See also:
- Audience-Alienating Premise:
- The general idea of combining Tekken and Street Fighter in one game raised an immediate eyebrow from fans of both, because it was extremely unlikely that either Capcom or Namco would be able to faithfully combine the two vastly-different mechanics (a 3D fighting game with 8 way movement and a 2D fighter, respectively). This game, naturally, leaned more heavily toward SF mechanics, which meant that ardent fans of Tekken's saw no reason to buy this game outside of brand loyalty. Furthermore, the fact that the SF character models and game engine were obviously recycled from Street Fighter IV meant that people who disliked that game and its engine immediately knew to give this one a pass, and even those who liked it had grown a little fatigued with it by that point (having played the previous 5 editions of said game). And last, but certainly not least, we have Gems, which the developers flat out admitted were introduced as an attempt to bring a Magic: The Gathering style of fun to fighting games. Except tabletop gamers aren't typically fond of the execution ceiling of fighting games, and fighting game players don't particularly like the unpredictability and "pay-to-play" requirements of tabletop games, which left just about everyone confused as to just who this game was for.
- Bad Box Art Mega Man. The idea of a Stylistic Suck version of Mega Man as an overweight middle-aged washout based on the bad box art for Mega Man's original U.S. release would have alienated many audiences in the first place, but it also (coincidentally) came out at a time when Capcom was canceling Mega Man projects left and right, making it come across as a Take That! to the series' own fans.
- Cheese Strategy: The game has a faster timer than most fighting games, leading to a lot of rounds ending in a time out. As a result, some players will switch to playing all defense as soon as they get even a small lead, aiming to win by running out the clock.
- Critical Dissonance: The game was critically acclaimed by mainstream reviewers upon release with 9s and 8s across the board, but fan reception... well, the above section about sums it up. Even after the initial release had passed and there's been plenty of time for fans to cool off, Street Fighter X Tekken is still generally considered the black sheep of the Capcom crossover fighters.
- Designated Hero: Nina teams up with Kazuya because she's a mercenary, and despite knowing how horrible Kazuya's intentions are, business is business. Kazuya and Nina are considered the protagonists of the Tekken side. She does attempt to stop Kazuya in the ending, which makes up for it a bit, but still.
- Designated Villain: Jin serves as the penultimate boss for Street Fighter characters and his counterpart is none other than M. Bison. However, he has a much more noble reason to go after Pandora than both Bison and Kazuya. Not to mention the fact that he has served as the main representative for Tekken in other crossovers.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- King. He was, according to one report, the most played character behind Ryu and Kazuya (surpassing even Ken) during the Captivate 2011 play-testing, and was seemingly popular enough to account for his buddy Marduk as well.
- Poison as well, seeing as how this was the first time she's been in a bona-fide fighting game since Final Fight Revenge, as well as the reaction from fans from her first announcement.
- Fandom Rivalry: Prior to X Tekken's reveal, many Capcom fans were hoping for their next fighting game to be a Darkstalkers revival, in vein of Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. As a result, the announcement that it would instead be a crossover with Tekken that reused Street Fighter IV assets left lots of fans feeling burned.
- Fan Nickname:
- "Bob Saget"
◊ for the team-up of Bob from Tekken and Sagat from Street Fighter. - Bob Loblaw for Bob and Law, which kind of extends to Tekken Tag Tournament 2 as well.
- "Blonde-Li" for Nina, thanks to Capcom's love for epic-sized thighs being transferred from Chun-Li over to her.
- Pandora, the game's powerup mechanic, has been jokingly referred to as Xross Factor in some circles.
- "Dr. Wily" for Heihachi as the game's rendition of him has a striking visual similarity to the classic villain. This gets driven home when he's Mega Man's opponent in the Guest Fighter trailer.
- Lili and Poison are referred to by some as "Team Lady and the Tramp."
- Elena and Dudley are "That Ass and that Class".
- "Team GB (Great Britain)" for any combination of Cammy, Dudley and Steve.
- Beer Belly Mega Man, for Bad Boxart Mega Man (BBM/BBAMM).
- Pac-Bonne for Pac-Man's incarnation in this game. The robot is also fan-called Mokujinbot.
- Toro is known as Sony Cat for the few westerners that knew him prior to this game.
- Seth Green for Ogre, whose design in this game looks like...a green Seth.
- Maximum Raven for Raven's Doppelganger super, which looks similar to Wesker's Phantom Dance and Lost in Nightmares.
- Dark Wesker / Black Wesker, for Raven himself, because he has the same voice actor as Wesker.
- Team Korea for Juri/Hwoarang.
- At the time when Mega Man had the flying glitch, the action itself was referred to as "I have to go now. My planet needs me."
