Guile, as usual, is waiting.

As the cultural anthropologists who make up SoraNews24’s readership are well aware, autumn is tsukimi/moon-viewing burger season in Japan, when the nation’s hamburger providers serve up sandwiches topped with fried eggs that resemble a beautiful full moon.

However, it’s specifically early autumn that’s moon-viewing season, coinciding with the timing for the moon-viewing parties which courtly nobles use to hold. That means, sadly, that it’ll soon be time to say goodbye to this year’s tsukimi burgers, as the official McDonald’s Japan Twitter account reminded us on Tuesday.

▼ “It’s almost time for them to go back to the moon.”

It’s a bittersweet moment, to be sure, but the very next day McDonald’s Japan gave us something new to get excited about.

▼ “Waiting for something…”

So just what’s being waited for, and who, for that matter, is the shadowy figure doing the waiting? The first clue is the detailed pixel-art aesthetic, evoking memories of a pre-polygon era of video games, but not so far back as to be taking inspiration from the earliest days of the medium. But the more telling clue? Well, they say that one mark of good character design is when you can recognize who the character is from their silhouette alone, and that silhouette clearly belongs to Guile, from the Street Fighter franchise.

▼ You might think Guile’s hair is the most “could only work in a video game” thing about him, but that distinction actually goes to his crouching block, as we painfully found out.

And it doesn’t look like Guile is the only one getting set for a round at the Golden Arches, as the McDonald’s Japan Twitter account then posted another teaser featuring even more members of the Street Fighter cast, along with the name of series developer Capcom.

The Street Fighter franchise spans nearly 40 years, with six mainline numbered entries and dozens of spinoffs and semi-sequels. For this collaboration with McDonald’s Japan, though, the focus looks to be on Street Fighter II, as the silhouettes in the tweets are all exact matches to poses the characters strike in its entries (though the second tweet’s use of the original 12 Street Fighter II characters suggests that the new challengers added for Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo won’t be part of the festivities). The second tweet also includes the message “They are coming to meet you,” a play on Street Fighter II’s tagline in Japan, “I’m off to go meet someone stronger than myself.”

As to what exactly the team-up is going to entail, a Street Fighter Happy Meal would seem like the most obvious choice, but McDonald’s Japan has been running into some problems with its high-profile Happy Meal collaborations as of late, so we might be getting special Street Fighter sandwiches like McDonald’s made for Godzilla, or they could be releasing sold-separately merch like the McDonald’s Evangelions. More info is expected to be announced later this week.

Source: Twitter/@McDonaldsJapan
Top image: Twitter/@McDonaldsJapan
Insert image: SoraNews24
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