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As the team were testing out the early prototypes of Street Fighter 6, they were thinking about which concepts the game's attack VFX was going to look like in-game using the RE Engine before the final release. They had made several effect designs, but some of them were never actually used.
Special Move Concepts#
Luke's Flash Knuckle#
While this move is used in the final game, early pre-release prototype concept art for it was also shown on the Developer's Column section of the Buckler's Boot Camp site. The team had conceptualized the move as "something where Luke essentially fires a bullet of compressed air towards the opponent just by swinging his arm with unbelievable strength and speed. It's a very Street Fighter-esque technique that requires equal parts brain and brawn". They looked to express that concept by incorporating ideas such as the spreading impact when the attack is fired, plus the sparks that fly due to the friction in the air, as well as when the attack hits an opponent. When they were incorporating these ideas into the game, they had to balance it for playability, so they did things such as adding afterglow to the bullet and sparks for better readability, as well as turning Luke's pumped up arm red due to the heat.
Drive Ability Concepts#
Drive Impact#
In the earliest pre-release prototypes, the effects for Drive Impact weren't always the 3D graffiti you see in the final game itself. The team thought that "a lot of players were surprised by the big colors and visuals", so director Takayuki Nakayama wanted something that symbolized the new game's system and that everyone would know is totally new just from a quick glance. He also wanted to make the visual effect character-specific, even though the system itself is shared among all characters.
The first Drive Impact they created had the background going dark, and only touched the characters for a kind of calm feel. Some of the keywords that they focused on for the concept of this effect were "Brush", "Paint", "Comic", "Spray", "Graffiti", "Music Video", "Sports", and so on. The team took those words and looked for how they could express them visually.
They tried some motifs from comics and sports advertisements, and "changed some of the touch-ups, stretched out the silhouette of the character and changed dimensions to give attacks a different look".
This is a motif based on a music video. The team "added video noise as a base to try and get a hip-hop music video feel". They felt to most people it would look like a bug, so they scrapped it.
This motif is based on a painting. They re-mixed the effect concepts from Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter V and "try to give each character their own unique touch", but they decided against it because the cost performance wasn't working out.
The last of the concepts is this 3D graffiti style, which is what they used as a base for the final Drive Impact effect. Each character in the game would have their own style of graffiti based on their favourite signature colors, and the form, touch-ups and the way the colors change despite performing the same attack all have slightly similar characteristics. When both characters do a Drive Impact, the screen dazzles. The team decided to go with "something that looked like a video which mixed live-action and animation together with a hint of character graffiti thrown in". Since the characters in Street Fighter 6 lean towards the realism end of the spectrum, if they also made the effect realistic then they'd overlap with each other and there would be a bit of information overload, weakening the intended effect. They felt that having a gap between the effect and character is more interesting so they went in that direction.
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The ability was designed in the game for beginners to go crazy with. So the team wanted the game to have a sort of pressured look to it that leads a player to think "my opponent hit me with a Drive Impact first, I gotta do the same or else I'm gonna lose!". They designed it so that visual effects would fill the screen from behind the character performing the attack, so it's easy to see which side is on the attack, and the flashy effect of the counter hit that symbolizes the Drive Impact is when the attacker's style of graffiti affects the opponent, causing a dramatic camera angle to happen on hit. They also used the logo of Street Fighter II as a motif, as that game was wildly considered the start of the series in terms of it being a cultural phenonmenon, so they made that the foundation of Street Fighter 6 and made it even more emphasized. It represents the loudest effect in the game, and they used that to create the other effects in the game.
Drive Rush#
Another of the new abilities in Street Fighter 6 is Drive Rush. The team created the ability using the following brainstorm of ideas: "Drive: Rush = Running = Sporty = Vitamins", and had the base of Drive Impact to work off of, so the job was to find an effect that screamed "Drive Rush" while matching with what they had. The idea of speed and rushing up to the opponent also made them think of manga, so the team experimented with things like speed lines and aerodynamic-looking effects.
In early prototypes, the ability looked different at the beginning of development. They considered having all the effects of the Drive System other than Drive Impact and Overdrives being blue at this point.
This is a red Drive Rush. The top two screenshots and the bottom three belong to two separate suggested designs. For some reason, red just seems like a fast color, but it was later scrapped.
As for the final color, they eventually found out that they had to use the vitamin-like colors of yellow and green. The speed lines from the other designs were removed due to worries that they made the character seem to go too fast, in addition to worries that it may make judging the distance between the two players difficult. In exchange, though, they gave the attacks an extra effect to make them seem powered-up.
Drive Parry#
This was another Drive System ability that looked different in early prototypes. The team's first crack at Drive Parry involved blocking an attack because it is essentially a stronger block. They wanted the character to stop the blow completely rather than react like they were guarding against it, and this led the team to this unused tough-looking design which caused a big puff of smoke, and a splash of sweat. It was already a set design policy at the time to have effects spill over to the opponent on hit and stop short on block at that point in development. They also already had a design for Drive Impact, so they worked hoping to it and Drive Parry complement each other well.
Next, they went with a design that would have the effect continue into the next attack in order to reinforce the idea that a successful Perfect Parry allows the user to move first. The team played with designs of all blue, since the idea of guarding seemed to fit the color. It's a paint-like design based on Drive Impact for both normal Drive Parry and Perfect Parry. They worked to differentiate Perfect Parry from regular Drive Parry, really focusing on making it feel rewarding and exciting, and they increased the size and had ink explode out towards the opponent to make it seem like the attacker had snatched advantage from them.
In the final game, players may be able to see an X-shaped light effect. This is to contrast with the circle-shaped effects you see when moves hit. For Perfect Parry, they tried to make it stand out while not standing out too much or making things difficult to parse.