We’ve seen Capcom crossover with all manner of different companies over the years. SNK, Bandai Namco, Marvel Comics, and even Tatsunoko Production are all among the list of collaborators for the makers of Street Fighter, but we’ve never seen them lock horns with the likes of DC Comics’ heroes and villains.
In a recent rapid fire interview from Game Informer, Street Fighter 6’s director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto sat down to field 118 questions about the upcoming title. Here, Nakayama stated that his most wanted collaborations for Street Fighter are none other than DC Comics and Marvel Comics, though he notes that making that happen would be “really difficult.”
Among the long list of questions, the interviewer asked the Street Fighter 6 developers what series they’d most want to see Street Fighter crossover with. Nakayama was quick to respond and bring up DC.
“I’m a big fan of DC Comics, so it would be fantastic to collaborate with DC and Marvel Comics,” started Nakayama. “It would be fun, but really difficult.”
Such a crossover would be very difficult to pull off, as Nakayama notes, due to the rights hurdles that would be needed to make it happen. Even with Marvel Comics, a company that has worked with Capcom in the past to make several Marvel vs. Capcom entries and other Versus titles, making the stars align to get another Marvel vs. Capcom game made has proven to be a struggle.
That being said, it would be incredibly interesting to see a DC vs. Capcom fighting game. However, Warner Bros. holds the rights to the likes of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and company, and NetherRealm Studios has been the forerunner for fighting games based on these characters.
NRS also develops another longtime legendary fighting game franchise in Mortal Kombat, and the interviewer transitioned from this question to ask if the developers could ever see a Street Fighter X Mortal Kombat crossover happening.
“It’d be very cool, but it may also be hard to watch certain characters’ heads falling off,” explained Nakayama. “It might be OK if that happened off-screen,” continued Matsumoto.
That has been the long-running issue with seeing Ryu, Sub-Zero, Ken, and Scorpion in the same fighting game doing battle. Finding a balance between Mortal Kombat’s gory nature and bringing Street Fighter characters into that realm seems to be a puzzle that neither Capcom nor NRS have been able to solve.
Full-fledged crossover titles are certainly difficult to nail down, but one-off guest characters — though still tough to make happen — are generally a more reasonable prospect and more likely to happen. Game Informer asked which Marvel Comics character the developers feel would best fit in Street Fighter 6, and Nakayama had an interesting answer to that.
“I want to make Killmonger,” said the director. Erik Killmonger, the main villain from Marvel Studios’ 2018 film Black Panther, is a former United States Navy SEAL of Wakandan descent who ends up harnessing the power of the Black Panther on top of his already elite combat skills.
We saw Black Panther make his fighting game debut in 2017’s Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite in which he was a heavy rushdown character and had a similar playstyle to Wolverine in past Marvel vs. Capcom games. Why Nakayama feels Killmonger would fit well in Street Fighter 6 isn’t clear, but it’s likely that the director is simply a fan and would love to see him in Capcom’s latest fighting title.
Street Fighter 6 does not yet have a set release date, but it is expected sometime in 2023. It will be released for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
