Street Fighter 6 Has Been Trying to Get Tifa for 3 Years

Conversations between Capcom and Square Enix over Tifa’s inclusion in Street Fighter 6 started three years ago, around the time of the fighter’s acclaimed release.

That’s according to an IGN interview between director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto, who say they share a mutual friend at the Final Fantasy firm.

Nakayama explained:

“We have a mutual friend who works at Square Enix, who's also a big fan of Street Fighter 6. We’d been discussing about, what can we do to collaborate somehow? And then eventually those conversations led to, what about a potential guest character from one of their IPs or series?

And around that time the Final Fantasy 7 remake series was very active, and looking at the character background, a character like Tifa, who has a heavy martial arts style, we thought that it would be perfect for Street Fighter 6. So it kind of organically led to this happening.”

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is scheduled to release next Spring, with Tifa due to join Street Fighter 6 earlier in the year. It’s pretty compelling synergy between the two brands, then.

Matsumoto added that Square Enix has been pretty involved with the design of Tifa, with legendary character designer Tetsuya Nomura also lending support.

He said:

“A lot of things were taken into consideration, like the exaggerations that are required for, for example, when a punch or a kick lands. Ultimately that gets reviewed by the team at Square Enix, including [Tetsuya] Nomura-san from the Final Fantasy 7 team. And then once that's approved, then it's up to the developers on the Capcom side to implement into the game.”

According to the official blurb, Tifa will include a unique Materia-based fighting mechanic when she joins Street Fighter 6, so you can look forward to her operating a little differently to the rest of the roster.

Remember, she’ll be part of the Year 4 Pass, alongside newcomers Yasmine, Arjun, and Bosch.