Category: Entertainment & Lifestyle

Fighting games crossing over with other genres is nothing really new though it’s usually companies like Capcom and SNK that we see lending out their characters and series to other titles.

Koei Tecmo and Gust announced today a special collaboration with Tekken 8 for the upcoming RPG Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land.

The companies released a small teaser trailer showcasing a slime with Heihachi Mishima’s hair and mustache getting tossed off of a cliff like his home series.

Atelier’s official website confirms this crossover will include costumes, special skills and accessories all themed around Tekken.

It won’t apparently be ready at launch, however, as the information states the collaboration content will be made available at a “later date.”

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is set to release tomorrow, March 21, for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC.

You can check out the teaser trailer for the unexpected crossover between Koei and Bamco below.

IBSG|Kakeru was recently able to stun the world with his victory at Capcom Cup 11, securing him the $1,000,000 grand prize. It’s funny to think that he actually had a fight with his wife about potentially switching to Mai Shiranui during the top 8, but ended up sticking with JP in the end.

During an interview with Walker Plus, Kakeru also revealed how he’s been able to play fighting games throughout his childhood. The article is in Japanese, but translations have been provided by Nicholas “MajinTenshinhan” Taylor.

“The Sumo hall was beside itself with hype. Compared to when you were a child, how do you feel the Esports scene has grown?” asked Walker Plus.

“My household wasn’t very strict about games so they let us play them pretty freely as we wanted to, but the general vibe in society was always ‘play outside instead of playing games,’ I felt.” — Kakeru

“My household wasn’t very strict about games so they let us play them pretty freely as we wanted to, but the general vibe in society was always ‘play outside instead of playing games,’ I felt,” responded Kakeru.

In the past, BST|Daigo Umehara shared similar experiences, but video games seemed like that they were even more taboo back then. Of course, Daigo is about 16 years Kakeru’s senior, so these were different times altogether.

Still, it would seem that Daigo (as well as Rohto|Tokido) did seemingly have an impact on Kakeru growing up. Kakeru mentioned that both Daigo and Tokido were among the notable players when he started playing fighting games in middle school.

“I started playing fighting games during my second year of middle school and back then there were only a few pro players like Umehara-san (Daigo) or Tokido-san,” continued Kakeru.

“Because of all the hype that they managed to bring back then, we now have the fighting game scene that we do and people like me can become pros and work in this environment that they created.” — Kakeru

Needless to say, it’s difficult to imagine where the fighting game scene would be at today had players like Daigo and Tokido never became so invested into fighting games.

As a result, Kakeru believes that it’s because of the hype that they were able to bring to the scene back then is because we have tournaments like Capcom Cup 11. With that in mind, Kakeru intends to continue to elevate fighting games even higher.

“Because of all the hype that they managed to bring back then, we now have the fighting game scene that we do and people like me can become pros and work in this environment that they created,” continued Kakeru.

“I hope that moving forward, I can help bring the fighting game scene to even further heights.”

Every fighting game franchise has them. Those characters where people keep saying “but they have to be there, otherwise it’s not the same.” It’s a tale as old as time and honestly, in today’s fighting landscape, it’s more relevant than ever.

The knowledge on fighting game developers’ part that they’re going to be supporting games potentially for years and have lots of room for post-launch content means that pushing the roster in before release isn’t the same type of concern anymore. But that also leads to its own share of problems…

What brought this to mind for me to write about at all was actually an X post I saw from user 4th Snake which I’ll embed below.

The more “must-haves” you demand in every sequel’s roster, the less newcomers and uncommon characters you get to see. Please consider that before complaining that they missed one game in twenty years. pic.twitter.com/MxkZmiQAOK

— The4thSnake (@4thSnake) March 19, 2025

The post shows some of the most recurring Mortal Kombat characters and how most of them haven’t missed a game recently, remarking that if you keep referring to these characters as “must-haves”, then the less rare characters or potential newcomers will show up.

It’s a valid concern, to be sure. The picture for Mortal Kombat’s roster through the last few games shows pretty clearly how many spots tend to be taken up by the “usual suspects”, and it’s definitely not just something that happens with Mortal Kombat.

Street Fighter has gone out of its way to include the World Warriors from Street Fighter 2 at every turn, Tekken despite launching with a larger roster than its rivals has gotten complaints about Anna occupying the same spot back-to-back in Tekken 7 and 8, which is the first DLC character of the game’s second season and there’s more where that came from.

Even with Virtua Fighter you can see it, I wrote a piece recently about how the series only ever cut a character once, but maintaining the core roster has also led to the game having fairly few new characters for each of its iterations.

So, this being a thing in fighting games is well-established and nobody would really try to deny it. But is it a problem? Now that’s an entirely different discussion. Let’s weight some pros and cons on the issue.

Let’s make one thing clear — people like what they know. This is a pretty universal truth and it’s no different in fighting games.

If someone grew up playing Street Fighter 2 and they want to buy the new game, they’re going to be looking for who they used to play as a kid. If they’re not there, odds are they won’t buy it.

