By Isaac Espinosa

Street Fighter has been a household name since it hit the arcades in 1987. And even though it didn’t truly take off until Street Fighter 2 came out in 1991, the series has stood as a kind of cornerstone of the fighting game genre to this day, decades later. 

The most recent game in the series, Street Fighter 6, released two years ago has sold over 5 million copies to date. This was, of course, a statistic made before Nintendo dropped their port, which was released alongside the Nintendo Switch 2’s premiere as another way to demonstrate the console’s power. 

For those that may not be aware of Street Fighter 6 and what it has to offer, a brief breakdown is important. The flagship fighter of Capcom is easily one of the greatest fighting games on the market, with many mechanics that not only push for a high skill ceiling, but offer a place for beginners to start their journey. 

Street Fighter’s core mechanics have always been about this concept of neutral: neither player has a clear advantage, and both are trying to find a place where they can gain the upper hand. Things such as parries, where you block an opponent’s attack at just the right time, are familiar. 

But the new Drive Gauge brings a unique kind of neutral to Street Fighter, giving access to Drive Rush, a dash move that lets you close the gap quickly between your opponent. And Drive Impact is an attack that you can use to push through your opponent’s moves and potentially stun them. The system has been continuously praised by the playerbase. For me, it’s super engaging to play and learn, but also a treat to watch at a higher level. 

All of this play comes with seemingly more fireworks and blast sounds than you hear at Macy’s 4th of July event. These animations make the game completely thrilling during battle.

Of course, SF6 wouldn’t be what it is now without its roster. From mainstays of the series like Ryu, Ken, and Chun Li, to fresh faces like Marisa, JP, and Manon, there’s no character in Street Fighter 6 that plays even remotely similarly. They all have their own playstyles and archetypes that make it so you really want to try them all out and find the character that clicks with you. 

This isn’t even including the 2 DLC packs for SF6, characters like Akuma and M. Bison, and newcomers Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui, who both actually join from the Fatal Fury franchise! 

Personally, I’ve found myself playing a lot of Mai Shiranui, with her projectile fan and combos being particularly strong, and Zangief, the series grappler archetype that really wants to stay in your face and grab you for big bursts of damage. The best part of Street Fighter 6 is that, although there are of course, stronger characters than others, you’ll still see a varied amount of characters at high level play! So if you’re trying to learn about how to play a specific character, there’s surely someone at the upper echelon that you can learn from watching YouTube or Twitch!

As I noted above, Street Fighter 6 has been out for two years now, and people have been playing it on Playstation 5, PC, and Xbox Series consoles. But the Switch 2 has serious contention with all of them. While not as graphically brilliant as the PS5 or PS5 Pro, Switch 2 still runs this battler like a dream, moving at a clean 60 FPS throughout most matches, with no noticeable instances of flicker in between. This is extremely important in Street Fighter 6, since every fame is important in a competitive environment where execution is key. And in the Fighting Ground mode, where most matches in tournaments and online are held, the lock to 60 FPS is absolutely perfect. 

The game is available as cross play with these other systems, an impressive feat for Capcom and Nintendo. I would consistently run games against a friend of mine that ran SF6 on PC, and neither of us had any connection issues or instances of rollback making us teleport around. Even when not docked, Switch 2 manages to run at a consistent 60 FPS (while, of course, making graphical shortcuts to make this happen). The ambience is typically removed, which also strips the shading from both the stage and the fighters. This does make the undocked Switch 2 have a lot less depth than its docked counterpart. But considering it still runs perfectly fine; it doesn’t suddenly make the portable experience any less good. In fact, I believe the Switch 2 runs better on portable than the Steam Deck – a great boon for Nintendo. 

However, the performance absolutely seems to take a dip when exploring the other modes of Street Fighter 6; World Tour and Battle Hub. The Battle Hub is relatively harmless, jumping in between 40-60 FPS. But thankfully, since it’s just a place to meet other people online, it has no effect on actual matches. 

World Tour, however, is unfortunately pretty bad. 

World Tour lets you play as a custom made character and explore the world of SF6, going through numerous cities and going under the training of some of the Street Fighter 6 cast. It seems like a great avenue for single player content, including creativity. Considering how you can not only customize your characters’ looks, but also their moves in fights, it offers an insane amount of replayability. 

If only I could speak as much praise for its performance. Alarmingly consistent NPC pop-in issues, the same inconsistency in frames outside of battles as in the Battle Hub, and worst of all, the game locking to 30 FPS during battles within the World Tour against CPUs. While this isn’t normally an issue for me, in a fighting game where frames are everything, the experience feels super slow, almost unplayable. It’s a shame that this is a continuous issue between most versions of Street Fighter 6, the PS5 version being the only exception due to having a performance mode setting. So while this problem isn’t directly caused by the Switch 2, it’s not exactly fixing it either. 

Despite the choppy World Tour,, a round of applause must be given to Capcom for this effort. Everything that people love about Street Fighter 6 has been maintained with this port, and at its core, it stands as a generally fantastic showcase of the Switch 2’s power output when optimized properly. The fact that it matches the competition is impressive by itself. But providing a tournament viable experience while on the go gives the console a unique edge against the PlayStation, PC, and Xbox variants. Without a doubt, Street Fighter 6 on the Switch 2, is absolutely worth your consideration if you haven’t gotten this absolute beast of a fighter already.

Bronx native Isaac Espinosa is a Member of the New York Videogame Critics Circle. Along with being named the Circle’s first assistant Mentor, Isaac also coaches students for CEI Esports.

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