Never-before-seen Street Fighter concept art gives us ideas for Street Fighter 6 DLC

Street Fighter 6 will have 18 characters at launch. It’s a solid starting number, and the roster is a mix of fresh faces and veteran fighters. The list will surely grow in time, and thanks to some recently shared concept art from Capcom, we have plenty of ideas about who could join the fight down the road.

The official Capcom Artwork Team account shared some never-before-seen Street Fighter III: Third Strike art on Twitter, and there are 15 different sketches to check out. There are some wacky designs in the bunch, like a velociraptor, a genie, and one that looks just like Martin the mandrill from Baoh the Visitor (the manga series Hirohiko Araki did before Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure). One can see how some of these ideas evolved into the Third Strike roster we know today: the nude man with a carefully placed leaf could have become Urien or Gill, since both fight in nothing but a loincloth. Likewise, the one with the bat-like cape bears some resemblance to Street Fighter V’s F.A.N.G.

The main takeaway from this set of drawings is that Capcom’s art team is clearly full of ideas — ideas that could still come to fruition in the future. A giant robot, a breakdancer, and even a regular-looking office worker would make for interesting additions to the Street Fighter universe. While the fate of Mike Haggar and the inclusion of Fei Long are up in the air, there’s no shortage of possible new fighters for the roster.

Street Fighter 6 also supports custom characters, and even the more outlandish ideas in this concept art are probably possible with those tools — we’ve already witnessed some real monsters in the beta. We’re sure to see more when Street Fighter 6 releases sometime in 2023. The new fighting game is headed to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. The Xbox release is particularly notable because a new Street Fighter game hasn’t launched on that platform in more than a decade.