AEW announces Street Fighter crossover action figures
Ryu, Ken and Akuma are all represented.
Professional wrestling company AEW has announced a series of action figures in collaboration with Capcom and Street Fighter.
First revealed at AEW fan fest in celebration of AEW Revolution, the wave of figures includes Kenny Omega, Nick Jackson and Matt Jackson.
Kenny Omega’s hair and attire are a reference to Akuma, while Nick and Matt Jackson are dressed as Street Fighter icons Ken and Ryu.
The figures, which will release in September in the US, celebrate gear that was worn by the trio during an AEW event in 2019.
Video games have regularly been referenced in AEW, and a popular fan meme is to bring a sign displaying a controversial opinion, in hopes that it gets on TV. One fan went viral last year when their “Persona 5 sucks” sign was picked up by TV cameras.
An AEW video game is currently in development by Yukes, the long time developers of the WWE games before 2K‘s Visual Concepts team began developing the games a few years ago.
Yuke’s shared the first in-game footage of the AEW game last June, where it showed Darby Allin fighting a generic green character.
Veteran WWE game developer Yuke’s confirmed in 2020 that it was working on a new “best in class” console game for WWE’s rival wrestling firm AEW.
During the game’s announcement, it was revealed that genre luminary, Hideyuki Iwashita, the director of classic fighting games WWF No Mercy and Def Jam Vendetta, would also be involved in the AEW title.
Iwashita’s influence can be seen in the new footage, which looks like a modern version of WWF No Mercy, rather than Yuke’s recent WWE games.
Iwashita’s past games were created during his time at Yuke’s’ historical rival AKI Corporation, a fellow Japanese developer which effectively left the genre in 2006. However, Yuke’s senior vice president and producer Hiromi Furuta said it would not be strange working with the director as it had already hired some former AKI developers.
After skipping a year, 2K will release WWE 2K22 next week. In our preview, we said that “While we’ll need to spend longer with its in-ring mechanics to see how they hold up to repeat play sessions, the core changes that have been made here are enormously positive ones, and will hopefully result in one of the better WWE games we’ve seen in a while.”
However, some fans are already questioning the game as it was revealed that over 20% of the roster no longer works for the WWE.