Now, of course, this isn’t a universal truth, but there are trends that point to it. One thing we can look at is how many fighting games tried to reinvent themselves by cutting most of their old cast, and while they didn’t all flop, it’s not like most of them really brought the series to new heights either.

The most infamous example, Street Fighter 3, often gets brought up, though I want to take this opportunity to point out that I think it’s an oversimplification to say that was the whole issue with the game.

One of the core reasons that Street Fighter 3 suffered due to roster choices wasn’t just that they removed characters people loved from Street Fighter 2, but also that Capcom were concurrently running two separate Street Fighter series, the Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter EX franchises, which did contain all or most of the old favorites.

It was something of a self-sabotage and when fans were confronted with picking between a roster where they didn’t really recognize anyone or one of the two games that had all the world warriors, they would naturally gravitate more to what they already knew.

That said, Street Fighter 3 is far from the only example of this happening in fighting games. Soul Calibur 5 replaced the majority of the old characters and was not embraced well, Garou: Mark of the Wolves was not a flop by any means but it also happened to end the Fatal Fury series for 25 years until Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves which releases on April 24th, 2025.

Mortal Kombat itself had this issue as well with lots of characters being introduced during the so-called “3D era” of games between Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat 9, many of which either took a very long time to return or never did at all.

Perhaps the best example of a fighting game which did big roster cuts but still succeeded was Tekken 3, though in their case they replaced many of the old cast members like Kazuya and Michelle with their children (Jin and Julia, respectively), thereby making it so that fans of the old characters could still gravitate to their new counterparts.

In short, having characters that people know and are accustomed to tends to be a fairly safe bet. But, one can go too far in that direction as well…

The issue with having too many iron-clad slots on your roster is that you risk stagnation.

Season 2 of Tekken 7 was well-received by many and brought back several favorites who missed the cut in the initial roster, but after seeing Anna be the first Season 2 DLC for Tekken 8 as well, fans are starting to feel a bit weary.

Although the rest of the season pass is still unknown, Marduk, Lei, Armor King and Julia are all quite popular characters who once again missed out on the launch roster of Tekken 8 just like they did back in Tekken 7, so it’s definitely not outside the realm of possibility that we’ll see one or more of them show up for this pass again.

A similar situation already occurred in Tekken 8’s first season where Lidia Sobieska, a character who was the final DLC and final new character in Tekken 7 is early DLC instead of being on the launch roster, prompting many fans to vent their frustrations at having to pay twice for the same character in a relatively short span of years.

When you load up on characters that you deem absolutely essential to your roster, it can lead to many repeat scenarios like this where the same characters show up in the same spots over and over again and risk making everything feel stagnant for long-time fans.

While Street Fighter has avoided this specific issue, Street Fighter has an entirely different problem related to their insistence on keeping the World Warriors around (more so in 6 than 5, since several of them ended up being DLC in 5 but all are in the main roster of 6) and that is popular characters simply never showing up at all.

During the Street Fighter 4 era when Capcom held an official character popularity poll Karin topped the vote in Japan and placed highly outside of Japan as well.

Now, granted, Karin showed up for Street Fighter 5 which was a few years after the poll had been conducted, but the fact that she’d been asked for throughout all of Street Fighter 4 but never showed up was still strange.

It isn’t an isolated issue either — mid-way through Street Fighter 5 back in 2018, Makoto placed 2nd and Q placed 4th in Capcom’s next Street Fighter character poll. Neither of them were ever included and indeed neither of them are present now in Street Fighter 6 either.

The most recent such poll we have from Capcom, which is from 2024, was conducted in-game in Street Fighter 6 and thus focused primarily on people who already owned the game so it gives a different type of results and it’s honestly a bit too new to be factored in to anything just yet, but the results tell a similar tale.

Here, we again see Makoto very high up in the charts, this time being exceeded by Akira from Rival Schools who debuted in Street Fighter 5.

What I’m trying to say with this is, the more characters you reserve slots for either on the launch roster or as DLC for this season or that season, the more popular characters that fans are crying out for get ignored.

It’s no surprise to see characters that fans don’t like miss the cut and it’s also no surprise if companies want to hold off on popular characters for the next game, like Capcom did with Karin for Street Fighter 5.

But when you have provably popular characters that fans are crying out for simply never showing up at all because you’ve bordered off roster spots for characters that may be iconic but not necessarily popular (for example Dhalsim in particular but also E. Honda both tend to do terribly in all of the polls listed above), what’s even the point of keeping the roster locked off to specific characters?

It may be a copout answer, but to me personally a mid-way balance is best. If we’re going to use Street Fighter as an example since it’s likely what most readers are familiar with, I think that characters like Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Cammy and Guile are mainstays and should probably always be in the roster.

