I haven’t written anything Street Fighter related in a good while now. I’ve refrained from posting about it because I know Robin loved the game and had a lot of thoughts on the topic to blog about. The thing is, I’ve had this specific topic cooking in the backburner for months now and she did take a long break from it and is only getting back to Street Fighter 6 recently. I also really didn’t have any topic to write about at this time as this is the a new year and, like with every other ringing of the new year, things have been hectic. So, I’m taking the time to write about it now. Sorry if this was an idea you had, Robin. But I’m using it right now.

Street Fighter 6 has been out for several years now. And Capcom really stuffed it with a whole lot of bells and whistles to avoid the debacle of how the previous entry, Street Fighter V, launched with virtually no content. That was a good thing. The problem is, because the game is crammed with a lot of features, a lot of them have been ignored or unused by a lot of players. So, at this time, I would like to highlight just five features Capcom added to Street Fighter that hardly anyone uses anymore.

#1 The non-Street Fighter 6 Capcom classic games

If you’re a Street Fighter fan, chances are your a fan of Capcom and its games. Well, Capcom was gracious enough to include many ways to play. If you’ve been playing it from the start, chances are you’ve at least touched on World Tour, Battle Hub and Fighting Ground modes. But what if you do need a break from Street Fighter 6? Well, you can go play many classic Capcom games in either the Battle Hub Arcade center. Here, you can play a rotating list of games, including the older Street Fighter games like Super Street Fighter II: Turbo, the first Final Fight, Captain Commando, SonSon, Vulgus and Savage Bees, just to name a few.

If you’ve been keeping up with the Battle Pass, you may have even unlocked even more games that never show up in the Battle Hub arcade in the Gallery section of Street Fighter 6. Not only do you have games like Saturday Night Slam Masters and Warriors of Fate, there are also 8-bit NES/Famicom classics such as Bionic Commando and Mega Man 3!

While it is fantastic we can play all of these games in Street Fighter 6, no one really does so. The reason is no one boots up Street Fighter 6 to play another game. It would be like loading up Shenmue so you can go to the arcade in the game and play Hang-On. I would also like to add another reason and that would be there are no two player modes for these games. Despite it having several Street Fighter games other than Street Fighter 6, you can only face off against the computer when you play them. This does seem like a huge missed opportunity.

#2 Dynamic controls

Capcom really wanted to get players who are intimidated by fighting games to play Street Fighter 6. And one of the reasons why newbies think playing fighting games are hard is because of the motions you have to do to execute special moves. They fixed this by adding Modern controls, where all you’d have to do to perform these special moves was to push a singular button while moving the control pad/joystick in a direction. They’re not for everybody but it did get a lot of gamers who haven’t played a fighting game to start playing Street Fighter 6.

But what about the widdle iddy biddy babies? What about your younger cousin who visiting for the holidays and can’t be bothered to learn the controls, even the simplified Modern Control scheme? Well, Capcom thought of them, too! For those who have never touched a fighting game before but still want to play and seem like they’re doing good, there’s Dynamic controls! Dynamic controls basically has the computer handle all the inputs and attacks. As long as you’re pressing the buttons, the computer will handle the rest!

Although Dynamic controls make it fun for utter newbies, no serious player I know has even touched Dynamic controls! For one, you can’t use Dynamic controls when playing online. So, it would be kind of useless to even practice using Dynamic controls if you’re even a bit serious with the game. Second, even if you are playing against someone with Dynamic controls, a moderately experienced player using either Classic or Modern controls should be able to beat the kiddie Dynamic control user, devs excluded, of course. So, it’s there but only gets busted out when your younger relatives comes over and your mom forces you to play Street Fighter 6 with them.

#3 In-Game Commentators

It takes a lot to put together a big fighting game tournament such as EVO or Combo Breaker. You need an actual tournament, of course. But you’ll also need a lot of little niceties like a huge venue, live spectators and commentators to bring the hype to the audience, both at the location and those streaming back home. Well, Capcom did give players one of those things: in-game commentators. The venue and the live crowd, that’s on you.

