Video Game / Street Fighter 6

All spoilers for previous installments in the franchise up to Street Fighter V may have been left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Your moment. Your fight.

"When you go looking for strength, it's not like a game. This journey doesn't have a real ending."

— Luke Sullivan

Street Fighter 6 is a 2½D Fighting Game developed and published by Capcom as the seventh main entry in the Street Fighter franchise.

Touted as the “next evolution” of fighting games, Street Fighter 6 marks the biggest shake-up for the series since Street Fighter II. The game’s story finally moves past the Cliffhanger Wall presented in Street Fighter IV and V, pushing the timeline past Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike after a 24-year wait. The series also gets a major graphical overhaul through the power of Capcom’s RE Engine, with characters and environments now rendered in a more realistic style, and all of the returning characters getting radical new looks.

The game is split between three core modes: World Tour, Fighting Ground, and Battle Hub. World Tour is an expansive single-player story campaign that focuses on an extensively customizable Player Character who sets out to discover the meaning of true strength in the Street Fighter universe. The action primarily takes place in a pair of explorable Wide-Open Sandbox locations as well as several smaller spots across the globe, as the player faces many trials as they fight with many NPC fighters in both 1-on-1 and multi-man battles, take part in multiple minigames to earn cash for travel, and train with the legendary World Warriors to learn their special moves that they can add to their moveset to evolve their fighting style and reach new areas in the overworld.

Fighting Ground is the mode focusing on traditional 1-on-1 matches in both local and online play, which showcases the newly refined fighting gameplay. The biggest new addition is the Drive Gauge, a refilling meter that allows players to use special Drive abilities in exchange for the gauge, but will leave them in a drastically weakened "Burnout" state if it's emptied out. Other additions include the return of the multi-level super bar from the Street Fighter Alpha trilogy, with each character having three different Super Arts, an Extreme mode that allows players to set up matches with special conditions and gimmicks, and the addition of two new control types; in addition to the classic six-button control scheme, 6 adds Modern, a four-button scheme that allows players to pull off moves with simple button presses and directional inputs similar to Super Smash Bros. in exchange for less specific control, and Dynamic, a scheme exclusive to local play that simplifies attacking to a few buttons, which change what they do depending on the character's position. Fighting Ground also features a traditional Arcade mode, letting players select a fighter and see them in their own mini-arc as they battle through a series of opponents and bonus games, and new character-specific tutorials that give a quick rundown of each character's basic playstyle and how to use their special moves.

Finally, Battle Hub is the game’s major online multiplayer component. Players represented by their World Tour avatars can come to this arcade-like facility with up to 100 people per server, where they can duke it out by getting onto a cabinet, participate in special events and tournaments, buy special gear for their avatars in the Hub Goods Shop, and even play some Capcom arcade classics.

First teased in February 2022 before being fully revealed on June 2, 2022 during Sony's State of Play presentation, the game released on June 2, 2023 on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. A closed beta test ran for Battle Hub through October 7-10, 2022, a second closed test ran through December 16-19, 2022, an offline demo was released for PlayStation consoles on April 20, 2023, with Xbox and Steam following on April 26, and a final open beta test for Battle Hub ran through May 19-21, 2023. An arcade version of the game distributed by Taito (who also brought V to arcades) titled Street Fighter 6: Type Arcade was launched on December 14th, 2023.

Capcom and UDON Entertainment also announced a five-issue prequel comic miniseries, titled Days of the Eclipse, with "Issue 0" releasing on May 6, 2023 for Free Comic Book day and the miniseries releasing on a weekly schedule throughout May until the game's launch.

Playable Characters

Italics indicates DLC

• From Street Fighter: Ryu, Ken Masters
• From Street Fighter II: Chun-Li, Guile, Dhalsim, Blanka, Edmond Honda, Dee Jay, Zangief, Cammy White, Akuma
• From Street Fighter IV: Juri Han
• From Street Fighter V: Luke Sullivan, Rashid, Ed
• New to Street Fighter 6: Jamie Siu, Kimberly Jackson, Manon Legrand, Marisa Rossetti, JP, Lily Hawk, A.K.I.

DLC Releases:

• Year 1:
  • Rashid: July 24th, 2023
  • A.K.I.: September 27th, 2023
  • Ed: February 27th, 2024
  • Akuma: Spring 2024

We tropin’ fools are all getting to it, on the streets!