Conversely, I think that some like Dhalsim or E. Honda should maybe not be guarantees every time and leave some space for favorites who have been absent for a while. To Capcom’s credit, they did do this in Street Fighter 5 by holding Blanka and E. Honda off of the launch roster, but inexplicably reversed course for Street Fighter 6 anyway.

This obviously goes for every franchise — Mortal Kombat’s original 7 could maybe stand to have 3 of them absent at once sometimes (which I do realize is the case in Mortal Kombat 1 to some extent since Sonya and Kano are just Kameos) and Tekken could be a bit more flexible in which picks have to split off the launch roster and wait for DLC chances.

The full on approach we’ve seen where fighting game developers insist on including every one of their most classic characters at once or just shake up the entire roster from its very foundation seems like a flawed one.

Tekken 3 probably did it best all those years ago by having a healthy mix of newcomers, passing the torch from legacy to new on some characters and a solid amount of classic fighters all mixed together.

Especially in this age where content is becoming much more slow-drip and fighting games are lasting much longer before any sequel is released, it really would be nice to have just a tiny bit more variety, don’t you think?

There are many characters from Marvel Comics which have come and gone, some see a massive heyday for a short period of time and then fall into obscurity while others endure the test of time and keep pumping out more than 700 issues without pause.

The character I’m focusing on today is somewhere in-between — he definitely had a very specific time where he was an absolute A-lister of Marvel content and while he’s far from obscure even today, he’s fallen from his prime to a somewhat minimized role in Marvel’s pantheon of heroes. Today, we’re talking about the Silver Surfer.

Before we get into the Marvel vs. Capcom history as it pertains to Silver Surfer, let’s get to the bottom of the character himself first. Who exactly is the Silver Surfer?

Well, his real name is Norrin Radd and he was originally a normal person from a planet called Zenn-La, not entirely unlike Earth with its inhabitants looking fairly human. His backstory is intricately connected with a famous Marvel character who was also the final boss of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the planet-consuming entity Galactus.

One day, Galactus appeared with the intent of feasting on the planet of Zenn-La and Norrin Radd offered himself up to work for Galactus in exchange for leaving the planet intact, basically bargaining to save his homeworld and his lover Shalla-Bal.

Galactus accepted this trade and imbued Norrin Radd with the dubiously defined Power Cosmic which turned him into the shiny soldier we know as the Silver Surfer and became the herald of Galactus whose basic role was to fly ahead of Galactus and identify planets which offered adequate sustenance for his master.

Since the Silver Surfer was still Norrin Radd at his core, his conscience was deeply troubled by sacrificing entire civilizations to Galactus’ hunger which led to Galactus altering his mind to repress his memories and entire personality.

Shortly after this is where we are first introduced to the Silver Surfer, way back in Fantastic Four #48 from March 1966, when he arrives on Earth and relays to Galactus that it is fit for consumption.

The Fantastic Four try to figure out how to stave off Galactus’ assault, but it was actually Alicia Masters, long-time girlfriend of The Thing, who pleaded with the Silver Surfer to spare their planet and thereby managed to reawake his dormant feelings and lead to him turning on his master.

With some outside help, the Silver Surfer was able to hold off Galactus long enough for the Fantastic Four to confront him with a weapon which even Galactus could not stand against. Enraged at the betrayal, Galactus erected a barrier attuned specifically to the Silver Surfer and trapped him on Earth, leaving him a homeless nomad on the planet he had chosen to save.

For a long time, the Silver Surfer was more of a cameo character who would show up on occasion across various Marvel titles, though most predominately in the pages of the Fantastic Four as this was a team he had prior relationships with from his debut, but after about two decades things would change massively for our silver-clad superhero.

After a few prior launches that didn’t last too long, in 1987 the Silver Surfer received his own ongoing comic book which lasted for over a decade all the way until 1998. Since then, he’s had several smaller comic book runs though none have reached the length of the massive one he had throughout the late ’80s and almost entire ’90s.

As it stands, the Silver Surfer has a total of over 200 comic book issues to his name and that’s not counting the time he’s spent in crossover events or assisting in other comic books or on teams, so he’s definitely one of the bigger characters in Marvel’s past library as far as standing on his own.

It wouldn’t be fair to call him an obscure character today, but compared to his heyday it’s definitely a big difference. At his peak, the Silver Surfer even got his own NES video game which many cite as one of the hardest games around.

So, given how popular he was during the ’90s, he would’ve been an absolutely perfect candidate for the Marvel vs. Capcom series which spawned around that time, right? After all, other characters who were huge during that time like the X-Men are all over the roster in those titles.

Well… here’s the thing about that. If you’ve kept up with the talk about older Marvel vs. Capcom titles, you’re well aware that Marvel, who were struggling somewhat financially at the time, had basically thrown out their rights to various characters all over the place.

Given Marvel’s interconnected nature with a shared universe for all its characters, some of these restrictions proved to be absolute nightmares. It was to the point where they weren’t allowed to use Iron Man, but Marvel let them recolor him and call it War Machine and there were no issues.

