Maybe they’ll keep it in house at Sega with Virtua Fighter
Guest characters and crossovers have continued to be a very popular strategy for fighting game developers over the past decade or so, and while that trend shows no signs of slowing down, not everyone is on board with the idea.
A few years back we learned that Yakuza’s Creator wasn’t really down to let Kazuma Kiryu into fighting games, and it looks like the current leader of the Like A Dragon studio has a similar sentiment for different reasons than his predecessor.
You’d think that with characters like Kiryu, Majima Goro and Ichiban Kasuga who pull from / reference things like Virtua Fighter and other ideas from the genre would be a no brainer fit.
Current Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio producer and writer Masayoshi Yokoyama has loftier goals in mind for Sega’s hit franchise.
Polygon recently had the chance to interview Yokoyama to ask him directly about crossovers for games like Tekken 8 while discussing the upcoming Yakuza show.
“I think it’s better to say that going across mediums like how we did with [the Like A Dragon: Yakuza TV] series is better, rather than just going to another game,” said Yokoyama via Polygon. “We receive all kind of invitations to appear in other games, but we never actually went over to their doorstep and said ‘let us in.’ I think going cross-medium is the better way to go about it.”
So while he doesn’t flat out reject the idea wholly, it certainly sounds like fighting game crossovers are far from the top of his priority list for the series’ future plans.
This follows up what Yakuza Creator Toshihiro Nagoshi had to say on the matter a few years ago when he was still with the Sega studio.
“We do get this request a lot. Of course there are exceptions,” said Nagoshi via Red Bull, “but fighting games generally have female characters, and personally I don’t really want to see Kiryu beating up women.”
Although fans of both franchises had been asking for a crossover previously, Tekken Director Katsuhiro Harada kicked the interest into overdrive after bringing up the large amount of Kiryu requests he receives as well as directly referencing the Dragon of Dojima a few times more during Tekken 7’s lifespan — but he obviously never made it in.
Tekken 8 currently doesn’t have any guest characters in the game or revealed as DLC, and Harada recently spoke about some of the challenges of actually getting crossover characters that fans don’t think about.
Now, however, Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy 7 has probably eclipsed Kiryu as the most requested guest for the current 3D fighter.
For the longest time, Capcom had stayed away from smaller crossover appearances in Street Fighter, but that obviously changed with SNK’s Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui coming to Street Fighter 6.
It certainly sounds like the SF6 development heads are interested to do more if the Fatal Fury duo succeeds though Sega may not be totally down to play ball at the moment — at least with Yakuza.
Like A Dragon characters did technically appear in Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown as special costumes, and given RGG Studio’s work on the game, it’s not that surprising.
With rumors swirling of a new Virtua Fighter in development, that may be the most likely place we would see the likes of Kiryu, Majima and Ichiban now since it would all stay in-house at Sega.