• Ability Depletion Penalty: If a character's Drive Gauge runs completely out in either offense or defense, the character goes into a "Burnout" state, visibly turning the character grey and putting them in a more defensive idle stance. While in burnout, characters can't use any Drive abilities, they suffer more blockstun, they'll be stunned if hit by a Drive Impact against either stage corner, and they take Scratch Damage while blocking special and super attacks.
• A.I. Breaker:
  • Against most foes but the actually skilled combatants, Throw spam is highly abusable in World Tour. Command Throws can't even be broken out of, making them even more efficient. So naturally the AI starts doing frame-perfect dodge rolls or jumping out of the grab hitboxes the first frame they get sometimes, but it still doesn't save them from their vulnerability to it. Those skilled combatants, usually the Masters and boss fights that have 3-round matches proper, will often frame-one react with a vengeance on you if you try to chain throws back-to-back on them.
  • Dhalsim's Yoga Comet, an aerial fireball fired down at an angle, really breaks the AI's ability to react. Most characters will simply walk repeatedly into it, failing to block or avoid it at all. It's quite easy to simply spam it an entire match for an easy victory against an otherwise superior foe.
• And the Adventure Continues: The finale of World Tour sees the PC defeat JP, only for the villain to laugh as they realize their victory meant absolutely nothing beyond the satisfaction of pounding the old codger's face in for doing nothing to stop Bosch's death. After the PC informs Luke of these events, the latter notes how they have "unfinished business".
• And Then What?: Following the player character's victory over him, JP mockingly congratulates them for beating him before asking if they gained anything from it or if the victory had any meaning. He can't help but laugh at the PC's expression as they look at Bosch's corpse, realizing their victory meant nothing.
• Announcer Chatter: One of the features of the game involve real-time, pre-recorded commentary from some of the Fighting Game Community's most notable commentators and a few celebrities as well, segregated into play-by-play and color commentary. By role, the game is set to launch with the following choices:
  • Play-by-play: Jeremy "Vicious" Lopez, Steve "Tasty Steve" Scott, Aru and Kosuke Hiraiwa.
  • Color: James Chen, Thea Trinidad, H.E. Demon Kakka and Hikaru Takahashi.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The game features two different control systems available in online play — "Modern" simplifies the inputs so that performing a Shoryuken is as simple as pressing a direction plus the Special Move button (e.g. Forward + Triangle/Y), and combos can be done simply by holding R2 and pressing the Light, Medium and Heavy attack buttons. The other one, "Classic", is the same old control scheme that's been present since the very beginning of the franchise (the trade-off being that Modern doesn't have separate Punch/Kick buttons). The Modern controls in particular, aren't too far off from how other fighting games have simplified their inputs (notably Guilty Gear Xrd, which had something similar, and Super Smash Bros., which did the inverse for certain characters, including Ryu ^note for example, he could do the Shoryuken either with Up + B or the traditional dragon punch motion (Forward, Down, Down-Forward + A/B).), and are very reminiscent of the easy inputs found in Super Street Fighter Turbo Revival for the Game Boy Advance.
  • Dynamic Controls, a third control style only available in local play, takes this even further by making buttons context-sensitive, allowing players to mash buttons and have moves come out depending on the context (e.g. pressing X at medium range will result in a jump in heavy kick, but at close range, will go into a blockstring).
  • Any character with a unique powerup or move that requires ammunition (such as Ryu’s Denjin charge, Honda’s Sumo Spirit, or Kimberly’s spray cans) will have a symbol next to the Drive Gauge to show when they are charged up or show how much ammo is left.
  • If an opponent blocks a Drive Impact near the corner, they will slam against the wall in a unique "Crush" state. This acts as a guard crush of sorts and punishes opponents for blocking a Drive Impact by opening them up for a combo. However, some characters have moves that act autonomously, like JP's portals or Dhalsim's fireballs, meaning it might be possible to set up situations where you can guarantee a Drive Impact. If the opponent was in a state where reacting to a Drive Impact is impossible (such as by being trapped in blockstun by a multihit projectile), then the opponent will not go into the Crush state when they are hit by it and instead block the Drive Impact without being launched back. The game even demonstrates this with a unique "Lock" prompt, preventing certain characters from having unconestable unblockables.
  • World Tour comes with some specific features to make playing the mode smooth.
    • If you have no Flight Tickets, you can travel back to Metro City for free, giving you plenty of opportunities to restock afterwards.
    • When you've maxed a fighting style's level, you can transfer any extra style experience onto other styles. This way, you can stick with one that you like and still make progress on the others.
    • You can use a seperate controller for when you're not in a fight, as Capcom recognized how awkward it is to play a third-person Wide-Open Sandbox with an arcade stick or fight-pad with no analog controls.
    • Each Master has one gift item that will raise their friendship by 40 points. These items are acquired by completing Sub-Missions, and only one of each exists. To prevent a player from wasting them on the wrong Master, these gifts will be greyed out unless you're talking to the correct Master.
• Anti-Rage Quitting: In two improved ways compared to the previous game. Not only will rage quitting result in a loss on the culprit's record but there is also now a "No Contest" option for games with poor connections that allows players to instead call off the match without the need for quitting as a mutual agreement that match conditions are unplayable. In addition, players who repeatedly rage quit will have either a yellow card or red card icon displayed next to their username in online matches that indicates they have been segregated from non-quitters into a queue specifically for rage quitters.
• Arbitrary Mission Restriction: Fights in World Tour give you a number of optional objectives to complete, and completing them can earn you experience, money, and items.
• Arc Words: "What is strength?" in World Tour mode.
• Art Evolution: This game takes many of the visual elements introduced in Street Fighter V and cranks them up:
  • The game is now rendered in Capcom's own RE Engine to create more realistic lighting, resulting in scenes with even more vibrant and varied color palettes than what could be shown previously.
  • Hair and cloth physics are more realistic and high-fidelity than what was used previously. Compare Luke's hair across V and 6 for example; his previous outing gave him flatter solid shapes to render his hair (kinda like spaghetti) that emulate something like clay. This game opts instead for more realistic hair with individual strands.
  • Animations overall are more fluid while still retaining a lot of punchiness. Character models utilize a lot more limb breaking a la SFIII, giving hits way more impact than they've had in the previous 3D titles.
  • The series' signature ink effects are dialed up all across the characters' movesets, creating more colorful and stylistic flourishes. Landing a Perfect Parry, Drive Impact or Drive Reversal creates an explosion of vibrant paint splashes and even briefly shifts the shading style on models to more of a cel-shaded look.
  • Super moves now darken and blur the backgrounds, contrasting attacks with much more power and color.
  • Character selection has gone through a total overhaul, including fully animated player models, a full backdrop now set in a graffiti-covered block, and text displaying a short breakdown of a character's attributes (play style, effective range, and difficulty).
  • The match lead-in is now a fully-animated cutscene rather than a simple still-frame of each fighter's portrait akin to most Versus Character Splashes.
• Ascended Meme: After beating World Tour mode, you unlock an optional boss fight against Sheng Long. He's a level 90 NPC using Ryu's moveset, and considered the hardest fight in the game.
• Assist Character: In World Tour, you can use your super meter to call in any of the masters you've bonded with to assist you in a fight for a short time.
• Bait-and-Switch: Cammy's World Tour quest has her giving the player a list of locations to photograph "targets". Going by her tone, you'd think she's sending you off to do spy work. What she's really doing is sending you to take pictures of cats. She gets hilariously flustered when you ask her about it afterwards.
• Balance Buff: Across the board, returning fighters in this game have some of the most significant improvements out of any title. Characters who have retained the same moveset through most of the series (e.g. Ryu, Chun-Li, Dee Jay, etc.) now have new special moves that grant extra utility and distinctiveness, and the game puts a greater focus on Unique Normals and Target Combos, greatly expanding the size of every character's moveset and giving everyone utilities previously lacking to flesh out their gameplay.
  • Juri, a notorious low-tier pick in the previous game, is vastly improved from what she had in V. Not only does she have her Shikusen back from IV (which was sorely missed in V), but the follow-ups that she could do with Fuha stocks in the previous game have now been converted into standalone moves, giving her ample combo ability, especially without the need of stocking up first. Conversely, if she gathers Fuha stocks, those same moves gain stronger properties on hit and on block, and can chain into each other without the need for an additional resource (such as V-Trigger). Pair this with the universal benefits she gets with the Drive System, and Juri is effectively an entirely different character from what she was even towards the end of V's lifecyle.
  • Ryu is still a fundamental-focused Jack of All Stats, but the additions to his moveset allow him to go even further than that. While benefitting from system changes like stronger projectiles and a more aggressive neutral, he's also got his new Denjin Charge which provides a whole new layer utility; he can power up his Hadoken to boost his projectile game, or empower his new Hashogeki for greater combo and damage opportunities. It means he has a greater ability to adapt his strategy to more situations. This keeps his low skill floor while creating room to improve and optimize on his damage output, all while still playing like an honest shoto.