“But really, why were things like The Fantastic Four, like Silver Surfer, like Ghost Rider not allowed? Why is Iron Man not there?” — Kenji Kataoka

In some recently unearthed writing by Marvel vs. Capcom producer Kenji Kataoka he laments the inability to include certain characters including the Silver Surfer himself.

That clearly seems to suggest that Silver Surfer very much was a wanted character at the time but there were simply rights issues which kept him from being included, a fate that plagued many of Marvel’s cast at the time.

So what about Marvel vs. Capcom 3? Much later, there weren’t really any rights issues to the video game usage of Marvel characters (movie rights were a whole other story, though), so the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 developers had much more free reign with who they wanted to include in the game.

Indeed, not even did they have that freedom, they actively used that freedom — Galactus, the character who the Silver Surfer is intricately tied too through his lore was the final boss of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which actually makes the surfer’s absence a bizarre anomaly.

If Galactus was here to consume Earth, why hadn’t his herald come before him as a sort of mid-boss character, or been included as the traitor he eventually became to stand against Galactus as he threatened his home?

Well, there’s no direct quote but there are some notes from way back in 2010, before the release of the first Marvel vs. Capcom 3 game, where the game’s director Ryota Niitsuma and Capcom USA employee at the time Seth Killian talked to fans about certain decisions they’d made with the game… including a snippet about the Silver Surfer.

When asked about an entirely different character, Ghost Rider, they mentioned that they’d wanted him in the game but couldn’t figure out a way to incorporate his bike in the moveset and didn’t want him included without it.

Notably, Ghost Rider would later be added to the enhanced version with additional content, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, where he fights without his bike but uses it in certain super attacks. Not only that, but this version of Ghost Rider would also return in 2017’s Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.

After talking about Ghost Rider, they said that their rationale for Silver Surfer was similar, except that it pertained to his surfboard — they didn’t figure out how to have him fight without it, but including him without it would be a waste.

It does make a certain amount of sense. Rarely do you ever see a picture of the Silver Surfer without being on his iconic surfboard. It’s even to the point that his name literally includes surfer.

While there was probably some way to make it work the same way they eventually did with Ghost Rider, it appears the development team saw the absence of Silver Surfer’s surfboard as an even bigger hurdle than doing away with Ghost Rider’s motorbike.

The closest we got to seeing Silver Surfer was the Heroes and Heralds mode that was added to Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, a for-fun mode with various effects added to you where any character could get the same shiny exterior that Norrin Radd once got when he swore his fealty to Galactus.

Obviously, there’s no guarantee we’ll ever see the return of the Marvel vs. Capcom series in the future. But even if we do, are Silver Surfer’s chances completely gone?

Never say never, as they say, but honestly… it’s not looking good.

He may not be an obscure character, but his relevance has certainly faded in a big way since his heights in the ’80s and ’90s.

On top of that, the perfect opportunity to include him would be when you have Galactus as the main threat of the game but since they already did that in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, they’d probably aim for something different next time.

In short, Silver Surfer has missed out on two absolutely golden — er, I mean silver, of course — opportunities to be part of the Marvel vs. Capcom universe but managed to miss them both.

Even if we do get a new game, I just can’t see them prioritizing him over all the other potential picks that are more likely to resonate with current fans… and that’s a real shame.

And so goes the story of Norrin Radd, the silver-clad starfarer who never got to see his chance to shine (in his case literally) on the fighting game stage…

The status of Karin, Sakura, Lucia, R. Mika, Maki, Ibuki, Makoto, Akira, Maki and more in Street Fighter 6’s timeline

If you’re curious how a large portion of Street Fighter’s female cast are doing, Street Fighter 6’s director, Takayuki Nakayama, shared a ton of updates recently.

Nakayama discusses Karin, Sakura, Lucia, R. Mika, Maki, Ibuki, Makoto, Akira, Maki and throws in a bit on if Chun-Li, Juri and Mai Shiranui are all the same age.

There are quite a few details here, which help give context to these past cast members, if or when they show up in Street Fighter 6. Regardless, it’s nice to know where the following characters are at in the latest game’s timeline.

Karin, R. Mika and Nadeshiko

First up is Karin, where a fan wondered what she was up to after the events of Street Fighter 5.

“She continues to lead the Kanzuki group after the ‘A Shadow Falls’ story. She is smart, dynamic, and well-funded. Very dependable leader,” wrote Nakayama.

He was then asked if Karin is still R. Mika’s sponsor. “Sure. She would still support Mika,” said Nakayama.

The next question was if Mika and Nadeshiko are still friends.

“Nadeshiko has become a fine athlete and even has a wrestling match with Mika (Best friends, of course),” stated Nakayama.

Sakura, Akira and Ibuki

The next question was about how Sakura knew to invite Akira to Karin’s party in the previous game.

“Sakura has a keen intuition（That may be the case though）The girls are staying in touch,” Nakayama said.

Street Fighter 6’s director was then asked what the Rival Schools guest character Akira was up to.

