Month: June 2022

Enlarge / The circular plaza at Chavin de Huantar—once a ceremonial gathering space, and later the site of a village. (credit: CyArk Chavin Database)

Today, the temples, canals, and plazas of Chavín de Huántar stand mostly in ruins. But the site (about 250 kilometers north of Lima, Peru) was once was the heart of the Chavín culture, a civilization that flourished in the central Andes centuries before the rise of the Inca Empire. Its oldest granite and limestone temples date back to about 1200 BCE, but people have lived at the site for much longer, since at least 3000 BCE.

Even after the Chavín culture’s power faded, members of the Huaraz group used stones from the ancient temples to build a village in an abandoned plaza. People lived at Chavín de Huántar until the 1940s. The place has had a long enough life that, over thousands of years, even the people who lived there lost track of some of its secrets.

Archaeologists rediscovered one of those secrets by accident: a narrow duct leading to a small ritual chamber eight meters deep beneath one of the site’s temple buildings. Based on the style of its architecture, the hidden chamber may be older than any other building or tunnel at the site.

Enlarge / The splashy color effects attached to successful "drive impact" attacks look even better in action, thanks to the early game already being optimized for 60 fps action. (credit: Capcom)

LOS ANGELES—After spending two days smacking strangers around in the world's first playable version of Street Fighter 6, I'm convinced that this is the entry that will bring me, a casual fighting game player, back to the series.

Already, this "2023" fighting game is beautiful. It's accessible. Its combat has real impact. And its strategies and moment-to-moment gameplay come with clearer consequences and learning opportunities than I've ever seen in a Capcom fighter.

As the version I played was quite early, with only four playable characters, I'm left with the impression that Capcom still has some fine-tuning to do. I can already imagine where the devs will focus efforts like damage balancing, recovery windows, and other numerical tweaks. I'll do my best to share what I've learned so far about SF6's myriad of systems, particularly the "drive" abilities that gather prior games' coolest mechanics into a "greatest movement hits" gumbo. These all appear to be subject to change.