  • Zangief, who throughout V's development infamously struggled due to his poor approach, is able to play much more aggressively in 6. Drive Rush lets him move around on par with other fighters, and he's received several buffs to the range of his normals and grabs, faster startup on moves like Siberian Express^note An armored charge that transitions into a Grapple Move if he connects with the opponent, and a stronger Double Lariat that improves his combo potential. Last but not least, his Spinning Piledriver receives a massive boost in damage, the light version of the attack dealing the equivalent of an EX version in V.
  • Unlike most previous entries in the series, health values in this game are mostly universal at 10,000 health - a notable step up for characters like Chun-Li and Cammy who were often saddled with less health. As of the base roster, only 3 characters have more health than this amount: Honda, Marisa (both of whom have 500 more) and Zangief (the largest with an extra 1000).
• Beef Gate: Certain areas in World Tour are gated by high-level enemies, hinting that you might want to hold off on visiting them until later.
• Big Bad Ensemble: As of the update that includes A.K.I. as a Downloadable Content fighter, F.A.N.G is reintroduced as a secondary Big Bad who wants to hijack the remnants of Shadaloo from JP, the primary Big Bad.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Downplayed. Bloodless Carnage is very much in effect. Regardless, the violence in this game tops previous entries. Some examples include Ryu's Shin Shoryuken cleanly knocking the air out of the opponent, Jamie outright snapping the opponent's windpipe like a walnut with his Getsuga Saiho super, and Cammy not only performing her horrific assassination move from the animated movie but also her new Level 3, which is framed in a way in which it looks like she's executing the opponent by kicking their head clean off. While not especially bloody, characters will also visibly gain bruises and minor cuts as the match progresses.
• Bonus Stage: Arcade mode brings back two bonus stages from prior games — one where you must demolish a truck within the time limit, and another where you must parry basketballs tossed at you.
• Break Meter: The Drive Gauge serves double duty as a guard meter similar to the one in Alpha, lowering slightly every time an attack is blocked. Aggressive play on a constantly-blocking opponent can push them into the Burnout state.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Some of the Game Over sequences, such as Juri looking right at the camera and saying, "The hell are you looking at?"
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • As was initially revealed with Ryu and Chun-Li, the series' biggest mainstays, all of the returning characters from SFII are sporting completely new base designs in this game. These replace the classic designs that have been used for the last few decades for the first time for the majority of the cast. In addition, all of the returning characters (with the sole exception of Luke) have completely new theme tracks, bucking a trend of homaging SFII from the previous two games for the first time since the release of 3rd Strike. This is most notable with Ken, who ditches his trademark red gi in favor of a more rugged, somewhat disheveled appearance.
  • The title of this installment uses an Arabic number instead of the Roman numeral used by the proceeding five entries and their respective updates. The appropriate Roman numeral (VI) does appear as the right half of the hexagonal "6" in the game's logo, rotated 90 degrees to the left.
  • After Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter V had Ryu front-and-center in promotional materials, 6 returns to what Street Fighter III tried to do with Alex and focuses on having a different, younger character being the Mascot for the game, with Luke being the main character of 6 and the focus of the official box art. Of course, Ryu is still featured in promotional materials, and Luke first appeared in V, but this still makes 6 the first Street Fighter game in more than two decades to focus on someone else that isn't Ryu.
  • As opposed to IV's grittier style inspired by Japanese calligraphy or V's more "claylike" visuals, 6 instead uses a more realistic, but otherwise stylized (think Tekken, in this case) art style owing to running on Capcom's RE Engine (the same one used since Resident Evil 7: Biohazard).
  • Button Mashing is no longer a command input. Instead most rapid striking attacks like Hundred Hand Slap or Electric Thunder are tied to quarter-circle inputs.
• Broken Bridge:
  • When you start World Tour, the western area of Metro City is blocked off by police barriers. It'll be a while until you're able to visit that area, and even then it's a little while longer before the barriers go away.
  • When you first enter Old Nayshall, the mountain path is inaccessible on the west end by a barrier, and on the east end by a meditator. The east one eventually opens up with story progression, and you have to make your way through the path to open the other end.
• Bullet Time: In World Tour mode, players can use "Drive Stall" to slow the flow of time. It is particularly useful when encountering hostile opponents while roaming, as it gives you time to plan how to deal with them (if you wish to at all), and strengthens Master Actions so you can get even more of an early advantage if you strike first.
• But Thou Must!: A few dialogue choices in World Tour will repeat until the player chooses the "Yes" option. Infooencer, for example, won't take "No" for an answer when asking the player for permission to use footage of them fighting for a video of his.
• Call-Back:
  • Ken's win pose in this game◊ is taken straight from his Street Fighter III: New Generation/Second Impact victory screen◊.
  • Ken's Shippu Jinraikyaku super briefly creates a lightning bolt effect identical to the super flash from 3rd Strike, in an homage to Shippu Jinraikyaku by far being Ken's most iconic super in 3rd Strike.
  • Ken borrows some of his pupil Sean's moves: Ken finishes the Critical Art version of his Shinryu Reppa by slamming his fist down to the opponent's face to send them careening back to the ground as the finishing blow, bearing a remarkable resemblance to Sean's Dragon Smash in New Generation and 2nd Impact. Ken also has a new tumbling wheel kick special called Dragonlash Kick, obviously based on Sean's Ryuubi Kyaku.
  • The Hado no Kamae returns in a spiritual sense; Luke mocks Ryu's Hadoken as one of his taunts.
  • While in burnout, Chun-Li's idle stance reverts back to her original one from II. Other characters go even deeper into this, veering into Mythology Gag territory. Luke's Burnout idle pose, for example, is based on the Shadaloo soldier NPCs from SFV Cinematic Story, and Ryu's is based on the pose he had during the early betas of IV.
  • When James Chen is on commentary, he directly quotes some of the announcer's lines from Street Fighter Alpha III and Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium.
  • The basketball parrying bonus stage from Street Fighter III returns as a minigame in World Tour mode, complete with an HD remake of the 3rd Strike version of the stage.
  • The cat from Cammy's Super Street Fighter II Turbo ending appears in one of her win poses and her idle animation on the character select screen.
  • In the prequel comic, a paternal figure to one of the main characters dies as a direct consequence of the Big Bad's actions while his daughter/niece is either out for blood or seeking answers behind the circumstances of their death/disappearance. Chun-Li, Juri, or Kimberly?
  • In World Tour, you'll have some fights (for example, Luke in the Demo version of the game) where you'll be accompanied by another companion (i.e., Bosch, Li-Fen, etc.), something that is clearly inspired by the Alpha series' Dramatic Battles. After achieving a specified bond level, players can also call in their mentor(s) for backup, allowing them to double-team their opponents.
• The Cameo:
  • Abigail's garage shows up from the Metro City Bay stage in the previous game.
  • Ken and Alex's stages from Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact are locations players can visit in Metro City.
  • Hugo shows up in several posters around Metro City.
  • Mike Haggar has a massive statue built in his honor.
  • The Metro City Downtown stage features many members of the Mad Gear Gang from Final Fight, such as Damnd, Andore, Poison, G. Oriber and Two P. Several members of the Andore family also appear in World Tour Mode.
  • There are advertisements for Hakan's oil.
  • Retsu from the original Street Fighter appears as one of the spectators on the Macho Ring stage and as an NPC opponent in World Tour mode.
  • Carlos Miyamoto from Final Fight 2 appears as an NPC opponent in World Tour mode.
  • Fair Libra, one of the Judgement Girls from Street Fighter III appears as an NPC in World Tour Mode.
  • Max, one of the combatants from Street Fighter II’s intro sequence, can be fought as a World Tour Mode NPC.
  • Carol from Captain Commando is another World Tour NPC opponent.
  • A flashback image of Yun and Yang appears in Jamie’s Arcade Mode story, while a similar image of T. Hawk can be seen in Lily's.
  • Sean appears in another of the unlockable Arcade Mode illustrations, enjoying burgers with Luke, Jamie, Rudra and Bosch at the gym. He also appears as the emphasized character of an illustration in Ken's mentor interactions, talking about his dedication to Ken's training.
  • In World Tour Mode, an image of Elena is shown when Lily talks about having fought her while in Africa.
  • A poster of Zeku can be seen in Kimberly’s bedroom during Arcade Mode.
  • Additionally, other characters from past installments like Sakura, Dan, Laura, Guy, Fei Long, Balrog, Adon, Hakan, Dudley, Crimson Viper, Rainbow Mika, El Fuerte, Charlie, Falke, Juli, Birdie, Maki, G, Lucia, F.A.N.G, Rufus, Abigail, Seth, Vega and Decapre and the other Dolls appear on illustrations from World Tour Mode and Arcade Mode.
  • Sagat and Kage appear in a montage depicting Ryu's past during his Arcade Mode route.
  • Juni appears in Cammy's Arcade Mode story, now trying to live a peaceful existence after having been freed from Bison's influence during Street Fighter V.
  • Several characters from the Breath of Fire series make appearances as cameos in World Tour.
• Canon Welding: Metro City from Final Fight is the first hub area in the World Tour mode, and members of the Mad Gear gang show up as various mooks and stage spectators. Final Fight has long been established as taking place in the same continuity as Street Fighter.
• Cap:
  • The maximum level for your character in particular is 100, with the highest possible health value being 30,000 points.
  • The level cap for each style maxes out at 20, wherein you're rewarded with a mastery cutscene that highlights each respective character's definition of strength.
