The Nintendo Switch is many things, but a serious fighting game platform is not one of them. That’s not to say there aren’t amazing fighting game experiences, as proven by the existence of titles like the Capcom Fighting Collection series, and there have been regular ports of premier fighting titles like Mortal Kombat, albeit vastly downscaled to fit them on there. Outside of Super Smash Brothers, though, Switches are not regularly seen at fighting game tournaments. Heck, there are barely any high-quality fight sticks for the system, relying instead on adaptors to make things compatible.
That all looks like it’s about to change though, with the arrival of the Nintendo Switch 2, and Street Fighter 6: Year 1+2 Fighters Edition as a launch title. Not only is this the full Street Fighter 6 experience, it’s also rated as tournament legal by Capcom, making this portable version of the game a genuine challenger.
If you’ve spent time with Street Fighter 6, you’ll already know that this sits handily amongst the current crop of best fighting games. It rewrote the pervading negative narrative that circled Street Fighter V, as well as introducing a host of new features to the series which now feel essential. It is a great game, and two years down the line, with the second batch of fighters having just dropped, it’s hit a new peak.
The Switch 2 version then immediately sets the tone by including all the previously released fighters, taking the roster to an exceedingly healthy 26 fighters. Besides that, it also benefits from two years’ worth of updates and content drops, and, if anything, loading up Street Fighter 6 at launch on Switch 2 is daunting, giving you so many possibilities, and so many characters to choose from, that it’s hard to know where to start.
The best starting point for most people will be World Tour. Here, you create your own fighter, designing them from the ground up, and then taking them out into the semi open-world to find fame and fortune by running up to people in the street and getting into a brawl with them. For all that it occasionally feels wrong beating up an unassuming old lady, this mode lets you craft and create a unique fighter, building up their personal repertoire of moves by training under each of the established fighters from the series, and it’s just a brilliant twist on the established Street Fighter one-on-one mechanics.
Some may wish it was more like Netherealms’ cinematic singleplayer stories like those found in Mortal Kombat or Injustice 2, rather than a Yakuza-lite brawler, but I love the player agency you have in World Tour, and there’s some serious longevity and customisation for your playable avatar to keep you coming back.
However, in docked mode, the Switch 2 version of the game doesn’t perform as well as the PlayStation 5 or PC editions here, with the open world and emergent battles proving pretty challenging for Nintendo’s new handheld. The frame rate takes significant hits while you’re running around, and that’s with vastly reduced animations on distant figures, or more often than not, characters just popping into existence much closer than you’d expect.
That, combined with the 30fps fights in this mode, take the shine off what is one of the biggest draws of this game. Surprisingly, things are better in hanheld mode, with a reduced resolution helping to keep things smoother, if not perfect. Even so, it’s still a hell of a lot of fun – I’ve spent the entire day today running around in it – and if you don’t have access to the other versions, you likely won’t mind too much.
The Battle Hub is Street Fighter 6’s online component. The twist here is that it’s one giant lobby that you explore in 3D, running up to potential opponents playing at arcade machines, while also being able to watch fights, customise your avatar and more. The Switch 2 version is fully crossplay compatible with the other versions of the game, but that’s a bit of a blessing and a swift kick of a curse. The combination of reduced access to competitive Fight Sticks and Nintendo resolutely steering away from an actual D-pad on the Joy Con 2, make this far from an even playing field, even if the bouts themselves are fundamentally mechnically the same.
You can choose to disable crossplay if you want your online fighting to be limited to Switch 2 players, but then you’re severely limiting your potential opponents. When playing with Joy-Con 2, you can opt for Street Fighter 6’s Modern Controls which make things more accessible, giving players access to set combos with a simplified button layout, but fighting game fans and long-time players will want the full-fat experience. That is here, and the new Pro Controller 2 has a better, more defined D-pad than its predecessor, but there’s a number of ifs, buts and maybes to actually interacting with this game.
Street Fighter 6: Year 1+2 Fighters Edition is, in and of itself, an awesome port of the original. It’s attractive, with clear, sharp visuals, and the mainline battles are brought to you in smooth 60fps. Performance is choppier during the World Tour mode, with 30fps combat feeling decidedly less polished than those elsewhere, and hanging out in the Battle Hub can bring the odd judder or two. Crucially, there’s no sign of that during online battles, or in the game’s traditional offline modes like Arcade and Vs, but there are signs of where Capcom has had to make cuts to bring it to the less powerful Switch 2 hardware.
Street Fighter 6: Year 1+2 Fighters Edition is an impressive port, but it almost feels like its for the wrong hardware. As the system matures, and as third party providers give us Joy-Con 2 with better D-Pads, and maybe Hori, Turtle Beach or Qanba bless us with a new fight stick or two, perhaps that feeling will change. In the here and now, I don’t expect to see many Switch 2 players making it to Evo or the Pro Tour, but they’ll definitely be having fun in the meantime.