When you really step back and think about it, Street Fighter It really is one of the first games ever as a service. Sure, back in the ’90s, that meant something different – but few games have “lived” as long as the Street Fighter titles have, receiving updates that would introduce new moves, new characters, balance changes, and even entirely new gameplay mechanics.

Back in those days, you had to buy a new cart, or wait for a new board to drop into your local arcade locker. In many ways, Capcom has been ahead of the game – every competitive game is now stretched with a sweet drip-feed of additional content. Street Fighter didn’t move much into that space simply adjusting the cadence of what it was already doing to fit the trends.

So with Street Fighter 6, characters aren’t delivered with one big update, but they’ll drop one by one throughout the year. Rashid arrives first, later this month. And in one area, SF6 rises from current trends more directly – Battle Pass.

You all know the concept of this by now, and it is unlikely that I will ever need to explain it. The Battle Pass is just what you’d expect; Divided into free and premium levels, with a range of rewards available for each card. Playing SF6 rewards you with XP that pours into the pass and unlocks nifty add-ons.

These add-ons mostly consist of basic customization items. This includes items for your avatar to wear in the Battle Hub, World Tour, and Avatar Battles, titles, backgrounds, and poses to use on your profile, and additional stickers and frames that can be used to place SF6 avatars.

It’s all relatively insignificant stuff, which I think is actually pretty good. Each Battle Pass is an optional purchase for the most hardcore, and it never contains anything earth shattering – but the freebies for everyone to pick up are decent enough. The card is pretty generous in how you earn it too: it’s available in almost all modes, which means that even online matches against friends or the CPU contribute towards card completion. Even if you casually play a few games a day, even now you can easily finish the entire pass in a week.

There are some other Battle Pass rewards that are more substantial. Subsequent levels of the Premium tier reward you with Fighter Coins, currency that can be used to purchase some of SF6’s more substantial DLC, such as character outfits and colors. Every Premium Pass to date contains a classic Capcom game that you can play and play through the SF6 menus. And then… there’s the music.

Music, dear reader, is what this article is about. Includes a pass-through battle pass to unlock the Street Fighter classic. The first swipe displayed two Street Fighter 2 tunes; The second offers an unlock of some character traits from Street Fighter 5 to welcome Rashid, who of course hails from that game. But this music… kinda useless?

After all, the music is designed to be played through some kind of MP3 Player Jukebox under the SF6 menus – but it’s actually not compatible with the game itself. This seems like a huge missed opportunity.

Street Fighter 6’s soundtrack is great. It’s brave and different in how it sheds the traits of classic characters of the past and gives even classic heroes new traits to represent their changing lives. But this presents Capcom with a huge opportunity. I love the new themes – but I’d like to incorporate the old into the mix, too.

The game is already set up for this; You can choose from the lists which topics you would like to hear at which stages; Stage themes, character themes, and so on. More options (or more options for random selection) would be a good thing. It’s ridiculous to me, for example, that the first Battle Pass features unlocking music for classic SF2 themes by Dee Jay, Cammy, and T. Hawk – but they can’t be selected to play when fighting those characters. Yes, ol’ Hawk isn’t in the game, but his protégé, Lily, is. She can inherit his subject.

Right now, unlocking music in the Battle Pass – which, it should be noted, is a Premium Tier exclusive – is useless to me. I will never go into the lists to listen to these tracks. Especially when Capcom is so cool about having the soundtrack available on Spotify anyway. These openings are pointless. With that said, make them playable in battle… and they become a big deal.

Hopefully that’s the plan. But honestly, I’m worried. Street Fighter 5 offered one piece of DLC music – unlocking classic tracks from Street Fighter 2 for battle – and then it was never followed up with any music from later games. When the Arcade Edition added a proper Arcade mode, complete with some really special tweaks for themes from older games, the massive open goal of allowing those themes to be used in other modes was simply ignored. And honestly, the music felt like it was an afterthought.

In any case. If Capcom wants me to buy these premium Battle Passes, they need to make sure the offer is good. Many fans beg for real character costumes to be included in these passes in lieu of the avatar’s gear. And while I get it, I also totally see why Capcom didn’t necessarily do that. Costumes are an absolute cash cow for these games. But I don’t understand why one of the most unique cosmetic unlocks is so useless – the music unlock should be used better. Thoughtful changes like this on Capcom’s part would make me open my wallet.