• Character Customization: While there have been modes that let you spec a character's stats like in Alpha 3 MAX, this is the first time in the series where that becomes a full focus with the avatar in World Tour.
• Charge-Input Special:
  • As usual, Chun-Li's Kikoken and Spinning Bird Kick. Those are her sole charge specials, however, as everything else (ranging from her other Specials to her Supers) is a motion input.
  • Guile, once again. In addition to his usual Sonic Boom and Flash Kick, he also has a new Special Move in Sonic Blade (his V-Skill I back in V), performed with fireball back plus punch. Additionally, Sonic Break is now performed by pressing two punch buttons while Solid Puncher is active instead of being a part of his EX Sonic Boom. Unlike Chun-Li, Guile also has Sonic Hurricane and Crossfire Somersault as Charge back-to-forward inputs, with Solid Puncher being a double fireball back motion instead.
  • E. Honda retains his two trademark Charge specials (Sumo Headbutt and Sumo Smash), but also has more motions than he did in any Street Fighter; including his signature Hundred Hand Slap, which is now a motion input instead of a mash input as mentioned above in Breaking Old Trends. He's also one of the few characters with a charge super in Ultimate Killer Head Ram, a souped up version of Sumo Headbutt.
  • Blanka likewise has most of his Rolling Attack specials intact barring the Backstep version, which is now a half-circle input as opposed to a Charge input. Unlike Honda or Guile, though, he doesn't have any Supers that are charge back-to-forward inputs.
  • Dee Jay is a notable case. Two of his Special Moves (Air Slasher and Jackknife Maximum) have been reverted to Charge specials after being converted to a motion character in USFIV's Omega mode, but the rest of his moves are all motion inputs (including his Rolling Sobat, which is still a fireball plus kick input like it was in Omega). And while Machine Gun Upper does have a history of being converted to a motion input, it lacks the mash input it had back in IV; Dee Jay only needs to press the motion and then the button once, no mash input necessary.
• Chiaroscuro: Developed on the RE Engine, 6 shows off some impressive dark/light contrast, which is prominent on stages like Metro City Downtown, with the centre of the stage featuring a bright shaft of light piercing between city blocks, and the dingy, graffiti-covered alleys on either side almost pitch black at the extremities. Dhalsimer Temple is similar, with a brightly-lit gold statue of the Hindu god Ganesha taking centre stage, with the deeper recesses of the temple in shadow. Even bright, sunny stages like Blanka's have spots of bright luminescence (the straw roofs of various huts, as well as sunlight piercing the jungle canopy) starkly contrasted with spots of much darker shadowing (the undergrowth and treeline).
• City of Adventure: The various locales you travel to over the course of World Tour mode, from the sprawling Metro City to the fledgling nation of Nayshall, are bustling with fighters to cross fists with, masters to train under, and challenges to overcome.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Drive Impacts and Drive Reversals use streaks of colors associated with the character employing them, but the other Drive mechanics have dedicated colors all their own.
  • Drive Rushes shroud your character in green.
  • Drive Parries are blue.
  • Overdrives/EX Moves are still yellow, just like they were since their introduction back in Second Impact.
  • And responding to a Drive Impact with one of your own (or using any move with armor frames against an attack) briefly makes your character flash red.
• Comeback Mechanic: Once a character's health drops to 20%, their Level 3 Super will change to a Critical Art, with an extended cutscene and stronger damage output.
• Commonplace Rare: There's a handful of clothing items in World Tour that are seen being worn all the time by common NPCs, but aren't sold in shops and can only be found as rewards from particular enemies in particular locations. If you want one of these items, this often requires you to go out of your way to not only find the enemy, which is easier said than done, but also to complete the challenge to win the item. For example, boxing shorts are only dropped by Chikadees (weak Crows gang members) on the Metro City Subway, meaning you not only have to go back to the subway (which is optional after the first visit), you have to hope the randomized enemies on the train include Chikadees, and even then there's no guarantee they'll have the shorts. If you get lucky and they do have them, you still have to beat their challenge, and by that point you're probably so overleveled that you'll KO them in one or two hits without debuffing items, forcing you to start over.
• Company Cross References:
  • Mettaurs show up as one of the hazards in Extreme Battles.
  • Guile's forward taunt has him hold a smaller Sonic Boom in his hand, calling to mind one of Vergil's taunts where he does the same with a Mirage Blade.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: High enough levels for the CPU in Versus or Arcade will result in them being blatant input-reading bastards as they just need one solid hit confirm to do frame-perfect combos on you for most of your life bar. Meanwhile foes in World Tour have Secret A.I. Moves they will abuse with impunity to make things challenging, and by endgame they'll pull the old Street Fighter trick of single-frame grabs and cheating the brief downtime on their Charge-Input Special to spam them with impunity. The level 60 Dunban in Nayshall is a perfect example, able to fire off Dee Jay's Air Slasher in Overdrive back-to-back with little pause at all and no burnout thanks to being a Drive Gauge-less foe.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Aggressive foes in World Tour will often come at you in groups and waves. Naturally, they each have a tiny amount of health compared to the singular NPCs you can challenge.
• Continuity Nod: One NPC in World Tour Mode mentions a thriving martial arts school known as Rindo-kan, which is run by an unnamed young woman. This refers to Makoto from Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, who had challenged several other fighters with the goal of reviving her family's failing dojo.
• Counter-Attack:
  • The Drive Reversal, this game's version of Street Fighter Alpha's Alpha Counter, costs two stocks of the Drive Gauge and allows a player to, while blocking, counterattack with a low-damage blow that knocks the opponent back.
  • Punishes are encouraged and made into a proper mechanic this time: striking a foe when they're in the recovery frames of an attack will activate a "Punish Counter", which confers more frame advantage than a standard counterhit. Certain moves will trigger extra hitstun when used as a Punish Counter, similar to V's Crush Counters. Normal throw Punish Counters deal a whopping 70% extra damage, drain a bar from the Drive Gauge, force a hard knockdown, and trigger a cool cinematic camera angle and unique taunting line from the attacker.
• Darker and Edgier: The prequel comics are this to the main game, eschewing Bloodless Carnage with characters getting shot, stabbed and wounded, several mild swears thrown around, and people actually dying compared to World Tour's relatively family-friendly beatdowns. Not to mention going into full depth on Ken's Frame-Up combined with his Heroic BSoD.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If you're KO'd in World Tour, you have the option to either use a continue to get right back up with full health or respawn at a set location with full health. Either way, you incur no further penalties.
• Degraded Boss: A handful of boss fighters in World Tour can optionally be found and challenged later on as regular - if high-leveled - enemies after their associated quests are completed, including Retsu, Carlos Miyamoto, and Rewancha.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The most obviously different animations that play from causing a Burnout are the idle, walking, and blocking animations, but there's also some finer details included. For instance, players are unlikely to see the Burnout recovery animations in an actual match. The subtle labored breathing facial animations also play outside of Burnout state and become more obvious the emptier the Drive Gauge is, which may be useful to more attentive players.
  • Victory animations change according to the winner's remaining health. Perfect KO animations are nothing new to the series, but 6 also includes alternate victory animations for high, middling, and low health.
  • The credits to World Tour Mode not only feature still images of your avatar's first meeting with their master's but will also show your avatar in the clothes they were wearing when they met their master.
• Dialogue During Gameplay: A first since Street Fighter IV's Rival Battles, during the final stage in Arcade Mode, the opposing character will make occasional comments or quips mid-fight.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Rather amusingly, the Blanka-chan Costume. Regardless of how you feel about the costume itself, that is but a small price to pay for what is arguably one of the best equipment items you can get early on (as early as Chapter 6, and as part of the main story, no less). Boosts every stat in the game (and can be upgraded even further by Enhancing it after the fact), and carries the added benefit of filling up your Super Gauge much faster? Sure, why not. It helps that you can get an upgrade early on which allows you to equip cosmetic items on top of stat-affecting items, meaning you can wear whatever you want and still have the benefits of the costume.
  • As far as Styles go, you're already set with Luke's from the very beginning. While it's slow to level up at the start if you master Flash Knuckle's (which is one of the moves you start out within the style) "Just Frame" Bonus, you can dish out some serious damage without ever using your Overdrives before you unlock full utility of your Drive Gauge. Beyond that, you've also got a very strong suite of normals and Target Combos to work with, especially if you plan on making full use of his kit by playing on Classic controls (nevermind Luke being one of the lucky few characters to have near-full access to his kit on Modern, with him losing out on a few pokes and command normals).
• Difficult, but Awesome: Perfect Parrying a projectile doesn't cause the action to pause for a moment like it normally does, making it hard to capitalize off of through reaction alone. However, if a player knows they're going to land that type of Perfect Parry, they'll still get the immediate Lag Cancel of the melee Perfect Parry, and their subsequent follow up combo doesn't have its damage scaled quite as hard.
• Easter Egg:
  • Characters now have special animations if they scored a Flawless Victory. Special mention goes to Juri, who parodies Chun-Li's classic "Yatta!" pose while snickering to herself.