“I wonder what’s going on? It would be nice to contemplate. (Though of course the worlds are connected.) She was a guest in Street Fighter 5, so I don’t know much more than that,” he said.

A fan asked if Ibuki ever got to take a normal college course after her ending in Third Strike.

“That ending is interesting. I love it. I don’t think her normal college life is going well for her,” noted Nakayama.

Makoto, Lucia and Maki

Throwing in one male Street Fighter character into the mix, the next question covers Alex and Makoto.

“Alex is active in wrestling. Makoto has taken over the dojo (Rindou-kan) and is active. They are similar in that they never neglect self-discipline,” Nakayama said.

Next, we touch on a couple of Final Fight characters, starting first with Lucia and then Maki.

“Lucia is, of course, in Metro City. She’s probably eating Instant Noodles again today,” he wrote.

“Maki is doing well. She goes back and forth between Japan and Metro City. It seems she has an apprentice she is taking care of,” noted Nakayama.

Are Chun-Li, Juri and Mai Shiranui the same age?

Closing this out, Nakayama addressed if three of the most popular females in all of fighting games are the same age.

“They are close in age but not the same age. Mai and Juri have the same birthday,” he said.

Nakayama was then asked if he can share these character’s birthdays.

“It is a secret known only to the members of the development team,” concluded Nakayama on X.

We recently saw the implementation of Ace Attorney’s Phoenix Wright as a character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate thanks to the power of modding. As expected, he functioned very similarly to how he does in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

It turns out that the modding community was able to take a character concept from another fighting game and implement it into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. This time, Milktoastmonika has put in the effort to add Pokkén Tournament’s Shadow Mewtwo. The Beefy Smash Doods have released a video covering its moveset.

Mewtwo already sort of fits the glass cannon archetype in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Despite being tall and having problematic hurtboxes, it is also very light and floaty.

While Mewtwo is very susceptible to losing stocks early due to these disadvantages, it tends to make up for these weaknesses with its high damage output and combo options. Additionally, Mewtwo functions well as a zoning character even though its only armed with one projectile (and a reflector).

Shadow Mewtwo takes this extreme design and somehow manages to make it even more extreme. Of course, while some of Shadow Mewtwo’s moves and abilities are identical to that of Mewtwo’s, its moveset is, for the most part, completely unique.

According to the lore established by Pokkén Tournament, Shadow Mewtwo is just a Mewtwo that was corrupted by a Shadow Synergy Stone. This Shadow Synergy Stone can be seen lodged in Shadow Mewtwo’s left shoulder.

While Shadow Mewtwo might have more powerful and crazier attacks than Mewtwo, this extra power comes at a price. Similar to Pichu, Shadow Mewtwo utilizes a number of attacks that inflicts damage to itself.

In Pokkén Tournament, Shadow Mewtwo also has a few moves that can recover some of the damage it had received throughout the match. With this Super Smash Bros. Ultimate mod, Shadow Mewtwo is only able to recover life via its idle stance, which really isn’t viable in a real match.

Regardless, Shadow Mewtwo utilizes very powerful attacks that can be used as practical combos. As an example, Shadow Mewtwo’s neutral special projectile (which can be charged just like Mewtwo’s) will briefly stun opponents before launching them upon hit. This gives Shadow Mewtwo an opportunity to chain additional hits for an even greater punish.

Shadow Mewtwo even has a number of attacks that will utilize either fire or aura properties based on which direction he attacks from. It’s actually fairly similar to how Gill’s attacks have unique properties based on him attacking either to the left or right in Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.

Check it all out below:

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is now somehow just over a month away from launch, and the game is doing quite a bit more than usual in terms of promotion for the upcoming fighting game.

SNK announced today that DJ Salvatore Ganacci has been brought on to Fatal Fury as a collaboration music advisor to help bring new tracks into the game from artists all over the world.

According to the official post, there will be 19 original tracks from “world-renowned musicians” each crafted for the game specifically by 11 different artists.

Besides Ganacci, however, we don’t yet know who the rest will be, but the tracks will be included as stage BGMs — so they are going to be in the game and usable if you so choose to.

This is certainly not the first interesting promotion SNK has done for the new Fatal Fury considering they’ve also got a deal going on with pro boxing currently too.

There was also the teased crossover with soccer legend Cristiano Ronaldo, which we still don’t know exactly what that is going to entail.

SNK revealed this week as well that Fatal Fury will be getting a second beta test starting towards the end of this month that’ll hopefully have fixed the connection issues present in the first run.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is set to release on April 24, 2025 for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and PC with those getting the digital deluxe edition receiving three days of early access.

News Flash
11 world-renowned musicians drop into FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves in an incredible collaboration!
Salvatore Ganacci serves as collaboration music advisor!

Releasehttps://t.co/henfInlA3d

Official Sitehttps://t.co/5JEcTxHG9C#FatalFury #CotW pic.twitter.com/IhHBXeXTu2

— SNK GLOBAL (@SNKPofficial) March 19, 2025

Virtua Fighter is back and trying to be bigger than it has been in many years with its current title getting pretty regular updates.

