Fans Show What Alex Might Play Like in Street Fighter 6

Ever since the Year 3 line-up for Street Fighter 6 was announced, people were getting hype about how those characters might play, but it feel like Alex had an especially dedicated community.

Between SFIII and SFV, it seems his uniquely brawly sort of grappler archetype has stuck with people, but perhaps the strongest part of him is just the visual flair. Street Fighter III, his debut title, established a lot of incredibly strong poses for his kicks, punches, and special moves. Even if he was never a top tier (or honestly even close to being one), when he hits people, you feel like there's a truckload of force behind it.

It makes sense that Nikuo, an animator who has been doing a lot of fighting game animations and general cool fight choreography, decided to pay his respects by animating a potential combo for Alex in Street Fighter 6.

This served as inspiration for Violin Ken and Mr. I, who have already been doing a lot of sick custom stuff in Ikemen and MUGEN, the fighting game engines that give people a very flexible platform for creating and adjusting characters and systems.

In this case, they already had Alex working, but Violin Ken added the quick Drive Rush function to properly emulate the combo, resulting in what is pretty much a one to one recreation that gives us a better glimpse of what Alex could be like in SF6.

He also remarks that Nikuo's animation is amazingly accurate to frame data and timings. While Nikuo likely used SFV for reference, it's still amazing that the result is such a natural looking animation that works within a different format (animation requires different flourishes and techniques depending on the framerate!), while also conveying the sort of immense impact that we've come to associate with Alex.

Only time can tell if this will actually resemble the final result in the game itself, but it's cool to get such a visceral glimpse.