  • Jamie's forward taunt changes based on his current drink level, appearing drunker and drunker the higher it goes. When his drink level is 4, he straight up passes out for several seconds, unresponsive to the player's input the entire time.
  • Kimberly's level 3 super has a Background Music Override occur as she whips out a casette player and earbuds. If another Kimberly player does the same to her, it gets a vocal track layered onto it.
  • If you're on a winstreak, you'll be treated to a Theme Music Power-Up in the Fighting Ground menu, wherein the instrumental version of "Not on the Sidelines" plays if you've won 5 consecutive times, with the vocals kicking in after 10.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: The three European stages prominently feature the most iconic building associated with the nation depicted; the Eiffel Tower (France), the Colosseum (Italy), and the Elizabeth Tower aka Big Ben (United Kingdom).
• Embedded Precursor: Various Capcom arcade games, including previous Street Fighter and Final Fight games, are playable in the Battle Hub.
• Equipment-Hiding Fashion: You can unlock Gear Appearance fairly early in World Tour, letting you choose your outfit independent of equipment stats.
• Equipment Upgrade: You can upgrade clothes by feeding other clothes and accessories into them, increasing their stats.
• Establishing Character Moment: Meeting any major character in World Tour triggers a cutscene that shows off the core traits of their personality, from Chun-Li playfully schooling Li-Fen to Jamie beating down a gang of Mad Gear thugs cocky swagger. There's also always a title card of their name that flashes into place once they've fully shown off.
• Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: World Tour mode runs on this trope, as your player avatar can start street fights with basically any random pedestrian, from businessmen and food vendors to students and construction workers, and they're all up for the challenge. The in-universe reasoning is that the years where the Mad Gear gang was in charge of Metro City made everyone around toughen up to survive, and that that has built up a culture where everyone is up and ready for a scrap.
• Everyone Has Standards: Once the player character finds out that the Nayshall Resistance plans to make Bosch win the Nayshall Tournament so that they can use a rigged championship belt to blow up next to JP as a Heroic Sacrifice, they immediately are visibly horrified and proceed to beat the crap out of Rewancha on the spot for even daring to consider such a plan before moving to stop it themselves.
• Experience Points: Present in World Tour in two flavors. Standard EXP points count towards your character's level, with each level-up increasing your base perimeters and awarding skill points for your Skill Tree. Style EXP, meanwhile, counts towards unlocking new special moves and interactions with your mentors, and is earned primarily by using that mentor's fighting style, as well as defeating opponents using that mentor's style.
• EX Special Attack: Now called Overdrives. Uniquely, as opposed to being tied to the Super Gauge like in the previous three games, it is instead tied to the new Drive System — with one Overdrive consuming two stocks of the Drive Gauge (meaning that, theoretically, you have three EX Moves total just like in SFV).
• Fictional Country: One of the game’s key locations (complete with its own flag and richly-defined culture) is the Kingdom of Nayshall, an obscure, developing nation tucked away in a remote corner of Asia inspired by real-world South Asian nations such as Nepal or Bhutan (on the World Tour globe, Nayshall's map pin matches Nepal's exact location northeast of India). The nation’s name is likely inspired by the Hindi name ‘Naishal’, meaning ‘The Mountain’. JP is noted to have a vested interest in the fledgling country.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: While März is mentioned by Cammy as being deceased, Cammy has no special interactions with A.K.I. (whose master, F.A.N.G, was responsible for her death). The same applies to Rashid and the death of his friend; F.A.N.G. himself appears as The Unfought, but Cammy and Rashid have no relevance to him. Cammy also never mentions the Apprentice Dolls at all, leaving their fate up in the air.
• Game Within a Game: The Battle Hub houses a rotating selection of classic Capcom arcade games, including (but not limited to) Final Fight, Street Fighter II, Captain Commando, and Mega Man: The Power Battle. You can find arcade cabinets with classic Capcom games in them in World Tour as well.
• Genre Mashup: World Tour mode is a blend of the fighting mechanics at the core of Street Fighter 6 with a Wide-Open Sandbox Action RPG.
• Genre Motif: The game has an overall hip-hop theme going, hearkening back to 3rd Strike, with the main theme being a rap number, the main hub of World Tour Mode being the urban Metro City, and the general style of the game takes a lot of inspiration from graffiti art.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Kimberly, in particular, with two of her taunts, one of which is a Kuji-In.
  Kimberly: Domo arigato! From the Bushinryu!
• Greater-Scope Villain: Though M. Bison has been Killed Off for Real as of the previous game, his presence is still felt through this game's Big Bad JP, who formerly worked for Shadaloo as their financial advisor and was deemed a worthy successor to Bison through his use of Psycho Power.
• Guide Dang It!: Figuring out which purchasable gift items will increase your friendship with a character the most can be difficult to figure out, and at times even seem outright contradictory, as some of the masters preferred gift items are things they outright don't like, such as Chun-Li's being canned herring, Cammy's being jellied eel, Dee Jay's being lukewarm beer, Dhalsim's being ultra-mild instant curry, and Guile's being natto.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: A few fights with major cast characters in World Tour end with a cutscene showing the player character lost even if they won the fight, mostly to highlight that for however far your Avatar has come, they're little more than an overeager small fry compared to the characters that have been fighting and training for years on end. They're not a Hopeless Boss Fight, though; managing to win does get you extra rewards.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: On your first trip to the United Kingdom to chase down Bosch, you run into Juri, who fights you and Bosch two on one. Juri is level 25, a few levels past most of the fights you've participated in so far, and will have a much higher health pool and attack output than you're expected to have going into the fight. While it is possible to survive the encounter if you come prepared, the odds are stacked greatly against you. In addition, it is impossible to knock out Juri outright as the battle will forcibly end with a fade to black once Juri's health reaches a critical point and the cutscene following the battle will play out with the same outcome.
• Hourglass Plot: Since Alpha, much of the game's background lore revolved around Ryu overcoming his inner struggle with the Satsui no Hado, something that, come 6, he's finally achieved inner peace and unlocked the fullest potential of the Power of Nothingness, the Satsui no Hado's Good Counterpart. Ken, on the other hand, has mostly been Out of Focus, with him settling down and having a kid by the events of 3rd Strike... that is, until his life goes downhill in the Prequel comic and he goes on the run, with his hardships possibly putting him at risk of succumbing to the Satsui no Hado. In other words, while Ryu's at his best in this game, Ken is unfortunately at his lowest point.
• Immune to Flinching: The Drive Impact, being this game's equivalent of Street Fighter IV's Focus Attack, and costing one stock of the Drive Gauge. It functions similarly to the Focus Attack, but with an added twist. Suppose you use it on the opponent near the wall. In that case, it will induce a wall splat for better combo opportunities, much like how Blowbacks in The King of Fighters has worked since The King of Fighters XIV. And if the opponent is in Burnout when they hit the wall? Now, they're stunned, rewarding you with an opportunity to hit them with a devastating combo.
• Instructive Level Design: Aside from being its own full-fledged story mode, World Tour is also designed to help ease new players into fighting games, and SF6's mechanics, in an organic fashion. This can be seen in some of the minigames, which introduce some of the nuances of gameplay. Examples of this include:
  • The Hado Pizza mini-game, for instance, uses Action Commands that mirror the inputs for special attacks, such as the quarter-circle forward directional input for the Hadouken.
  • KARATE, conversely, has players holding a directional input to build power, followed by pressing the opposite direction and an attack button to cleave bottles and break bricks, the same way one would use charge specials such as Guile's Sonic Boom. The harder versions of KARATE change it up by asking for vertical charges, which other charge specials use (i.e. Chun-Li's Spinning Bird Kick).
  • The Kung-Fu board-breaking minigame, in addition to being an homage to a bonus round from the first Street Fighter, teaches the importance of the difference between low, medium, and high attacks. Strike true, and you break the board; but land the wrong type of attack, and you will be penalized. It trains the player in knowing what moves work for whatever they're aiming at using a given fighting style, in the air and on the ground, which translates well into confirming hits in an actual fight.
  • Scrap Heap, another homage — this time to the car-busting bonus rounds of Final Fight and Street Fighter II — rewards the player for successfully performing combos with higher scores and higher rewards.
  • Ball Block Blitz, just like the bonus stages from Street Fighter III, imparts the importance of mastering the Drive Parry, with Perfect Parries granting more points.
  • When fighting some mooks on the streets, they may have a white outline appear around them after certain attacks: attacking them during this period will inflict additional damage and, if hit with a special, stun. This knowledge can then be transferred out of World Tour mode to other modes for inflicting Punish Counters.
  • More generally, each type of generic goon has a specific attack pattern and Drop Locks that encourage you to take advantage of the weakness in said pattern; for example, enemies that jump repeatedly have drops that require landing anti-airs against them, while projectile spammers reward canceling their attacks with your own projectiles and getting in close. These train the player to counter common strategies in fights and capitalize on creating an opening.