Sega has now released the official Version 1.03 patch notes for Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. scheduled to hit the game next week.

It appears this new update is going to focus around adding some more quality of life features / functions to the game as well as handful of bug fixes.

Once again, there are no character-specific battle or balance changes included.

In a recent Virtua Fighter producer letter, the developers stated they are listening to player feedback, however, some larger changes may be difficult to implement at this time — but they are looking into solutions.

Recently, Sega also announced the Virtua Fighter Open Championship that’ll be a pro circuit with a $100,000 grand prize beginning at Combo Breaker 2025.

GRAND PRIZE – $100,000
Details on the first ever “VIRTUA FIGHTER Open Championship” are NOW LIVE!

The first qualifier will be held this May at @COMBOBREAKER in Chicago#VF5REVO #VFOC2025 pic.twitter.com/TboZQIldCO

— VIRTUA FIGHTER (@VF_SEGA) March 14, 2025

According to the official post, this update is scheduled to hit the PC version of VF5 on Thursday, March 27.

You can check out the full patch notes for Virtua Fighter’s upcoming changes below, and the previous Version 1.02 patch notes can be found here.

Ranked Match Improvements

• Match Ping will now be displayed as soon as a ranked match is found.

Button/Key Mapping Improvements

• Up to two buttons/keys can now be assigned to a single function.

• Movement keys can now be adjusted using keyboard/mouse.

Graphic Option Improvements

• Graphical setting changes are now reflected when pressing the ‘Apply’ button.

• Graphic Settings can now be saved upon exiting.

Other Feature Updates

• An official data collection feature has been added.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where leaderboards were incorrectly displaying players’ highest rank achieved rather than their current rank.

• Fixed an issue where leaderboards would sometimes display incorrect information when filters were changed too quickly.

• Fixed an issue in Performance Improvement Settings where mismatched Sharpness Value and actual game results occurred when using ‘AMD FSR 1.0.’

• Fixed an issue where match replays would stop playing if the game remained on the Main Menu for an extended period.

Other minor bug fixes

Arc System Works are perhaps the most active fighting game developer on the market and while their biggest published games haven’t reached the heights of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat or Tekken sales, they are probably the most contracted developer by other publishers as well as one of the fastest growing Japanese developers due to their heightened success in recent years.

With two Arc System Works-developed games (more if you count their published games like Under Night In-Birth 2 [Sys:celes]) on the market that are currently being supported with post-launch content, Guilty Gear Strive and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, you might be surprised to hear that they actually have several other projects in the pipeline as well. But what could they be?

The reason we know that Arc System Works are in fact working on several different projects as of right now actually comes from a video that’s 9 months old as of writing. Back in the video, which detailed the development of Season 3 for Guilty Gear Strive, this factoid was mentioned in passing by the game’s director Akira Katano.

“Arc System Works has, even only over the last few years, welcomed many new staff members and has continued to grow. As it grows we continue to work on a variety of projects, some of which we have yet to announce.” — Akira Katano

At the time, Katano mentioned that there’d been an expansion to the work force at Arc System Works in recent years. “Arc System Works has, even only over the last few years, welcomed many new staff members and has continued to grow,” he said, continuing with “as it grows we continue to work on a variety of projects, some of which we have yet to announce.”

This seems like good news all around for anyone who’s a fan of Arc System Works games, though the Guilty Gear Strive director did also have a less joyous tidbit to share at the end.

“Unfortunately, as we’re jumping from project to project, even our growing number of staff is not enough to handle the amount of work,” he concluded, which likely is part of why we ended up seeing Venom’s release delayed for Guilty Gear Strive earlier this year.

So we know that Arc System Works have projects in the making… but what are they? I’m going to outline a few possibilities below from what I believe to be the least likely down to the most likely.

This one seems like the obvious choice for Arc System Works to be working on at some point… but not yet.

Guilty Gear Strive may have divided the old fanbase, but there’s no denying that its sales speak for themselves with Arc System Works announcing last summer that the game had hit 3 million copies sold.

Bringing the franchise to new heights obviously means that there will be more from it to come in the future, especially with an anime series based on the property set to start next month, but it’s unlikely that a sequel is in development as of right now.

The thing is, Guilty Gear Strive released in 2021 and even though its current post-launch content has seen some trouble, it’s still got at least the end of its third season to wrap up.

Even after that, there’s no telling if that’s actually the end — Guilty Gear Strive may have even further post-launch content planned. We’ve seen some fighting games go as far as five seasons of post-launch support, so who’s to say?

Guilty Gear will definitely be getting a new game somewhere down the road, but it’s just much too early for something like that at the current stage.

Guilty Gear Xrd, the predecessor to Strive, released its first version in 2014 and was eventually followed up by Strive in 2021. So… maybe in 2028?

