We now have an intriguing new rumor about one of the standards of the fighting game genre.
According to Midori, a reliable source on leaks and rumors about Atlus games, especially Persona games, Atlus’ parent company Sega is working on a new Virtua Fighter game. And this time, this will be a full release.
This will warrant some explanation. The last full original release in the Virtua Fighter franchise was Virtua Fighter 5, which first launched in arcades all the way back in 2006. This title received several ports, but most recently, was rereleased exclusively to the PlayStation 4 as Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown.
Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown has something of a strange origin, as it was actually co-developed by RGG Studio of Yakuza / Ryu Ga Gotoku / Like A Dragon fame. This version of the game came about because an earlier version of this same game, Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, was added to Club Sega in the games Yakuza 6, Judgment, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Lost Judgment.
So, fans thought they got a new Virtua Fighter in 2019, only to discover it was really Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown. That takes us to today, as Midori shared all of this on Twitter:
“Virtua Fighter
• It is online and esports focused and has online and offline modes including customization modes.
• There are new characters with a modern art style and character artist.
• It is a game concept that changed many times since 2021 up to now.
• Streaming and spectating implementation is an important part of this title and Super Game concept.
• It is a reboot of the Virtua Fighter series in development by current Virtua Fighter staff.
• It is a title releasing on all major platforms with crossplay and rollback.
This is a Virtua Fighter title that is developed to be a modern competitor to Street Fighter and Tekken with esports concepts and mechanics that are similar to current Street Fighter and other fighting games. It is a concept that evolved a lot.
And there is all new main story and side stories with brand new characters.
And there is an evolution of ranked matches that is similar to modern fighting games. This is a title that is focusing on scaling with the player and their play styles when they play online.”
Virtua Fighter, of course, is one of Sega’s most important and successful franchises of all time. After Virtua Racing and before Shenmue, Yu Suzuki took his ideas on game design to make an ambitious new fighting game unlike anything that came before it.
Virtua Fighter’s big source of appeal was the groundbreaking use of computer generated graphics, and then the depiction of real-life martial arts, and finally the depiction of movement in 3D space. Virtua Fighter set the standard that other 3D fighting games followed; simpler button inputs and shorter combos than 2D fighting games, but new mechanics to deal with, thanks to the addition of 3D.
It looked like Virtua Fighter would survive the fading away of the 1990s US video game arcade scene, and also the decline in popularity of fighting games, alongside its other 3D brethren in Tekken and Dead or Alive. But Sega wasn’t able to mount a successful revival, in spite of the repeated rereleases of Virtua Fighter 5, mainly because they didn’t see this title becoming more popular with time, and they also didn’t have any new ideas on where to go next.
As we see from the rumor above, Sega is going to follow the lead that Street Fighter and Tekken have created, and that’s perfectly fine. While these games are their developers were once more fiercely competitive, nowadays all the fighting game developers work with each other with events like the Japan Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable, which is streamed to the public. It’s become a niche now, but it’s a niche with a dedicated audience. Today, with esports, and also new ideas to appeal to the casuals, it may finally be time for Virtua Fighter to rejoin our virtual video game worlds.
