Capcom and SNK have a long history of -mostly- friendly combat as the two titans of fighting gaming have intertwined pasts, perhaps most notably in 2001's Capcom vs. SNK 2, a crossover title featuring some 24 characters from each developers' IPs.

Especially after both Street Fighter and King of Fighters characters popped up together on Evo 2022 branding and some interesting words on the matter by SNK producer Yasuyuki Oda, the fighting game community has begun to buzz a bit about the potential of a Capcom vs. SNK 3. If this does happen, there are a handful of cross company character rivalries we'd love to see explored in modern times.

Especially with how much fighting games have been delving into stories as of late (thanks, Mortal Kombat 9) there's all new potential for the many characters with obviously similar designs (in many cases, said designs were directly inspired) to clash in interesting ways.

Here are a handful of match ups we'd love to see explored in modern times should Capcom and SNK round up their rosters under yet another shared title.

These ladies have become two of the most popular and prominent figures in their genre. Both are all but guaranteed to be in every single entry of their respective franchises, and both have made tons of appearances as brand ambassadors and guest stars in other games.

Mai actually can be spotted cosplaying as Chun in a pre-fight animation from CVS2, (check the 0:56 mark of the video below... these especially better return of CVS3 happens!) and the pair make up the most memorable thing about 2003's ill-fated SVC Chaos: an iconic promotional image in which they face off (as seen above).

Though Terry Bogard tends to take center stage most of the time, Kyo Kusanagi is the main protagonist of SNK's King of Fighters franchise. Developer Yuichiro Hiraki designed Kyo to contrast directly with Street Fighter's main protagonist, Ryu.

The two have some obvious differences when it comes to personality and fighting styles, but they clearly have some overlap as well. As protagonists, both have traversed fairly massive story arcs over the last few decades, and seeing how they'd interact as their evolved selves would definitely be worth exploring.

Fiery fighters with blonde hair and red clothing... Ken Masters and Terry Bogard are two of the most recognizable faces in all of video games.

The kinds of high octane battles that naturally occur whenever either of these two pop up on screen would be turned up to 11 if ever the two ended up clashing (beyond in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate).

The two big bad evil bosses. There's a ton of respect for both M. Bison and Geese Howard as villainous final foes, and who doesn't like seeing titans of evil clash?

Maybe they'd even team up in CVS3... at least for a while. We all know neither of these two could handle sharing the spotlight with anyone else for long, but there's a lot of awesome potential in the spark between this pair.

Dan vs. Ryo and/or Robert

Dan, Ryo, and Robert may not be the most popular fighters among their respective rosters, but they represent an especially important moment in the crossing of Capcom and SNK wires.

SNK's 1993 Art of Fighting had more than a few obvious "influences" from the widely popular Street Fighter 2. This makes some sense considering that a few key development figures behind the first Street Fighter, Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto, had left Capcom and joined SNK to develop Art of Fighting, but Capcom would answer this one of its many copycats from the time in an interesting way.

Dan Hibiki, an intentionally bad and overly proud "joke" character, was slipped into Street Fighter Alpha as Capcom's response. The oafish Dan was designed to be a mixture of SNK's Ryo and Robert, retaining physical features and using attacks common to the two SNK reps.

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There are plenty more potential CVS rivalries that would be awesome to see fleshed out further in a new Capcom vs. SNK game. What kinds of cross company match ups would you like to see explored in 2023 (or whenever a possible CVS3 might happen)? Let us know in the comments.