Last week, I touched on the puzzling absence of a Dragon Ball FighterZ sequel in an article here on EventHubs and while it seems like such a no-brainer to do given the success of the first game… there’s really no indication as of right now that it’s happening.

Dragon Ball FighterZ is a game that Arc System Works don’t explicitly have control over since they aren’t the publishers but were hired by Bandai Namco to work on the game under their publishing label, so any decisions to be made on a sequel would be conducted by the publishing company.

Because of this, it’s not really up to Arc System Works if it’s going to happen or not. They mostly have the opportunity to either say yes or no if Bandai Namco wishes to work with them again… and that’s assuming a sequel is even on the table to begin with.

There’s definitely merit to the idea, given how well Dragon Ball FighterZ did, but it’s also important from Bandai Namco’s perspective to not overflood the market with similar games.

While the recently released Dragon Ball Sparking Zero is not a traditional fighting game, it’d be disingenuous to say that they aren’t hitting a similar spot in the market by being one-on-one competitive fighting games, albeit in extremely different styles and with different levels of competitive integrity to them.

At the end of the day, there’s just no evidence for a sequel now despite a few promising leads from years ago which I outlined in my previous article.

Said leads could just as well be related to the upcoming Hunter X Hunter Nen Impact, so right now there’s not much pointing to a Dragon Ball FighterZ 2 no matter how much sense it would make.

The BlazBlue series was one of Arc System Works’ staples alongside Guilty Gear since its debut in 2008, but on the fighting game front it’s stayed stagnant for quite some time now.

Although well-received rollback netcode update a few years ago, the series hasn’t seen a new entry outside of the spinoff crossover BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle in 2018, which wasn’t really a sequel.

That’s specifically talking about the fighting games though — the series has actually seen recent success with its mobile spinoff game BlazBlue: Entropy Effect recently being announced to have crossed 1 million sales meaning that the intellectual property itself is definitely still alive and well in fans’ minds.

If Arc System Works are indeed working on something for the BlazBlue series, it might end up a tad different than what fans expect, though. This is because series creator Toshimichi Mori left the company back in 2022, so it would most likely be the first core game in the series developed without his presence… if it’s even on the table at all.

This is one that fans have been clamoring for almost a full decade at this point. The original Persona 4 Arena released in 2012 with an update called Persona 4 Arena Ultimax following in 2013 for arcades but 2014 for home consoles.

Persona 4 Arena was made during the Persona franchise’s staggering growth in the public consciousness, but long before it had reached its actual heights.

Persona 5 was released in 2016 and hit new heights for the franchise, bringing Persona into the public eye in a way it really hadn’t been before and ever since then fighting game fans have been asking… when’s Persona 5 Arena?

Well, back in 2016, the Persona 4 Arena series director said they definitely want to make it happen, though this was right after the release of Persona 5 itself so it was a bit too early to say anything.

In 2021, more news surfaced where some URLs that could potentially be linked to Arena games related to Persona 5 were unearthed, leading fans to believe that perhaps the time had finally come.

Unofficial leaks occurred in 2023 which stated outright that Persona 5 Arena is happening, though there’s been no official word since then.

Much like Dragon Ball FighterZ, this is a scenario where Arc System Works would be doing contract work for a different publisher, in this case Sega.

Given that Arc System Works have expanded their workforce and are traditionally known to do many such contract games (besides Dragon Ball FighterZ, they’ve also developed Granblue Fantasy Versus and its sequel as well as DNF Duel for other publishers in recent years), they should definitely be available to bring the series back if Sega asked them to.

With Persona bigger than ever and Sega finally making their own jump back into fighting games with Virtua Fighter, it feels like a no-brainer for this to materialize.

Even though we’ve heard rumblings about it for almost a full decade now, there has yet to be anything concrete about it. But with so much smoke surrounding this potential project, there really has to be fire somewhere, right?

This is such a broad scope so it’s barely even a prediction, but it’s also the most obvious one to be happening.

Let’s face it — when it comes to fighting games, Arc System Works are the talk of the town and they have been for a very long time. If a publisher wants a fighting game spinoff to any of their franchises, this is where they go.

From 2005’s Fist of the North Star game all the way up to 2022’s DNF Duel, the sheer volume of licensed games that Arc System Works have taken upon themselves throughout the years is just beyond any comparison with other fighting game developers.

Although their rates may be a bit more expensive after how well Dragon Ball FighterZ (10 million copies sold as of May 2023) did, you can bet that there are lots of intellectual property owners out there who want their own slice of that pie.

Obviously, there’s absolutely no telling what kind of franchises Arc System Works might be collaborating with. After Granblue Fantasy Versus and DNF Duel, basically anything is on the table from mobile games to foreign franchises to Japan, so anything could happen.

The most common request seems to be for the storied fighting game developer to try their hand at other popular manga series than Dragon Ball and give them the FighterZ treatment — I personally had some suggestions on that topic a few weeks ago.

Whatever they’re working on, I’m sure we’ll find out in the near future what at least one of those projects are because it’s been a while now since we saw anything brand new from Arc System Works.

