The line up for Street Fighter 6’s Season 2 of DLC was unveiled in its entirety during the Summer Game Fest 2024 back in early June. Surprising everyone who watched, Capcom blew the doors off of their reveal when they announced that Fatal Fury and King of Fighters’ own Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui would joining the playable roster as the first-ever guest characters in a mainline Street Fighter title.
Naturally, with this being Capcom and Street Fighter’s historic first time adding guests in as DLC, fans are wondering if the two SNK representatives will make way for other potential guests in Street Fighter 6 down the road. IGN recently caught up with the game’s producer, Shuhei Matsumoto, and asked about exactly that, to which Matsumoto-san provided some more insight into what it all means.
Street Fighter 6 Season 2 is adding four new fighters to the game’s already varied playable cast. To start, classic Street Fighter villain M. Bison joined the roster in late June, and he will be followed by Terry in the Fall, then Mai in Winter 2025 (which typically means early 2025), and finally Elena in the Spring of 2025.
IGN asked Matsumoto if Terry and Mai potentially opened the door for other guest characters from other fighting games, and if we might see any others added to Street Fighter 6 down the road. The core of Matsumoto’s answer is that Capcom hopes this creates more opportunities for other IPs to join in on the SF6 action, and it sounds like Capcom is interested in the prospect.
“So, Terry and Mai are joining the roster starting from the year 2 line up, which is relatively early in the lifetime of the game,” Matsumoto began. “However, we were all very excited about the positivity that we saw online once we made the announcement.
“We are very much looking forward to actually seeing people play with these characters, and based on that reaction and based on how people are engaging with these characters, we would like to consider other options maybe in the future.
“This was quite a big challenge for us to even incorporate these guest characters, as you mentioned this is the first time, but hopefully things move forward in a positive way and there’s more opportunities that open up for us,” Matsumoto concluded.
As far as outside companies that Capcom is on good terms with at this moment in time, it seems that the big two are SNK and Marvel. We have not only seen several collaborations with SNK — including but not limited to Terry and Mai in Street Fighter 6 and the rerelease of SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos — but Capcom and Marvel have also banded together to develop the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics compilation that is set to bring seven classic titles back to modern platforms with added features.
Capcom has expressed a lot of interest in making new crossover games with both companies, and from everything we’ve heard recently Capcom and Marvel have a strong relationship right now. It would certainly be interesting if we eventually saw a Marvel Comics guest character join Street Fighter 6 as a DLC fighter, perhaps as a lead up to a new Marvel vs. Capcom game, though nothing of the sort has really been hinted at at this moment in time.
Street Fighter 6 just saw a teaser trailer for the next DLC character in line to be added to the game. If you didn’t catch it before, be sure to check out the recent teaser for Terry Bogard in Street Fighter 6 Season 2.