18 characters on the launch roster.
To begin with, M. Bison has ties to Rashid, A.K.I. and Akuma who were all in the Year 1 pass, so we’d basically been laying the groundwork for connecting their stories to M. Bison’s arrival.
Famitsu: So what you’re saying is that you’d decided on including M. Bison at this timing since quite a while ago. When Akuma was added, the secret document mentioning “he rides a horse” was also brought to life in the trailer.
Takayuki Nakayama: He really was on a horse!
Famitsu: I was very surprised, haha. Is there any kind of meaning behind him now riding a horse?
Takayuki Nakayama: Please check out the story for more details on that. Our scenario writer wrote a lot of content, so most of these things will be explained in various episodes there.
Famitsu: In the May 30th issue of Famitsu this year, we published a user survey for what characters our readers wanted to see join Street Fighter 6. M. Bison received a lot of support and ended up in 2nd place, so I’m guessing you also received many requests for adding him to the game?
Takayuki Nakayama: There was a pretty high amount of requests to add M. Bison. Also, Producer Matsumoto has been a M. Bison main since Street Fighter 4, so there was a lot of pressure put on me.
Shuhei Matsumoto: Ha ha.