I actually was excited for this as there’s no way I’d be able to play at a big tournament and have the likes of Tasty Steve, Vicious and James Chen call out how terrible I am at Street Fighter 6. I turned on this feature and, after maybe six or seven matches, I had to turn it off for several reasons. One, I heard all of their recorded lines by this time. Two, they do repeat very often. Three, everyone says the same things but in their own style.

It also doesn’t help that the lineup of commentators is… weird. I appreciate mainstays like Tasty Steve, Vicious and James Chen lending their voices. But where are the other big name commentators like Sajam, IFC Yipes and UltraDavid? Why are there no European commentators such as Logan Sama and F-Word? I may not know them but I completely understand why Capcom included Japanese commentators like Aru and Kousuke Hiraiwa. But why do they bring in Thea Trinidad/Zelina Vega, a professional wrestler, and Naevis, a virtual personality, to record commentary for Street Fighter 6? If they needed female commentators, they could’ve gotten Sherryjenix.

Once in a while, I will turn on the commentator feature when they release a new one. But that only lasts for a few matches before I’ve heard everything that they can say. I’m betting I’m virtually the only one who does this as I don’t know anyone who really plays Street Fighter 6 with this feature on.

#4 The entire second floor of the Battle Hub

The Battle Hub is a mixture of happy places and sad places, depending on where you are. When you first enter the Battle Hub, you’re greeted with a spectacle of a myriad of player Avatars milling around. You’ll see some of them standing in place, waiting for Ranked matches. You’ll see some of them crowding around the V-Rival machine, facing off against virtual players of different skill levels. You’ll see people doing Avatar battles, playing on the arcade machines, fighting Extreme Battles and fighting in tournaments. It’s all so happy.

Then you go to the second floor of the Battle Hub. And you’ll find it to be a deserted and dark area with forgotten features hardly anyone uses. You might see a couple of people hiding out there, even on arcade machines, playing all by their lonesome instead on the ground floor where all of the other players are. You’ll see an abandoned DJ booth, flashing its lights and no one manning the table. You’ll also see an ironically sad photo booth display. It looks so shiny, which makes it even more depressing as no one uses it. This is the sad section of the Battle Hub.

I remember playing the Open Beta of Street Fighter 6 and you would see Avatars flock towards these sections. You would see people crowding around the photo booth area, doing various poses and whatnot. You would see several people on the DJ booth, playing annoying tunes with no rhythm. You would see throngs of people crowding around the DJ booth, pretending to enjoy the annoying tunes with no rhythm as well.

That’s all in the past. No sure if I would have qualified that as a good time. But it was for a lot of people. They’ve all gotten over it.

#5 The “No Contest” Option

Capcom did a good job with Street Fighter 6’s netcode. It uses rollback netcode instead of the antiquated delayed based netcode, allowing for a smoother online experience. As such, you can even get some really good matches from players who are a good distance from you. However, everything can’t be perfect all the time. You’re going to run into some players with a terrible connection. The thing is, if both of you agree you can’t fight under these terrible connection issues, Capcom gave you an out. If the game detects a poor connection, it will actually give you the option to mutually quit the match with no penalty on you or your opponent.

The thing is, most players don’t seem to use it or they don’t even know it exists!

To be fair, the option only shows up when specific things happen. First, the connection has to be really bad. Second, the option pops up on the lower left corner of the screen. Now, I know it’s there so it doesn’t block the screen. But it’s so small and, since it’s out of the way, you might not even be aware you can request for a no-contest ruling! Finally, and this is the big one, it only shows up in the first round. That means, if the connection gets bad on the second round, the no-contest ruling doesn’t pop up anymore!

Still, I do think this is a good option. I’ve used is several times and it works. The problem is there are either some players who don’t even know about this and don’t know they can quit. Or they’re okay with the bad connection so they don’t want to quit! If you’re the former, well, now you know it’s there!

What other unused features in Street Fighter 6 would you like to highlight? Let me know in the comments section below!