Sixteen months, a full first season with over sixteen million YouTube views on Machinima and over five-hundred thousand Facebook fans later, the franchise that became a household name for generations of gaming culture is well on its way to coming full circle.
Set to release sometime in late 2015 or early 2016, Street Fighter World Warrior will re-introduce Moh and Howard respectively as Ryu and Ken, the iconic purveyors of Ansatsuken – the style passed on to them in the previous season by master Goken, played by actor Akira Koieyama.
Following the events of Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, Ansah is returning to write and direct the new season which will expand the story which Ansah explained during a panel at SDCC on Friday. “The scale of ‘World Warrior’ is much larger, picking up where ‘Assassin’s Fist’ left off as we follow Ryu and Ken on their ‘Musha Shugyo’ (warrior’s pilgrimage),” said Ansah, who also starred as Akuma in the first season. “The Shadaloo criminal cartel will be introduced, led by the extremely dangerous M.Bison, which will naturally lead into the World Warrior tournament,”.
Accordingly, the new series will expand to the stories will characters from the classic game franchise, namely prominent Muay Thai fighter, Sagat, U.S. Air Force Major Guile, and expert martial artist and vengeful interpol agent Chun-Li. Further developments are needed on how the new season will achieve its goal, but producer Jacqueline Quella and co-producer Mark Wooding offered a few statements of their own at the SDCC panel. “We demonstrated with ‘Assassin’s Fist’ that an authentic, live-action version of videogames, with a compelling and dramatic storyline, can be made,” said Quella. “We’ll be taking the same approach with the new series.”. Wooding added “There are some big and primal themes which we’ll be exploring in the sequel, …It will be thrilling and naturally, as befits the game, the fights will be epic, but it will be driven by the characters, their stories, faults and problems. It will be a dark tale.”.