• Item-Drop Mechanic: Opponents in World Tour have a varying number of "Drop Locks", conditions that will cause them to drop a specified item when defeated. These range from as simple as just winning the fight, to landing a certain number of a particular attack type, to defeating them without taking any damage. With the exception of Pre Existing Encounters, you can check what items and requirements an NPC has before engaging them.
• I Shall Taunt You: Returning from Street Fighter IV, every fighter now has more than one taunt (usually three; though Jamie's taunts are different if he's drunk while Guile can taunt the opponent while crouching), done by pressing all buttons like in SFV plus a direction. For example, pressing back plus all buttons as Luke nets you his infamous mocking Hadouken taunt.
• Lag Cancel: The Drive Rush, which is a spiritual successor to the FADC^note Focus Attack Dash Cancel from SFIV, that can be performed after a cancelable Normal Attack or after a Parry stance, and allows the player to dash forward out of them. It costs one stock of the Drive Gauge if parry canceling or three if normal canceling.
• Level-Up Fill-Up: Leveling up in World Tour restores all your health.
• Jiggle Physics: Notably, the animation is incredibly detailed for virtually every character's muscles. They can stiffen, go limp and react to stimuli much like real-life musculature does, a vastly more complex system than the clay-like anatomy of IV and V.
• Limit Break: Each character has three Super Arts, each level requiring the same number of bars of the super gauge. Furthermore, when a character is reduced to 20% health or less, their level 3 Super Art becomes a Critical Art, which deals more damage and has a more elaborate animation.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Gang members in Metro City and other ne'er-do-wells wear masks to hide their identity, as well as to show how serious they are about the gangster life. The masks, however, are laughable, being made from cardboard boxes, old CRT televisions, and ties with eye holes cut in them.
• Mana Burn:
  • Scratch Damage goes to the Drive Gauge first instead of the health bar unless the defending player is in the Burnout state.
  • Super Arts reduce the opponent's Drive Gauge by a fixed amount, depending on the strength of the Super Art, going from half a bar, to one a full bar, to two bars per the three types.
• Mecha-Mooks: Not every opponent you fight in World Tour mode is a person: you'll also face off against juiced-up cleaning robots, gun-toting attack drones, and even malfunctioning refrigerators.
• Metal Slime: Dash Eats enemies in World Tour play evasively and begin to escape when they appear on screen. Defeating them rewards you with food items. Golden drone enemies in Nayshall focus entirely on running away from the player and will flee if not defeated, but drop valuable items.
• Mickey Mousing: Certain characters will move and/or sing to the beat of their own songs as seen with Ryu and Jamie.
• Microtransactions: Fighter Coins are SF6's premium currency, which you can use to get things like costumes, colors, and various avatar items. However most things can also be gotten with Drive Tickets, which are earned by completing in-game tasks.
• Mini-Game: There are a variety of extra activities in World Tour mode that can be played to earn extra money, such as Scrap Heap (destroying a vehicle in a fixed amount of time), Hado Pizza (prepare pizzas by following Action Commands similar to those used for special moves in battle), and Kung-fu Target (break boards held up by Chun-Li's students within the time limit).
• Mundane Utility: In World Tour mode, in addition to being useful in a fight, certain special moves you acquire from the game's masters can be used as Master Actions outside of battle. For example, you can use Dhalsim's Yoga Teleport to clear a large body of water, use the Spinning Bird Kick to reach hidden pathways, or fire Ryu's Hadouken to clear debris blocking a path.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The face smash from the end of Ken's critical art version of the Shinryu Reppa is taken right from his fight against Gil◊ in the Street Fighter III: Ryu Final manga.
  • Cammy has several to previous animated installments of the franchise. Her new Level 2 Super Art references her signature scene from Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie where she assassinates the British Minister of Justice, and her new default costume (red boots, black tank top and pants) is an almost-exact replica of her outfit from Street Fighter II V, complete with her choker (sans crucifix), with the only exception being her new Union Jack-themed jacket.
  • The character select screen has the original eight World Warriors^note Ryu, Chun-Li, Ken, Guile, Dhalsim, Blanka, Zangief and E. Honda grouped together in the same order they were positioned in back in the original Street Fighter II.
  • In the prequel comic, Ken is framed as a terrorist through the use of deepfake technology. In other words, he's once again become a Head Swap as in the 2D games.
  • One of the in-game commentators borrows quips from other games, such as Street Fighter Alpha 3's "Triumph or die!" and "It all depends on your skill! Go for broke!", as well as Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium's "This is gonna be a match to remember!"
  • At one point in World Tour, you will need to take the subway to travel from one part of Metro City to another that is otherwise cordoned off until later. The subway train is crawling with Mad Gear gangsters that you'll need to fight past, similar to Stage 2 of Final Fight.
  • The ability to summon the World Warrior whose style you are using to join you in battle harkens to the "Dramatic Battle" modes of Street Fighter Alpha, themselves inspired by the climactic final battle of Ryu and Ken against Bison in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.
  • Cammy has a cat version of herself as her profile pic in the World Tour mode, which can be seen when she messages the player character. The art originates from an April Fools' Day joke game known as Neco Drop: Cat Friends Nation, a short puzzle game that has Street Fighter characters as Neko Atsume-styled cats, including Cammy, who's called 'Kylie' in that game.
  • Similarly, a character called Sheng Long can be encountered as an NPC opponent, referencing the infamous April Fools Day incident where Electronic Gaming Monthly claimed a fighter by that name was a hidden character in Street Fighter II that, in turn, led to the creation of Akuma and Gouken. His design in this game is taken from his profile on the Capcom Fighters Network, more specifically the Shadaloo Combat Research Institute files.
  • In World Tour Mode, Kimberly can be heard humming the Slum theme from the original Final Fight (which was later repurposed as Guy's theme in the Street Fighter Alpha games).
  • The description of an extremely spicy curry in World Tour mode says that no matter how your mouth feels, you won't actually be able to breathe fire after eating it, a reference to the original explanation for Dhalsim's fire attacks being due to him eating super-spicy curry before each match.
  • In Retsu's questline in World Tour, he reminds the avatar that there are many people like them all over the world, as in trying to find the meaning of strength and trying to improve. This is a call back to the very first game on what your opponent says after defeat: "What strength! But don't forget there are many guys like you all over the world!"
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: The main antagonistic faction this time is Amnesia, led by JP, following Shadaloo, S.I.N., and the Illuminati.
• Nerf: Compared to being one of, if not the best, characters in the previous game, Luke is slightly less effective than he was before. Owing to the lack of a V-System and most normals having less frame advantage on block and on hit across the entire cast, Luke can't get damage for free like he used to in V^note  His V-Skill I, Hard Shot, was a prime offender since the move allowed him to get really good damage off of his basic pokes, especially off of lights and his cr.MK., forcing him to rely on Flash Knuckle's "Just Frame" Bonus and know-how of the Drive System to get the damage output that he used to. And speaking of, he can be quite meter hungry since his some of his OD Specials have follow-ups that, while increasing his damage output on top of their added utility, also cost an extra stock of the Drive Gauge^note  OD Moves usually cost two stocks; the follow-ups from Luke's OD Specials like Rising Upper or Flash Knuckle, cost another stock on top of that, totalling to half of the entire Drive Gauge. , meaning resource management is a must with Luke as much as it is for the rest of the roster. Nevertheless, while far from the worst character in the game^note Common consensus among pros (such as Justin Wong, Magotto, Angry Bird, and Mena RD) early on in the game's lifecycle is that he's one of the better characters; though not the definitive best, since others like Ken, Guile, JP, and Dee Jay can go toe to toe with him. Closer to Capcom Cup X, consensus has shifted to say that he is overpowered compared to the rest the cast, with Ken, Dee Jay, JP, and Chun-Li trailing behind him; Guile having fallen into the middle of the pack behind those; and Chun-Li getting stronger, Luke's not as good as he was in his prime back in V.
• Nostalgia Level: SFV features a selection of classic stages from previous games remastered in 3D. However, 6 takes things a step further, presenting elevated versions of classic stages that are an Homage to the originals, taking inspiration from the overall vibe and setting but putting a more detailed and visually-impressive spin on things. Examples include "Ranger's Hut" (based on Blanka's II stage), "Dhalsimer Temple" (based on Dhalsim's II stage), and "Carrier Byron Taylor" (based on Guile's II stage).
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • An exploit allowing players to automatically break grabs while blocking - possible thanks to feature designed to help players press multiple inputs more easily - was swiftly patched out of the game.
  • A quality of life change was made with the patch that introduced Rashid, allowing players to press the Parry input to Drive Rush cancel attacks instead of having to rely on a somewhat finnicky at times forward-forwad input. Given how powerful and reliable the mechanic is already, and a demonstration of a prominent competitive player exploiting it at an event shortly before the patch by spamming light attacks - the fastest, safest option in the game - that he could cancel into Drive Rushes the second they landed even with the harder input, a caveat was added that a Drive Rush would always come out if the input was pressed after a light attack, even if said attack whiffs, at the standard costly 3 out of 6 bars of Drive Gauge.
