Street Fighter 5's Summer Update shares important anniversary with Capcom vs. SNK

It feels like we've been waiting forever at this point, but we're finally less than 24 hours away from Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition's big Summer Update event.

There's already plenty of evidence that venue will serve as the place Capcom will announce SF5's final DLC character alongside gameplay information for Oro and Akira Kazama, and there may be one final hint as to their identity hiding within the timing itself.

The Summer Update event is obviously scheduled to take place on August 3 in the West, which just so happens to coincide with a very important date with the Capcom vs. SNK games.

To be more specific, Aug. 3 is also the day Capcom vs. SNK 2 first released in the arcades back in 2001, making it the 20th anniversary since the landmark crossover's launch.

Capcom Fighting All-Stars was the unfortunate title in question, which initially started life as Capcom vs. SNK 3 before the latter company went bankrupt and forced the team to try and make something new from its ashes.

This Capcom vs. Capcom fighting game was being developed by a number of former SNK staff, including leadership from past King of Fighters Director Toyohisa Tanabe.

In an interview on the Shadaloo CRI, Nakayama actually spoke to Tanabe about the project, who he refers to as a "great mentor" having worked together at a different company for five years.

There he revealed an SNK character was going to be added to All-Stars though their identity was never revealed.

"Ah, ***? Of course, we talked with the other party and had a contract," said Tanabe. "It's a character from my old place. Someone that is very well known. lol At the time, we had someone on staff who did their original pixel art. But even now, it remains a secret."

The article includes a silhouette of presumably said mystery character and appears to look quite similar to K' from The King of Fighters.

But if the *** does refer to the characters actual name, Kyo Kusanagi seems to fit the bill as well.

Kyo was also at the top of our most likely choices to join SF5 should the Season 5's last character be from SNK, so the KOF protagonist would definitely be a great choice to bring back.

"It's a character from my old place. Someone that is very well known. lol At the time, we had someone on staff who did their original pixel art. But even now, it remains a secret"

- Toyohisa Tanabe

Unfortunately, Capcom Fighting All-Stars was cancelled following the poor reception from its location test despite being nearly complete, which left us with the terrible Capcom Fighting Jam instead.

Perhaps Nakayama would like to essentially finish his mentors work by bringing in Kyo or a different SNK character to a main Capcom fighting game, but of course business deals take a lot more than wants and wishes.

This would be the first time in mainline Street Fighter history that a non-Capcom character would be included on the roster (unless you want to count Arika's EX series), which would be a momentous occasion to close out SF5's DLC support.

It would also make perfect sense why the final fighter was the only one left a mystery for a year when Akira Kazama's arrival would have also made for a hype reveal. All of that being said, however, none of this is a real guarantee that it's going to happen even if the stars are aligned.

It's also important to remember Capcom's previous track record with last character announcements and maybe not get overly excited just yet — lest we be hit with the same feeling from 2014.

I'm sure most of you remember Ultra Street Fighter 4's final character, which ended up being Decapre, so there's that.

Either way, the day of destiny is almost upon us, so be sure to come and watch Street Fighter 5's Summer Update with us starting at 3 p.m. PDT where we'll have full coverage of all of the announcements and beyond.

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