Capcom recently put out some new screenshots for upcoming crossover fighting game Street Fighter X Tekken, which will pit characters from the two long-running franchises against each other for the first time.
They look quite nice; I was was struck by how colorful they were, and they seem to do a good job of taking Street Fighter’s visual style and mixing some of Tekken’s look to create something distinctive. The new set of screenshots showcase a number of characters from each game including Vega, Chun-Li, Ryu, and Zangief from Street Fighter and Kazuya, Law, Asuka, and Raven from Tekken.
Capcom has been involved with quite a few crossover games with characters from other companies over the years. The best known is the Marvel vs. Capcom series, of course, but there have been others: A previous crossover with Namco called Capcom x Namco, and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, which incorporated characters from various series produced by Japanese animation studio Tatsunoko productions. (So if you’ve always wondered what would happen if Mega Man and Chun-Li got in a fight with the guys from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, there you go.) There was also a series of Capcom vs. SNK- or SNK vs. Capcom, it varied from game to game- games in the very late 1990s and the early years of the last decade, some developed by Capcom and some by SNK.
Street Fighter and Tekken are interesting choices for a crossover game, because aside from the fact that they’re both fighting games they’re pretty radically different in their gameplay and style. (Vastly more so than SNK’s Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury series, which jointly gave rise to the King of Fighters series.) Street fighter is the world most iconic 2D fighting games series, while Tekken is probably the world’s most popular 3D fighting game.
The problem of integrating them is being solved by making two games: Capcom’s Street Fighter X Tekken will be based primarily on the gameplay of Street Fighter, while Namco is in the process of producing its own game, Tekken X Street Fighter, that will play like Tekken. Street Fighter X Tekken will include some elements of Tekken’s gameplay, however, such as the ability to do Tekken-style combo attacks.
The fights will also be in a tag-team format similar to Tekken Tag Tournament, with each competitor choosing two fighters who can be swapped in and out over the course of the round and victory in each round going to whoever successfully knocks out one of the other side’s fighters. The rules in most team-based fighters- King of Fighters, Marvel Vs. Capcom, the tag-team mode in the most recent Mortal Kombat- require the defeat of all of one side’s fighters to win the round or the match, so that’s an interesting wrinkle that ought to make gameplay strategies a bit different.
Street Fighter X Tekken is currently planned for release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 onMarch 6. Tekken X Street Fighter is in a much earlier stage of development and does not currently have an announced release date.
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