Almost half a year has passed since we got official word that a new Virtua Fighter game was in development.
We still don’t have any concrete information on when it’ll be releasing and the footage we’ve seen so far is quite minimal, but given modern reveal strategies, the fact that it’s being shown at all likely means it’ll be released within the next year or two. If this is the case, I believe that the timing might be the best they could ever hope for.
Timing isn’t something that developers can really account for. You can control what you’re doing, but trying to find the perfect opportunity or which trend will pop off right when your game releases will to a good degree come down to luck, but I really feel like the stars are aligning here in a major way for Sega.
Of course, we aren’t exactly sure when the new Virtua Fighter will release yet, but there are so many things lining up right now for the coming window of time to be absolutely perfect for Sega’s Virtua Fighter revival. Let’s go through the most major factors one by one.
This is the most obvious one and is one that’s been discussed for a long time now. Tekken 8 is out and although Tekken is the biggest fighting game franchise, that’s honestly all there is at the moment as far as 3D fighting games go.
Long gone are the eras back in the PS2 days where 3D fighting games are all over the place competing with each other and while it may seem like Soul Calibur 6 and Dead or Alive 6 weren’t that long ago, the fact of the matter is that both games ended support several years ago and neither of them have any new projects in development as far as we’re aware.
Tekken has basically been standing alone as the 3D fighting game of choice for the last 4 years unless you’re playing older games, so Virtua Fighter has a perfect opportunity here to come in and give people an alternative.
While the 2D fighting game players are spoiled for choice, the 3D fighting gamers haven’t had much choice in what to play.
Offering an alternative while other franchises are on hiatus (they’ll come back eventually… right?) gives Virtua Fighter a much bigger chance to stand out, so the current landscape heavily favors Virtua Fighter’s new game.
There’s also another thing regarding 3D fighting games at the moment that needs to be mentioned…
Look, I’m not trying to be a hater here, but we have to be honest. Tekken 8 is in major trouble since it’s Season 2 launch.
From reviews being tanked, major influencers speaking out all the way to needing emergency patches, Bandai Namco have a big mess on their hands.
The worst part of it all is that this comes after already having made some controversial decisions in regard to the gameplay for Tekken 8 in its first season, which fans had been vocal about.
For a long time Tekken fans and players had been voicing their issues but stayed optimistic that Season 2 would be the saving grace they’d been waiting for and when it turned out that it was anything but, the pot simply flew off the handle and now Bandai Namco need to make a lot of changes to get players goodwill back.
Of course, it’s not all bad news, the player base has remained strong at least on PC, but honestly that’s to be expected when new content releases.
Bandai Namco definitely have a lot of time to try and rectify the issues with their game and Harada himself openly said that “it is clear to me that the result is a disconnect between what the community wants and the tuning results”, meaning that Bandai Namco will be hard at work to address the issues players currently have with the game.
That said, trust once broken takes some time to regain. If Bandai Namco haven’t been able to regain that trust by the time the new Virtua Fighter comes out, they may lose more players than they’d expect to their rival game.
Now, you might wonder what on earth Dragon Ball FighterZ is doing here. Well, it’s simple. Given the previous discussion about Tekken 8 currently going through a rough time, it relates very well with what happened to Dragon Ball FighterZ right around its launch.
When Dragon Ball FighterZ came out in early 2018, it was a smash hit and let’s be honest — that was going to happen no matter what. It was a well-crafted game from respected developers and publishers based on one of the biggest intellectual properties in the world. It’s a total no-brainer.
However, the game also got some unexpected help along the way from a rival company… namely Capcom. A few months before Dragon Ball FighterZ came out, Capcom released Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, a game which largely lives in infamy in fighting game players’ memories.
The game was plagued with lots of issues from its questionable presentation in pre-release trailers, its absurd collector’s edition bonuses and the fact that support was dropped almost immediately for the game.
Meanwhile, Dragon Ball FighterZ was releasing close to it and having its promotional tour happen around the same time and it basically delivered on all of the aspects where fans were disappointed with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.
To put it bluntly, the failure of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was a direct benefit to Dragon Ball FighterZ, which was a new game moving in on the team-based fighter where Marvel vs. Capcom as a series had reigned supreme for over a decade.
Now, let’s be clear, the current troubles Tekken 8 is facing aren’t even remotely close to the level of issues Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite faced and they also most likely have a long time to fix whatever issues they have before Virtua Fighter comes out. But, if fans still aren’t satisfied by the time Virtua Fighter does roll around, then we might see a similar extra boost like what Dragon Ball FighterZ saw back in 2018.
“Okay Majin”, I hear you say, “I’ll give you the Dragon Ball FighterZ comparison, but what the hell does Street Fighter have to do with this?” … to which I’ll respond, well, a lot, actually.
First, let’s talk about Street Fighter 6’s current status. It’s definitely a big hit worldwide, but the level of success it’s achieved in its homeland of Japan is absolutely staggering and the evidence of such is abundant, from massive sales numbers to Evo Japan being massively up in entrants year-over-year.
We even had an interview with legendary competitor Rohto|Tokido a few months ago where he said that “the popularity of Street Fighter 6 in Japan is at a level which was unthinkable before now and it’s wonderful.”
So, Street Fighter 6 is a really, really big deal in Japan. You know what other fighting game used to be a really, really big deal in Japan? That’s right — Virtua Fighter.
Virtua Fighter has always been a worldwide franchise, but its level of popularity in Japan was on a completely different level back in the day.
It may be easy to forget since we’ve gone almost 20 years without a new title in the series, but back in the arcade era Virtua Fighter was very much a trendsetter and viewed as the fighting game back on its home shores.
