Elena is still a few weeks away from her official release in Street Fighter 6, but some players have already gotten the chance to try her out. One of Elena’s more interesting additions to the game (apart from her infamous Healing move) is the return of her classic mirror match intro animation from Street Fighter III: Third Strike.
Though not a 1:1 remake of her original mirror match intro animation (the original animation had two Elenas touching open palms before switching sides), the Street Fighter 6 intro animation is still a homage to Elena’s past Street Fighter appearances. Despite not being a true intro animation in which the character models interact with each other (it seems that Elena holds her fist out no matter which character she is fighting against), it is still a nice touch that both Elenas’ fists align so that it looks like they are touching each other.
Given that Street Fighter 6 currently does not have any unique character interactions at the start of a game, players are hoping that Capcom will reintroduce them in a future update. It feels rather strange for Ken and Ryu to not acknowledge each other as rivals before sparring or for M. Bison to treat the former Shadaloo experiment Ed as just another opponent. While there is unique text dialogue that pops up at the end of each game, the lack of voice acting or character animations incentivizes players to skip them.
Elena is set to release on June 5 for Street Fighter 6, which is available for PC (Steam), PS4/PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
