The wonderful announcement from Sega earlier this month still resonates as the fighting game community has been speculating at what the recently announced new Virtua Fighter game will have in store.
While we await more footage and information on the project, Sega executive Masayoshi Yokoyama and new Virtua Fighter project producer Riichirou Yamada sat down for an interview with Famitsu in which they both offered much insight on the endeavor thus far. We’ve translated some of the Japanese text thanks to efforts from our own Nicholas “MajinTenshinhan” Taylor, and you can read a segment about how Sega plans to compete with the likes of Capcom and Bandai in the competitive fighting game space below.
“Fighting games have seen kind of a resurgence lately, but it’s not like that just happened out of nowhere,” starts Yamada to Famitsu. “During these last 10 years, the Street Fighter and Tekken series have gradually built up to this. So our first question was, ‘if we face them head-on, will we be able to catch up’?” he wonders.
This reflection shows the immense challenge Sega faces in trying to re-enter the competitive fighting game arena. Street Fighter and Tekken have decades of legacy and huge player bases. Yamada’s honest acknowledgment of this battle indicates the awareness of the tough road ahead, and the strategic planning needed to make Virtua Fighter stand out.
“But with that said, Virtua Fighter is a competitive fighting game series at its base. We were trying to make a plan that’s an extension of that and surpasses it, so when we established the project our first goal was to make a game that isn’t simply limited to the role of competitive fighting game, but makes a lot of people play it,” continues Yamada.
Famitsu goes on to directly ask about how the team plans to make Virtua Fighter a shine as an option in the midst of the raging momentum both the Tekken and Street Fighter franchises are currently experiencing.
Yokoyama takes on the tough question, saying, “I can’t give specifics on how exactly we’d be battling against them, but with our executive producer Utsumi I had this conversation,” he begins.
“‘Say you want to go out and eat in the middle of winter and you head to a pub which has a 4.8 out of 5 score. However, they only have 8 seats and all seats are full. Would you line up there?’, he asked me. No matter how delicious the food may be, when you have no idea when the other customers will leave, I wouldn’t stand there and wait. So of course, I responded ‘I wouldn’t’”, he continued.
“‘But if it’s a food court, no matter how crowded it is, you’d line up, right? Because you know seats are going to be opening up. But at a small place where you don’t know, you won’t. So at that point, you’d either have to change which restaurant you’re lining up at, or you’d have to change the restaurant itself. Please do that’, he told me”, said Yokoyama.
This extension of the metaphor suggests that the key to Virtua Fighter’s success will be in its ability to offer players more than just “a seat at the table.” Sega needs to present the fighting game as something with ongoing, evolving appeal—one that doesn’t require a long wait or uncertainty, but an experience that’s continually accessible and rewarding.
With Street Fighter 6’s World Tour Mode and Tekken 8’s story and Tekken Ball modes, for instance, Sega will have to be extra creative in this arena. Yokoyama further clarifies the concept using examples from another genre.
“I also use a lot of examples like this, so to me it made sense,” he continues. “From the start, the Ryu ga Gotoku (Like a Dragon/Yakuza) series came about in the same way. Without changing the story focused action adventure genre of the ‘restaurant’, we brought in the culture of city nightlife and the seedy underbelly of society which made it different from other restaurants and turned into somewhere where adults gathered.”
Yokoyama’s analogy shifts here to the Yakuza series, offering insight into how Sega has successfully revitalized other franchises by adding unique cultural and narrative layers. This could be a sign that they aim to do the same for Virtua Fighter—taking the base formula and adding distinctive features (perhaps story or unique modes) to make it stand out in a crowded marketplace.
“So what do we do for our current mission? Taking an overview of Virtua Fighter, a certain unique aspect presented itself. For me, I looked at Virtua Fighter without prejudice and my impression was ‘a plain and stoic battle video’. There’s nothing wrong with its base as a fighting game, but it’s far too straightforward. There’s no projectiles even. You can even compare it to the Ryu Ga Gotoku (Like a Dragon/Yakuza) series and see that it’s very plain in comparison to the latter’s effects and showiness.”
“But if you look at it from a different perspective, this could be turned into a strong point instead. Even if the action is supernatural, at the end of the day it’s regular humans who are hitting each other and if you pair that with a very real story, it’d fit perfectly well together. What I’m saying is, the reality that Virtua Fighter had been so obsessively focused on for its 30-year history could be paired with a very realistic setting and realistic surroundings to make it shine even brighter,” he finished.
Let us know what you think of Virtua Fighter’s chances against its more prominent competitors in the comments section below.
