There are two things I’ve learned about the world of Street Fighter 6: One, I have absolutely no idea how it could function as a society, and two, I’ll never be able to look its pizza seller in the eye again.
If you’ve not tackled the game’s Story Mode, it’s quite a ride. Whether you go with a default character or create your own, you’re ushered out into a world where fighting random people isn’t just acceptable — it’s the norm.
So when I was asked to wander around the city and challenge a couple of people to a brawl, my brain was still scrambled by the prospect of this being okay. That’s how, to my shame, I ended up punching Pizza Guy in the face.
Yes, my Street Fighter 6 story began with my pummeling a customer service worker, a regretful act that’ll take me years to forget. In my defense, when I saw him standing by his van, I didn’t expect the game to actually let me fight him.
On some level, I thought Street Fighter 6 would mock me for trying to take on a street vendor. As wonderfully ridiculous as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is, its shopkeepers are largely off limits.
But here, after just one button press, I was squaring off against a guy who’d probably spent half the day dealing with morons, while someone in a business suit cheered me on. And with no easy way to exit the fight (though he gave as good as he got), he ended up flat on his back.
I can still remember the horror as, delivering the last blow, “KO” slammed into the screen. And there he lay, reliving the moment when someone asked him if there was chicken in the Chicken Calzone.
I’ve since learned that, at some point, you can start fights by punching people into the air. So it could have been worse, but not by much. And then Street Fighter 6 decided to reintroduce us, not five minutes later.
I could have picked a fight with anyone. There was even a mime standing just a few meters away, though Johnny Cage might have decided to sue. But trainer Luke, not knowing I’d all but kicked the Pizza Guy’s backside, instructed me to purchase pizza from his van.
To his credit he didn’t bat an eyelid, though I did have to choose between two equally abominable items, Asparagus Pizza and Pepperoni Pizza. I don’t care how much you might like the latter; there’s nothing natural about a meat that sweats when you cook it. Maybe that was his small act of vengeance, an alternative to charging at me with a pizza cutter.
Whatever was going through his head, I couldn’t look him in the eye, and so far I’ve given his van a wide berth. Even taking on the aforementioned mime who, as it turns out, was several levels above me didn’t wash away the stain.
And it’s also had me wondering — how the hell would Street Fighter 6’s world function as a society? Am I overthinking an already silly video game? Yes, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying to wrap my head around it.
Take Pizza Guy, for example. Putting aside our brawl, is his life better or worse because of Street Fighter 6’s “fight anyone” rule? If he can challenge any difficult customers, has that made his job easier? Did he chokeslam the first person who joked about their $20 bill being printed this morning? And because of that, no one has dared that line again?
That’s the only conclusion I can come to, that the world has reached some kind of weird equilibrium. The threat of Mutually Assured Punching has kept Street Fighter 6’s strange, strange world from becoming pure chaos.
Otherwise, how could you plan for anything? “We apologize for the delay in departure. Your pilot had to fight eight people just walking through the airport.”
Oh, who am I kidding? I definitely should have gone for the mime.