With the Arc World Tour Finals set to be held this weekend, maybe we’ll even get some kind of sneak peek in the next few days… ?

Last week, I did a piece talking about Asuka Kazama and the strange pivot her story took in the Tekken franchise after her introduction, where she started out as a seemingly plot relevant character with potentially serious implications but ended up being a total side character with more humorous and unimportant content.

But there’s another character who had a very stellar position right when the franchise started back in the original Tekken game and gradually grew into the position of almost a complete joke character with his original objective long since forgotten… that character is Paul Phoenix.

Way back when the Tekken series started out, Paul Phoenix was one of the eight original characters in the arcade version alongside JACK, Kazuya Mishima, King, Marshall Law, Michelle Chang, Nina Williams and Yoshimitsu, although there were more characters available on the console release.

Being one of the original fighters obviously carries some gravitas with it and Paul’s story in the first game was definitely taken seriously. He was an undefeated fighter who had only ever tasted victory until he ran into then-series protagonist Kazuya Mishima, with who he fought for hours in a battle that ended in a draw.

Seeing the King of Iron Fist Tournament as his opportunity for a rematch with Kazuya, Paul jumped at the chance to fight his rival and remove any doubt that he was truly the unbeatable fighter that his reputation suggested he was.

However, the canon storyline shows that Paul actually lost in his rematch with Kazuya and tasted bitter defeat for the first time. Not letting it demotivate him, he rose back up to challenge Kazuya again and get his revenge… but then it kind of went off the rails.

After Tekken 2, it’s stated that Paul managed to miss out on fighting Kazuya again because of… bad traffic. That’s right, a car pileup made him late to the tournament and robbed him of his opportunity to face off against the series’ main character. Not exactly a serious way to end a rivalry…

Despite originally being positioned as Kazuya’s rival, developers seemed to have other ideas for Paul after the console roster for the first Tekken game had been developed and expanded on the character pool and they found a different… less human adversary for Paul.

During his tournament run in the first Tekken game, Paul had fought against Heihachi’s pet bear Kuma and beaten him, something that developers apparently thought was notable enough to turn into something of a running joke and ever since then, even though Paul’s desire to fight Kazuya again gets an off-handed mention on occasion he seems to always end up in a battle with Kuma instead.

Even in Tekken 8, Kuma goes out of his way to try to fight Paul but ends up inadvertently saving him from a missile being fired at him by a soldier and though Paul’s grateful reaction seems to suggest they’ll put an end to their long-running feud, I’m sure the developers will find an excuse for them to keep fighting in Tekken 9 again.

As for the general character stories, Paul’s endings have typically been humorous in nature often involving some kind of traffic mishap, such as his Tekken 2 ending where he gets stopped by a rockslide (which he then punches away) or his Tekken 3 ending where he’s speeding on the highway and gets ticketed by a highway patrol officer.

Another aspect of Paul which has been explored much more after his more comedic turn is his long-standing friendship with Marshall Law and the many antics they get up to in order to try and get money, sometimes even involving the latter’s son Forest Law who was playable back in Tekken 3 and in later games sometimes also incorporating Steve Fox.

Paul has basically gone from a serious threat who is on equal level with Kazuya to a complete buffoon who may still be strong but is dumb as a bag of rocks and manages to land himself in strange trouble and always has no money.

While there’s definitely charm to Paul’s more comedic endings, it’s hard to see how this turn happened exactly. The most likely culprit is the time skip in Tekken 3, where Paul went from being a fairly young fighter in his late ’20s to a 40+ year old man who was just kind of a bumbling loser who also happened to be strong.

In Tekken 3, the series shifted its focus to new protagonist Jin Kazama and the former protagonist (who would later turn villain) Kazuya Mishima was believed to be dead, so with Paul’s rival no longer existing it was probably difficult to find anything serious for him to do, which is what led to this turn of events.

Since Kazuya’s return in Tekken 4, however, a pivot could’ve been made back to Paul being a more serious character but maybe the developers felt like the humorous turn with him had enamored him more to fans and decided to just keep going with it.

Paul’s strange adventures truly hit a fever pitch in Tekken 5 when is ending depicted him training for… fighting aliens?

Bizarrely, the ending goes on to show a bunch of UFOs getting ready to descend onto Earth as well, with no further reference being made to this throughout the series outside of background cameos featuring UFOs (Tekken 8 UFO image snatched from REC Gaming’s video).

It’s clear that at whatever point, Bandai Namco decided that Paul was simply not to be taken seriously in any way, shape or form. While that has now been true for the majority of his appearances in the Tekken franchise, it’s still strange to look back and see him originally depicted as a serious character and a real threat to Kazuya on the tournament stage.

Although Paul will probably still be the butt of the joke for the foreseeable future of Tekken, there’s always the off chance that the developers decide to tap in to his once serious demeanor. Given his outfit choice for Tekken 8 though, I really wouldn’t count on it…