Takayuki Nakayama, Director of Street Fighter 6, recently revealed some interesting Street Fighter lore over on Twitter. It turns out that a certain character that could’ve been thought of as being deceased is actually still alive.
During Akuma’s prologue story in Street Fighter 5, he ends up crossing paths with Gen, Necalli, and Ryu. He ends up defeating all three of them, but his fight with Gen is only shown through still images. Through coughing and wheezing, Gen taunts Akuma on what he lost when he abandoned his humanity.
Unimpressed by his words, Akuma moved in to strike against the weakened Gen. Though Akuma has been known to spare Gen from previous encounters, this time felt a little different.
“Your weakness has never been more clear,” proclaimed Akuma to Gen in response. “A useless speech meant to prolong the inevitable… accept your fate and go to Hell! Messatsu!”
Following this, Akuma is then seen standing over a lifeless Gen. Of course, Gen’s fate was always looking rather grim considering his crippling illness.
Despite all of this, Nakayama has confirmed that Gen is “still active” around the time of Street Fighter 6 in response to a question about the character. Considering that Street Fighter 6 takes place after Street Fighter 3, this shows that Gen has an incredible amount of resilence.
Of course, it’s certainly worth mentioning that it’s actually extremely rare for a character to actually become permanently deceased in the Street Fighter franchise. Some of the most notable examples of this actually happening are Dan’s father, Chun-Li’s father, and Goutetsu — at least thus far.
At one point, Gouken, the master of Ryu and Ken, was believed to have been felled by Akuma, but the confrontation actually just put him in a coma for a few years. He ended up making a surprising return in Street Fighter 4 due to the popularity of the “Sheng Long” rumor from the Street Fighter 2 days.
It was also stressed multiple times that M. Bison was killed by Ryu at the end of Street Fighter 5’s main story mode, A Shadow Falls. In hindsight, it comes across as somewhat of a joke considering that M. Bison has returned as a DLC challenger in Season 2 of Street Fighter 6, though the experience has left him with amnesia.
Unfortunately, Nakayama did not provide too many details about Gen’s whereabouts or activities. Ultimately, he only stated that he’s “still active” and wouldn’t be interested in participating in any sort of ball games.
Perhaps we’ll actually see Gen returning in Street Fighter 6 either as an NPC or a future DLC fighter. The fact that Nakayama has the character on his mind is certainly interesting in this regard.
Gen is still active. He wouldn’t be interested in ball games.
— TAKA-nakayama (@takaNakayama) January 15, 2025
Source: Event Hubs
