Better run home to momma now!
While Sega has teased a Virtua Fighter event of sorts for May 27th, 2021, today, the company announced a return of Virtua Fighter. Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown, which looks to be a remake of Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, is being developed by the original Sega AM2 team and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (the team behind the Yakuza series). For now, the title will be exclusive to the PlayStation 4, and will be released on June 1st, 2021.
According to IGN, who originally broke the story, Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown will feature updated graphics, new background music ( I hope they don’t change the original music), new online features which include a spectator mode (like our podcast), lobbies for up to 16 players, as well as tournament features. This definitely isn’t a port of the Virtua Fighter 5 game found in Yakuza Like A Dragon with these added features.
Oddly enough, this is the same game leaked by the Korea rating board listing a while back.
I can’t say enough great things about this news. I grew up on Virtua Fighter, I preferred it to Tekken, and I was quite decent at the game. Over the various versions, Sega had crafted a realistic fighting title that had enough depth to keep even the most hardcode players happy. Sadly, after Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, it seemed that Sega had abandoned the series. And while other fighting games such as Street Fighter and Tekken kept going, fans of Virtua Fighter were forced to sit on the sidelines and reminisce about the glory days.
Check out our Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Shodown image gallery.
Granted, this isn’t the Virtua Fighter game that many of us were looking forward to – we were hoping for a Virtua Fighter 6. But at the same time, that Virtua Fighter event is still happening, and Sega could still surprise us. In fact, I’m counting on it.
Now, how about that Virtua Fighter 6? Or even a Fighter’s MegaMix 2!