• Oddball Doppelgänger: Among the NPCs that can be fought in World Tour mode are people cosplaying as the World Warriors, fighting like them but looking more like shoddy knockoffs.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Both the central hubs in World Tour have areas where the player can quickly grind for a lot of EXP: the subway in Metro City, and Mount Vashal in Nayshall. You're only required to ride the subway once, but can go back whenever you want - the enemies are completely randomized and to some extent scale with the player, and the enemy roster is even updated to include later foes such as the Rogue Refrigerators or the rare Copy Fighters. Meanwhile, Mount Vashal is chock-full of high-level NPCs - even the weakest enemies are at least in the low 40s - and after beating the story you can fast travel straight to the Suval'hal Arena Entrance, the final area of the game, with levels as high as 56. You'll be coming back here a lot if you're grinding your neglected fighting styles, and when coupled with EXP-boosting items you can level up a new style from 1 to 10 in minutes just from a handful of fights.
• Perfect Play A.I.: The Level 8 CPU quickly gained a reputation for being very difficult to defeat. It never misses inputs, knows exactly the reach and priority of its moves and it can perform optimal combos and complex maneuvers at the drop of a hat. Many videos have surfaced showing that even pro players have trouble dealing with it.
• Permanently Missable Content: Nothing substantial, but many cosmetic items such as avatar clothing, stickers, titles, etc. are only available for a limited time during their initial offering period. If you didn't get them while they were available, you never will.
• Photo Mode: You can take photos using your cellphone camera in World Tour, and even get characters around you to pose.
• Poison Mushroom: In World Tour, there are some thoroughly-unappetizing food items that actually debuff the player upon use. Some opponents will require using one while fighting them for one of their drops.
• Power-Up Food: Food vendors in World Tour mode offer delicious dishes that not only restore your HP, but can also confer buffs. Iron Bar Caramels, for instance, provide a boost to your damage resistance, while Tough Jawbreakers bump up your damage output.
• Pre Existing Encounters: In addition to challenging named NPCs yourself, you can encounter opponents in World Tour that won't wait for you to ask for a fight and instead try to get the first hit in (they go by their generic titles rather than proper names, and show up on the mini-map as red dots). These kinds of enemies include various gangsters, ne'er-do-wells, and automated drones in Metro City.
• Punch Parry: The Drive Parry, derived from Street Fighter III's own Parry mechanic. Similar to Ryu's V-Skill in SFV, you can hold the input down to assume a parry stance that continually parries the opponent's attacks and refills the Drive Gauge on successful parries, but also slowly drains the Drive Gauge while the input is held and leaving the parry stance can leave you vulnerable. There's also Perfect Parries, a version that refills a larger amount of your Drive Gauge and recovers from parry stance faster, putting you at an advantage if you time it perfectly to the incoming attack.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Avatar creation includes distinct selections of male or female body and male, female, or neutral pronouns. Neither affects gameplay in any way, and all clothing, however masculine or feminine, can be worn regardless of body type.
• Rare Candy: You can find a variety of boosters in World Tour that enhance your character's stats.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: World Tour concludes with Bosch dead, JP getting beat down after laughing at Bosch's death but otherwise unaffected by the incident (as far as what's currently known), and a distraught protagonist wondering Was It Really Worth It? in their search for strength. Luke may be in on the know and seems set on getting involved, so for the heroes, even if it was All for Nothing at the moment, a hope for improvement is in the future by handling some "unresolved business".
• Recurring Element: The vehicle destroying mini-game introduced in Street Fighter II makes a return, this time letting you destroy a massive truck.
• Regenerating Health: Tanking a hit with armour or eating a Drive Reversal will inflict "grey damage" on your life bar. This damage slowly refills, but if you take a clean hit before then, the unsaved portion will be lost.
• Regional Riff: The game features a modern hip hop soundscape, though most of the stage soundtracks still feature instrumental nods to the nations depicted, which helps bring the varied locales to life. For example:
  • Fête Foraine (France) features a banging dubstep beat, smartly accompanied by an unmistakably French accordion riff to introduce a little Gallic rustic elegance into the mix.
  • King Street (United Kingdom) is a slow, moody hip hop track featuring both a military drum beat and accent notes provided by a crumhorn — an ancient instrument evoking the nation’s medieval past.
  • Bathers Beach (Jamaica) is, in a first for the series, a surprisingly relaxed, low-key Reggae piece with breakbeat inspired-elements.
• Regional Speciality: In World Tour mode, each nation has a travelling merchant hanging about amongst the other visitors, who not only sells clothing and equipment, but also a selection of recognisable national dishes which provide different regenerative properties and status buffs, including tempura soba in Japan, fish & chips in England, hamburger in the USA, jerk chicken in Jamaica, and duck confit in France.
• Relationship Values: You can increase your bond level with your masters in World Tour by talking to them and giving them gifts, which unlocks more of their moves for you to use as well as more of their backstories. Max them out, and you can unlock their second outfits (including the returning characters' classic outfits - such as Cammy's iconic green leotard or Ryu's traditional white gi) for you to use in every other mode (be it Fighting Ground or Battle Hub).
• The Remnant: During Rashid's and AKI's second master missions in World Tour, you run into a couple of former Shadaloo soldiers seeking to revive their organization. They wear ragtag versions of the blue uniforms they wore in the A Shadow Falls story mode in the previous game, in addition to an identical naming scheme ('AS' followed by a letter and a number) and even have a unique special move where they attempt to copy M. Bison's Double Knee Press but fall flat on their ass in the process, as a Call-Back to the 'Fake Psycho Crusher'.
• Retraux: The Scrap Heap minigames deliberately go for a retro style, adding a pixel filter and crunchy audio.
• Rewarding Vandalism: You're encouraged to break things like trash cans, barrels, and crates in World Tour, as you get miles and items for doing so.
• Rewards Pass: SF6 has the Fighting Pass, which you level up to collect a variety of cosmetic rewards. You can get some of them through the free version, but you can get a lot more by upgrading to a premium version.
• Scratch Damage: Reworked from previous games. Chip damage now applies to the Drive Gauge instead of the character's health, and characters only take health chip damage if their Drive Gauge is empty and they're in the burnout state. Chip damage KOs are again possible after being absent from Street Fighter V.
• Secret A.I. Moves: NPC fighters in World Tour can use moves that you don't have access to, like tossing wrenches and invulnerable dodge rolls regardless of their Style. This extends to certain boss encounters, such as Carlos Miyamoto doing multidirectional sword slashes and the Cardboard Combatant/Bosch's Psycho Power-infused attacks, including a completely invincible Super Art.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: World Tour ends with Bosch making a Senseless Sacrifice that fails to kill JP or even hinder his plans in the slightest, and would have worked had the player not tried to disable the detonator in the belt and tipped JP's suspicions.
• Shoryuken: As expected from the Trope Namer, Ryu and Ken's iconic Shoryuken are present (Shin Shoryuken included for Ryu, while Ken gets a new equivalent in Shinryu Reppa). Luke and Chun-Li likewise also have their takes (Rising Upper and Tenshokyaku, respectively). It's even used as a tool in the new World Tour mode.
• Shop Fodder: In World Tour, you can obtain nuggets of precious metal whose only purpose is to be sold for a large amount of Zenny.
• Shout-Out:
  • Juri's win pose, where she sits on the opponent's back after beating them, bears a remarkable resemblance to one of Hwoarang's (also a Taekwondo practitioner) win poses where he does the same thing.
  • Noctis and Shermie's haircuts are available in the character creator.
  • One of the World Tour minigames closely resembles the bottle cut minigame from Art of Fighting.
  • Manon's Dégagé (particularly the Short and Forward versions) wouldn't look out of place for Jean-Claude Van Damme, who just so happens to be Guile's actor in the film adaptation of the series.
  • Cammy's new short bob haircut makes her look very much like Android 18 from Dragon Ball Z and Blue Mary from Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters (with Blue Mary being based on the former).
  • One of Lily's story art features her playing with T. Hawk's family, which features a newly recovered Juli (one of Bison's dolls). Thing is, Juli with Native American outfit now looks like a rival game's Native American female fighter, Julia Chang.
  • Dee Jay mentions in World Tour that he's been offered a role in an action movie opposite Fei-Long, and the art is a clear parody of The Matrix, with Fei-Long in the role of Neo and an army of Dee Jays in the role of Agent Smith.
• Shows Damage: In offline modes, characters can optionally suffer small bruises and cuts, and their clothing will get dirtier as they're knocked down.
• Single Player Gauntlet: This applies to this game's Arcade Mode which serves as each fighter's story mode. You select a fighter and a length of five or twelve stages, and the stages contain story-related enemies, random enemies, and bonus stages.
• Skill Point Reset: You can use continues to reset your World Tour skill tree, getting all of your skill points back and letting you pick new ones.
• Spice Up the Subtitles: In a first for a Street Fighter game, the Spanish translation, at least the one used in the demo, features strong profanity; as an example, Luke's victory quote against Ryu used the Spanish word for "Shit" (as "¡Mierda!"), when the English version, he just used "Damn!" instead. This is very likely used in order to depict the American nuance about the use of the word "damn", since in Spanish, the equivalent for "Damn!" in Spanish, "¡Maldicion!", is pretty tame for Spanish-speaking ears.
• Superboss: World Tour has a small set of high-level opponents that are tricky to find and far more difficult to beat than any other potential adversary:
