Ryu Go Gotoko and Sega had a surprise at The Game Awards last Thursday. A teaser of the new Virtua Fighter game has been teased. While confirmation of the new Virtua Fighter game has been done a while back, what we were able to see from it was still a mystery until now.
In the trailer, we’re getting crows as a technical benchmark marker as the camera is focused on one particular animal as it flies away. A poem by Farjoen is quoted while this is going on. In a bit of an old rustic city, a man is fighting through it, yet he seems somewhat familiar. Carts are being knocked around while the two trade blows.
Akira is sporting a hat in this look while he’s giving his new foe his signature move, the Hantei Goku Tensetsukou. The foe flies through a house nearby, breaking the wooden walls. Later on, Sarah Bryant appears, with her and Akira are both locked into what may be a demonstration of the in-game engine that’s being used and an actual gameplay fight.
The fight goes on with the two of them for a bit until the teaser gets cut. The new logo is shown here, also. The brushwork resembles the same logo that is used for Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. This could be Sega trying to indicate that the series will be turning a drastic new leaf.
It seems as though Virtua Fighter’s rumors are coming to pass. The engine itself seems to be leagues away from even what Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown is using now in terms of visuals. The ring itself looks far from what to expect from the Virtua Fighters of now. Maybe this is something out of the pages of Hitmaker’s run in Virtua Fighter 3, but AM2’s games usually restricted character fights to boxed rings whether fenced or not.
The Great Wall of China stage and the City Stage come to mind from that game. An actual street is a surprise and something that RGG probably was inspired to do after seeing Virtua Fighter characters interact with Dead Or Alive’s cast and stages in DOA 5. Akira, Jacky, Sarah, and Pai, were guest characters in that game, retaining their original movesets under Dead Or Alive’s battle mechanics.
A lot of the 30 years that Virtua Fighter was brought back from was after some hiatuses on Sega’s behalf. It took nearly 10 years to release Ultimate Showdown after Final Showdown with not many updates to even balance changes as other fighting games would get in that period. However, in the early 00s, there weren’t as many gaps between sub-iterations such as Evolution and Final Tuned of Virtua Fighter 4.
Would this mean that Tekken 8’s reign of unchallenged 3D Fighting Game supremacy may be coming to an end by the very game that inspired it? Not much has been revealed yet in terms of what will happen going forward or where Sega is on this long-awaited sequel dubbed New Virtua Fighter Project. Perhaps dissecting the Virtua Fighter Direct from Friday will give us more insight.
