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New leaks from the Twitter account @ShiinaBR have provided Fortnite fans with the audio associated with the next portal, a faint tune that is immediately recognizable as Ryu’s theme from Street Fighter.
With this audio as evidence, ShiinaBR went on to speculate that the next Fortnite skins will feature a male and female character from the Street Fighter series, likely Ryu and Chun Li. At this moment, there isn’t enough information to say whether or not this crossover will be limited to skins or if the Street Fighter characters will be appearing within the Fortnite map this season.
Fortnite X Street Fighter
While usually Fortnite crossovers tend to rely more heavily on pop culture, featuring characters from well-liked media even if it doesn’t necessarily make sense, in this case the crossover seems a lot more natural. Street Fighter is already a very crossover-heavy series.
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To date, Street Fighter characters have appeared alongside characters from Marvel, Tekken, Super Smash Bros., Mega Man, King of Fighters, and even showed up in Wreck-It Ralph. These crossovers ranged from just featuring Ken and Ryu in Smash to having entire games or series made, as with Marvel vs. Capcom, just to explore the crossover.
Fortnite is quite crossover-centric itself. Like Street Fighter, Fortnite crossovers come in a variety of styles, ranging from simple skin inclusions to whole scale IP integration, as with Fortnite Season 4.
Most likely, the Fortnite X Street Fighter crossover will manifest itself as some simple skins, perhaps with some variations or extra goodies to fully flesh them out.
Which Street Fighter characters could be considered for crossovers?
Fortnite Season 5’s main theme is meant to be bounty hunting, something that isn’t quite so prevalent in Street Fighter. However, this theme has certainly been stretched already. The Walking Dead doesn’t feature bounty hunters in the traditional sense, yet Daryl and Michonne were added to Fortnite.
If ShiinaBR’s leaks are accurate, and there are just one male and one female character coming to Fortnite, then the assumption that these are Ryu and Chun Li is the safest guess. Ryu is all but confirmed with their choice of music. Although Ryu’s theme has shared elements with other Street Fighter characters, such as Akuma and Gouken, it’s unlikely that those less iconic characters would be featured over the series’ protagonist.
As for female characters, Street Fighter features an array of interesting women to play as, but yet again one stands out amongst the crowd. Chun Li is so iconic that she can often appear outside the context of Street Fighter and still be recognized. It would be hard for characters like Makoto, Sakura, or Cammy to do the same.
Fans of both Fortnite and Street Fighter will likely be excited to see these characters represented on the island, though it might be some time before any kind of confirmation comes out for them.
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