Capcom recently teased Akuma’s impending arrival to Street Fighter 6. Akuma is slated to be the final character being added to Street Fighter 6 via the Year 1 Character Pass, marking the end of Season 1.
As recently pointed out by Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama, Capcom has already begun development for Year 2 content. There’s still plenty more to look forward to after Akuma joins the roster.
“We’re currently working on Year 2 content and hope you’re looking forward to what’s coming next,” said Nakayama during the recent Capcom Highlights showcase. Of course, it’s expected that we’ll at least get four DLC fighters in the second season of Street Fighter 6, though it’s also possible there could be additional surprises waiting for us.
Needless to say, it’s time to start speculating on which characters we could potentially see for Season 2. Considering Street Fighter lore, there are tons of possibilities.
One character that could be interesting is Kolin, who made her debut appearance in Street Fighter 3 though she wouldn’t become playable until Street Fighter 5. Throughout most of Street Fighter 5’s meta, Kolin was typically considered to be a top tier threat that was almost always relevant in the highest level of play.
Kolin’s appearance in Street Fighter 5 introduced the freeze mechanic, which would also be partially adopted by Gill later on. This was a status effect that made it so that the opponent’s stun gauge would refrain from depleting even when they weren’t dealing with pressure.
This made it so that Kolin didn’t have to recklessly keep the opponent under pressure when their stun gauge was about to overflow. It generally wasn’t too relevant of a mechanic, but it still worked well for Kolin’s gameplan considering her emphasis on spacing and whiff punishing.
The freeze status effect would eventually clear out after a certain amount of time had passed during a round in Street Fighter 5, but the condition could also prematurely be dispelled if the opponent landed a hit against Kolin (or Gill). In this way, this debuff was similar to F.A.N.G’s poison.
However, it should be noted that there technically isn’t a stun gauge in Street Fighter 6. Instead, the freeze status effect would probably have to stall or slow how the Drive Gauge slowly restores itself.
Of course, the idea of freezing a Drive Gauge in Street Fighter 6 would clearly be a much bigger deal than freezing a stun gauge in Street Fighter 5. How balanced would a concept like this be in Street Fighter 6?
Ultimately we’d have to wait and see how that sort of mechanic would play out if Kolin or some other cryomancer were ever added to the Street Fighter 6 roster.