- Time Gem and ZA WARUDO for Rolento's Game-Breaking Bug, now patched, which caused the system to completely freeze when his Stinger knife collided with another projectile.
- "Bob Saget"
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- Dan getting smacked through the door of Ryu's temple by Kazuya in the trailer became one as Dan's been confirmed to have died at Kazuya's hands from said beating.
- Bad Box Art Mega Man was apparently suggested by Keiji Inafune himself, but since this Mega Man's unveiling came right off the heels of Inafune leaving Capcom, two cancelled Mega Man games, and Mega Man getting shafted twice in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, this character is still regarded as the cherry on top of the Mega Man controversies (he did make an appearance within MVC3 in the form of a cameo, however).
- Nina teaming up with Kazuya. At the time, Nina was ironically opposed to Kazuya through working for Jin in Tekken's latest mainline entry, 6, and indeed, their ending in this game sees Nina turn on Kazuya. Come Tekken 8, Nina has become The Dragon to Kazuya for real.
- Heartwarming in Hindsight: Guy and Cody's ending has the latter consider going back to the hero he used to be. Street Fighter V shows he managed to pull himself together enough to become the new mayor of Metro City.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Playing Arcade with a Tekken character as the lead fighter will result in Akuma as the Final Boss. Several years later, Akuma popped up as a Guest Fighter in Tekken 7 - and as the Final Boss to boot.
- Wildly unusual iterations of Pac-Man and Mega Man are the resident guest fighters from the two main companies behind this crossover. The more faithful ones would go on to fight Ryu in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, and both Ken and Kazuya later on in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- The early trailers portrayed Kazuya as a shadowy wraith completely cloaked in black ink, making him look especially evil and menacing. The ink effect surrounds him when he uses a Tekken Force soldier's helmet cam to record a threatening message to his own son, Jin.
- The Pandora's Box stage, more specifically the "2nd round" version. The corpses of Mishima Zaibatsu soldiers flying around and glowing? A Pandora-infused Tyrannosaurus Rex, accompanied with the Pandora-infused wooly mammoth from the "Antarctica" stage? The fact that you're fighting Akuma or Ogre on this stage in arcade mode, and you're probably going to have to use a lot of continues and see this creepy stage again? Oh, sweet Jesus.
- The Antarctica stage. You are facing a pair of Pandora-infused characters while the aforementioned Pandora-infused wooly mammoth is chasing the hovercraft you are fighting inside. To add on top of that, some of the dialogue from the opposing team is downright disturbing, like Xiaoyu willingly giving in to Pandora to help Jin.
- Everything about Pac-Man. His intro makes him sound like an embodiment of Horror Hunger, his confrontation with rival Mega Man has him giving the latter a rather creepy stare, giggling when his ally sacrifices themselves to power Pandora Mode and his ending has him almost mindlessly devouring trees in a city after growing several feet tall!
- Bryan Fury's Super move involves him slamming his opponent into the ground, and then the camera switching to the opponent's POV as Bryan repeatedly stomps their face in. And the whole time, Bryan is maniacally laughing in a way that sounds a little too familiar... it doesn't help that one of Bryan's alternate costumes is, basically, a Monster Clown.
- The Slasher Smile Bison makes in his trailer appearance.
- The final episodic Vita trailer sees many characters succumb to Pandora's influence as they all get closer to it, with Faustian results. Upon seeing Eddy apparently die from a grenade blast while she helplessly watches from behind bulletproof glass, Christie lets out a bloodcurdling wail as her eyes turn red. Violently slamming her hands into the glass, she effortlessly breaks it with her new superhuman strength, much to Lei's horror. To see an innocent, happy-go-lucky character like Christie transform into an unrecognisable white-haired demon is doubly disturbing.
- Overshadowed by Controversy: While the hardcore set didn't really fall in love with the game, it was doing well enough when it first came out... until it was revealed that the coming DLC characters were already on the disk and locked behind a paywall. This didn't endear any potential fans to the game after that and generally one of the reasons why SFxT is shunned by fighting game fans. Capcom had this particular controversy follow them for years afterward, as any talk of DLC for other games would have droves of people asking if those were also on the disc already.
- The Scrappy:
- Rufus. When he was revealed at the 2011 New York Comic Con, he was outright booed by part of the audience. They also booed him because he was confirmed as Zangief's tag partner, which upset a lot of people, particularly the R. Mika camp.
- Bad Box Art Mega Man. Apart from not being the traditional "Blue Bomber" and more of a Joke Character, he appeared at a particularly bad time for fans due to Capcom at the time cancelling many Mega Man projects, particularly Mega Man Universe and Mega Man Legends 3. Thus, what was supposed to be a light-hearted joke looked more like an insult to the fans.
