Sega has confirmed today that they are developing the next installment of the Virtua Fighter series. The father of 3D fighting games is getting a new entry in the series since the Ultimate Showdown graphical upgrade version of the Final Showdown port in 2021. In an interview with Video Games Chronicle, boss Justin Scarpone from Sega’s transmedia division name-dropped the series as one of the actively developed projects from the revival effort that was announced at last year’s Game Awards.
So we have a suite of titles in development right now that fall into that legacy bucket, which we announced last year at The Game Awards; Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Streets of Rage, Shinobi, and we have another Virtua Fighter being developed. And so all that’s very exciting. And then in certain instances, we’re also doing animation series, or live-action films to augment that and be part of those roadmaps.
While most of the new titles were seen in the trailers last year, Virtua Fighter’s new number nor footage was not, causing several to doubt that the series would get the sequel it sorely needed in this effort. At the current time, no other information has been revealed. Nor if Sega’s AM2 will be reprising its role in engineering the new game. Nor has Katsuhiro Harada, producer of Tekken, who has been vocal about Sega needing to announce Virtua Fighter 6. The rumors earlier this year in March have now been confirmed to be somewhat valid.
In the 90s, Tekken and Virtua Fighter iterations were nearly neck-and-neck in terms of releases. After the first 3 iterations being exclusive to Sega consoles Saturn and the Dreamcast, Virtua Fighter would then have multiple versions of the current number released to the PlayStation 2 console during the 128-bit era. Virtua Fighter 4 skipped the Dreamcast in favor of the PlayStation 2. Virtua Fighter 5 and its’ 2 other titles made their way to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. 5 R became a Japanese exclusive title, bringing back sumo wrestler combatant – Taka Arashi – post his Virtua Fighter 3 debut before. Arashi was omitted because of gameplay technicalities. Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown was released, in 2012, before the series went dormant. The Yakuza / Like A Dragon team took on the Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown remastering.
Virtua Fighter has been praised for being one of the most grounded 3D fighting games amongst the many including Dead or Alive, and of course, Tekken. Some of Virtua Fighter’s characters made guest appearances in Dead or Alive 5 to go toe-to-tabi against the Mugen Tenshin ninjas and their usual opponents. 2006 was the start of the last whole number of the series. With the 3D fighting game landscape having even Soulcalibur take a bow, it’s probably high time to do things with genre like it’s 1994.