  • The quest "The Fighty Mighty" unlocks a large amount of optional opponents that are considerably stronger than the civilians and criminals you'd be fighting normally. Defeating all of these opponents unlocks the superbosses in the post-game: Andore and Fou-Lu. Andore is one of the strongest enemies in the game at level 99, his moveset just being the generic NPC moveset, but with an AI tailor-made to use it to its fullest potential. Meanwhile, Fou-Lu is only slightly weaker at level 95, with a moveset taken from Bosch in his final encounter, giving him access to an extremely powerful Super Art on top of excellent AI. Both can be rematched in the Haggar Arena, where they are both level 100 and are among the toughest potential opponents, only matched by masters like Ryu.
  • The post-game unlocks a questline in the Nayshall arena, which challenges you to a series of 12 combat gauntlets with increasingly powerful foes, culminating in a one-on-one fight with Luke, the strongest opponent in the game at level 100, with maxed-out stats and the meanest AI the game has to offer.
• Super Special Move: Several classic examples return from past entries like the Shinku Hadoken, Senretsukyaku, and Sonic Hurricane. There are also new ones like Jamie's "Breakin'", a stronger version of his "Bakkai" special.
• Super-Speed: Drive rush is a short burst of this at the cost of some drive meter. Some fighters' drive rushes are so fast and long distance that they could be considered Flash Steps.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Oh, do you think you can perfectly replicate Chun-Li's full kata, especially her vertical standing split in the end? Said kata requires lots of training and flexibility to pull off, so unsurprisingly, everyone who just attended her lesson, including the player character, falls on their butt attempting the move. Only Li-Fen, whom Chun-Li adopted and trained from very young age, is capable of pulling it off.
• The Thunderdome: Multiple arena-style fighting stages featuring large crowds are present:
  • Barmaley Steelworks: A makeshift cage made up from chain-link fences topped with barbed wire set inside a submarine plant. A bald, one-eyed referee calls the action from within the ring whilst a rowdy crowd watches the fight from behind the fence (although cutting the graphics settings will reduce the size of the audience).
  • Coloseo: The Roman Colosseum itself. The fight takes place on the arena floor, unlike in the corresponding stage in Street Fighter Alpha, which is set up in the galleries. Vast crowds cheer on the fighters from the Colosseum stands.
  • The Macho Ring: A hexagonal MMA cage in an arena in Metro City. It has some spots for advertising that sometimes advertise the real-life Capcom Cup Street Fighter 6 tournament, but normally advertise the game itself, Capcom, and Brand X.
  • Suva'hal Arena: An ancient fighting arena in Nayshall that Ken and JP restored as part of setting up the next World Fighting Championship tournament as a joint venture. That’s before JP betrayed Ken and stole the tournament from him in order to turn it into a money laundering front.
• Tournament Arc: Different characters' arcade mode routes consist of unsanctioned street fights, participation in the World Fighting Championship tournament organized by JP in Nayshall secretly as a money laundering front, or a mix of the two, making this trope a Zig-Zagging Trope.
  • World Tour mode has several tournaments that the player participates in: a novice league tournament in Metro City, a team battle between gangs, an underground tournament in Nayshall, and the Suval'hal Tournement.
• Trailers Always Lie: The story trailer featured Dhalsim mentioning the Satsui no Hadou, alongside footage of a mysterious fighter whose body was covered in glowing purple scars. In truth, that's not the Satsui no Hadou being shown (and the voice clip of Dhalsim mentioning it actually comes from his Arcade Ending after beating Lily), that's a Psycho Power-infused Bosch.
• Training Montage: Learning a new style from a fighter in World Tour is conveyed in a cutscene where the player slowly but surely picks up on their new master's techniques.
• The Unfought: Kalima, JP's secretary-turned-Nayshalli Resistance leader in World Tour. Despite playing a major role in the story as an unclear threat-turned-uneasy ally (plus the fact that she's assigned Cammy's style, suggesting that you'll fight her at some point), you're never required to fight her. Even when the Avatar goes off the rails after learning of the resistance's suicide bomb plan, they instead fight her right-hand man Rewancha again. You can optionally challenge her after beating the story, but by then it has no purpose beyond a stack of EXP and picking up her unique accessories.
  • Played straight by F.A.N.G in the A.K.I. DLC, who cannot be challenged to a fight at all.
• Unique Enemy:
  • The rarest enemy type in World Tour are the Copy Fighters, Seth-esque cyborgs that exclusively fight with the same legendary fighters' styles available to the player. Despite their unique gimmick and being introduced with more fanfare than the usual Mooks, you're only required to fight four: two on the roof of the SiRN Building as a warm-up before the second fight with the Cardboard Combatant/Bosch, and another two while exploring the abandoned factory by Haggar Stadium. Downplayed a bit as the Copy Fighters in the factory respawn if you come back later, and more appear in optional encounters such as among the randomized enemy roster in the Metro City Subway, in Haggar Arena, and the post-game gauntlet at the Suval'hal Arena, but they still stand out next to the dozens if not hundreds of every other enemy type you blow through.
  • There's a grand total of two fightable NPCs who use JP's style: Merchant Mello, a shopkeeper found in the Nayshalli Resistance hideout at the very end of the game, and Ernest, one of the opponents in the post-game Suval'hal Arena gauntlet. Of these two, Merchant Mello is the only one you can challenge repeatedly, as Ernest only shows up once for the mission and is gone forever afterwards. This makes him the only reliable source of EXP for that style, meaning you'll be challenging him a lot if you've taken JP as a master after beating the story.
  • The former Shadaloo soldiers encountered in Rashid's second master mission have access to a unique special move (resembling a failed attempt at M. Bison's Double Knee Press) that - as of this update - no other enemies in the game have.
• Unstable Equilibrium: If you hit an opponent who has whiffed their attack, you'll score a "Punish Counter" and drain some of their Drive Gauge. Do this often enough and you can put your opponent into burnout, limiting their offensive and defensive options and making them even more vulnerable to your attacks.
• Useless Useful Skill: The Haggler and Traveler skills in World Tour mode, which give discounts from vendors and increase the amount of Miles earned, respectively. World Tour mode throws money and Miles at you with abandon, so there's very little chance that you'll ever run short on either. The only reason to ever unlock them is if you've already acquired every other skill.
• Variable Mix:
  • In addition to the low health and second round mixes of songs like previous SF games, all stage and character themes now have an even-more-intense final round variation too. Songs also properly sync to the beginning of each round, playing specific downbeat portions during character intros and between rounds before seguing into the next section for the next round. They even skip properly if the animations are skipped.
  • When starting a match in the Fighting Ground, the background music plays a calmer remix of the main character select theme, before smoothly adding lyrics when progressing to the character select screen.
• Versus Character Splash: The version from V, with the animated character models on display, returns, and this time you can now make your fighter emote with a variety of expressions. That's to say nothing about the fully animated cutscene of both fighters walking into the ring with the crowd hyping them up along the way.
• Violation of Common Sense: In many cases, the best gift for a given master in World Tour is something they dislike. Paradoxically, they'll continue to eat, play, or store in their fridge whatever the source of their displeasure is while thinking more and more of you all the while.
• Virtual Paper Doll: World Tour is played from the viewpoint of a fully customizable avatar. Included is a very robust system of physical features like age, gender^note Of note, the player also gets the opportunity to choose which pronouns their character identifies with regardless of their physical sex, or just not have any, ethnicity, and even species—some characters resembling androids like Seth. And as you progress through the world, you learn and master techniques from the World Warriors which can even be used in the Overworld as traversal abilities. The various clothing items you can equip also influence their stats.
• Warp Whistle: Bus stops act as fast-travel points in the open world areas. Find and activate them (or complete specific quests), and you'll be able to quickly travel to that location.
• Wham Episode: Most of the World Tour story is fairly low-key without much in danger besides gang fights and the occasional serious opponent. Then you get to Nayshall, do your usual stuff, and encounter a mysterious fighter who acts like a crazed lunatic. Not long after the following tournament, you find out this is Bosch hopped up on Psycho Power, and he's still partly lucid and aware of his actions. This gets followed up not long thereafter by more revelations that the Nayshall Resistance sent Bosch to Luke's training regimen in the first place to get him trained enough to break into the underground tournament scene filled with criminal activity and money laundering, solely so that Bosch could work his way up to the top and blow up a rigged championship belt next to JP to kill them both. JP's criminal organization, Amnesia, merely accelerated Bosch's goals of a nation-saving suicide bombing with what they did to him. What's left of the plot drastically shifts in tone after this.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: World Tour, the main single-player mode where the player can explore settings within the SF universe and learn moves from the various World Warriors. There are also several Player Vs. Computer encounters with other avatars, letting you develop and improve your character's fighting style.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Some of the fight and quest rewards in World Tour include customization items for your avatar.

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I ain’t ever backin’ down (Come and step up to the plate)

For my city for my town (I’ll do whatever that it takes)

Imma go and get the crown (Oh)

To the top, I see the sight, I see the sight, I see the sight, yeah

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