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- The gem system. Not only was it heavily tied to the game's "pay to win" initial model, since many gems were straight-up better than others, and most of said gems were store or preorder exclusives, but it also made the game inherently a bit unpredictable, and did a lot of damage to the tournament scene. Tournaments quickly realized that gems were a bad idea and banned them, so many players trying to practice online were forced to play without gems, putting them at an inherent disadvantage.
- While it's normal in tag-team fighters for a tagged-out fighter to regain health, the regeneration at launch was absolutely ludicrous, to the point that fighters could get most of their health back in seconds. Add in the fact that the most damaging technique was hard to execute and easy to stop, and you had it being labeled Street Fighter X Timeout for how many high-level matches ended in time overs.
- Pandora Mode was this before it was patched in 2013 — the big complaint being that it only lasted for seven seconds, at which point you lost the round, meaning it was totally useless as a comeback mechanic.
- The Vita version is mostly a Polished Port, but for some reason the gallery and character customization menus are touch screen only, even though the rest of the game can use either the touch screen or traditional buttons, making it feel tacked on.
- So Okay, It's Average: It's not a bad game by any stretch and a good number of critics found it to be fully functional with a very energetic vibe about it that most causal gamers can play. They cite that it's clear Capcom was putting effort into this as indicated by the quirky stages and catchy soundtrack. However, criticism stated that the game is hampered by the gem mechanic which is both cumbersome and out of place in a more down to earth fighting game (i.e: not Marvel vs. Capcom). This was a sentiment that a lot of the more hardcore set agreed with, and couldn't embrace the gems. Enjoyment of the game mostly rests upon if you don't mind playing what is essentially Street Fighter IV featuring Tekken characters note
- Song Association: Plenty of examples:
- Black Tide's "Honest Eyes" became the main song for everything SFxT-related.
- Hollywood Undead's "My Town," for everything Final Fight-related, in addition to King and Marduk.
- Rise Against's "From Heads Unworthy," for the Jin/Xiaoyu vs. M. Bison/Juri trailer.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: As the conceit of the game was to present Tekken in the style of a Street Fighter game, Capcom naturally took some liberties when adapting the Tekken cast to the 2D gameplay style, but even taking that into account, some Tekken characters bear very little resemblance to their canonical selves in terms of their movesets and stances. Only a handful of them retain accurate command inputs for their special attacks, most notably Kazuya (which may be a case of Early Instalment Weirdness on the development side), which gives some diehard Tekken fans a bad case of Damn You, Muscle Memory! Much later, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate of all games would definitively prove that Tekken characters can be more faithfully integrated into a 2D fighting game, and a hectic Platform Fighter at that.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- The trailers provided more nonsensical stories than the actual game, which suffered from an Excuse Plot. The Cinematic Trailer 5 is arguably the most complex storyline Capcom has ever made in a crossover; there, we learn that Jin wishes to capture Ryu, who is also being targeted by Jin's father, Kazuya, for an unknown reason. The promotional song appears to focus on the complicated relationship between Jin and Kazuya with the former becoming the target of none other than Bison. Instead, Jin ended up fighting against the cops in-game.
- Really? They missed out on having Law vs. Fei Long?
- Unexpected Character:
- Poison, whose sole playable appearance was in the Final Fight spinoff Final Fight Revenge, and all the Guest Fighter characters in the Playstation versions.
- Cole McGrath making it in as a Guest Fighter, as he's not in either Capcom or Namco's side.
- Toro is barely known outside Japan, despite being created in 1999 and being Sony's mascot in that country, he had only a few games made for himself since then; Toro basically grew to be a real mascot rather than an actual video game character, and his being actually playable instead of just a cameo is quite surprising. Kuro was even more unexpected due not being a heavy advertised mascot as Toro, he doesn't even get the cameo treatment, he is purely a Doko Demo Issho character.
- Vindicated by History: While it’s not exactly a universal feeling, as stuff like the Gem System and the on-disc DLC are still very controversial, people in later years have warmed up quite a bit towards this game, usually citing its stylish presentation, great music, creative stages, deep customization, how surprisingly fun and interesting the Tekken characters work in a SF engine and especially how gorgeous and well-made the ending cinematics and trailers are even years later (to the point where a lot of people in the FGC consider the latter to be the greatest trailers ever made for a fighting game), especially considering how lackluster the presentation in later Capcom and Namco fighting games were for a lot of people, showing that a lot of love and effort was put into the game, with fans still begging Capcom and Namco to port the game to modern consoles.