Basically what I’m getting at is, the fact that Japan has very much embraced fighting games again is absolutely amazing news for Virtua Fighter. While the people who used to play Virtua Fighter back in its heyday are much older now, the odds are pretty good that most of them now have their own children and families to support.
That also means, though, that with fighting games catching on with a younger audience again, it’s a perfect time for the mothers and fathers who used to battle it out in the arcades to bond with their children over a mutual interest — and dive back into the world of Virtua Fighter as a family activity.
It really can’t be overstated how much of a boon it is to the upcoming Virtua Fighter that its domestic region’s new surge in fighting game interest has soared to these heights and I, for one, can’t wait to see what it means for Sega’s fighting game revival.
So basically, we have a quadruple whammy in Virtua Fighter’s favor here — an open landscape for 3D fighters in general, its main rival Tekken 8 being in trouble, historic precedent from Dragon Ball FighterZ benefiting at Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite’s folly and Street Fighter 6 bringing fighting game popularity back to the mainstream in Japan.
But even with all that, there’s one more thing that’s going to be very important for Virtua Fighter to succeed… and it’s the most important thing of all.
You can have all the luck in the world but none of it will matter even a little bit if you don’t put in the work. We still haven’t seen much of Virtua Fighter, but we’ve had several quotes from developers through a lengthy interview I translated a few months ago.
One of they key words they’re approaching this new project with is “innovation”, as this was a key factor in older Virtua Fighter titles as well. What this innovation will lead to is unclear, but one of the quotes from project producer Riichirou Yamada mentioned that this legacy of innovation was also why they haven’t made a Virtua Fighter for so long.
“It’s easy to say ‘stay innovative’, but actually innovating is difficult.” — Riichirou Yamada
Yamada explained that “[…] what the series had always protected as its core was ‘stay innovative’. And because we had stayed tied by these words, we’d been struggling to release a new numbered title in the series for so long.” He continued “it’s easy to say ‘stay innovative’, but actually innovating is difficult.”
What really gets hammered home on multiple occasions throughout this interview is that the developers didn’t want to bring Virtua Fighter back just to bring it back — there had to be a proper goal in mind that made it worth bringing back.
The fact that we’ve now seen the game’s unveiling suggests that the developers truly have something they want to create and deliver to their fans after almost 20 years.
Other things the developers have mentioned their focus on is to eliminate the perception that the game is hard to play, though also specifying that it’s not about the game being difficult but rather the perception of it being so, which they believe to be incorrect.
“I think that fundamentally, Virtua Fighter is not a difficult game. […] at its base it’s a game with a stick and 3 to 4 buttons which you’re operating, so compared to other fighting games it’s not very complicated at the base level.” — Riichirou Yamada
Yamada explicitly says that he does not believe Virtua Fighter to be difficult or complicated until you get to the high levels, but notes that difficulty at top levels is true of any fighting game. He simply wants to ease the journey from low level to high level by making it easier for players to understand where to begin if they want to level up their skills.
“But I do think that one of the problems is that the steps from the basics to higher levels is difficult to understand,” Yamada explains and follows up by saying that “we want to lower the hurdle of how to get into it.”
It’s similar to the approach that Street Fighter 6 has taken which has proven quite successful in Japan. While the top level matches aren’t any easier than they tend to be for fighting games, the hurdle of actually starting the game is a lot lower, due in part to Modern controls relieving players from the worry of having to learn certain inputs for moves.
Once they’ve spent a good amount of time with the game, that hurdle becomes a lot less scary and it’s easier to push yourself to learn more of the intricacies of the game. However, as Yamada himself said, Virtua Fighter is a game with few buttons and a stick, so in their case modern controls wouldn’t really be an option.
“So rather than change the rules or fill the screen with flashy things, we’d like to keep it plain and honest and trying to enhance that side of it as its draw. From my perspective, that’s what we have to do.” — Masayoshi Yokoyama
No specifics have been said on how exactly they intend to approach this problem, so it will remain to be seen exactly what their approach will be. What is clear, though, is that they’re very intent on preserving the soul of Virtua Fighter by keeping the game honest rather than flashy.
Sega executive Masayoshi Yokoyama explained their approach to Virtua Fighter as a whole with this revival and how they intend to stick out by being more plain than their competitors since they believe a core part of Virtua Fighter’s identity is its relation to real life martial arts and just being straightforward rather than over-the-top.
All the quotes we’ve heard from the people attached to this project give a strong impression that they’re working hard to keep the integrity of Virtua Fighter and its legacy alive and if this indeed ends up being the case, I truly believe that they have a very strong chance of doing incredibly well.
By being more regular and honest, Virtua Fighter would definitely stick out even more than it used to, considering we are currently in an era where flashiness is the main focus for most new fighting game.
With Virtua Fighter now being more unique simply due to its simplistic nature, it actually compliments all of the other aspects already lined up in their favor which I’ve outlined in this article and it really does feel like the timing could not be better than right now.
One of the core things that fighting games have been focusing on lately is pushing a very aggressive playstyle. This isn’t uncommon for older games either — many of our favorites are quite aggressive in nature, and Virtua Fighter honestly is not an exception.
However, while Virtua Fighter may be a highly offensive game, the core point of it is that the offense feels earned, which is where the sticking point is with a lot of modern fighting games.
Very few players have an issue with being overwhelmed offensively if they feel like they did something wrong to end up in that situation to begin with, but if you feel like it was inevitable to end up there, it leads to frustration.
If the developers manage to keep this spirit of Virtua Fighter alive after an almost 20 year absence while also helping players understand how to progress from beginners to seasoned players, they’re very likely to have a hit on their hands. It’s all down to how they’ve decided to approach their stated problems.
Whether Virtua Fighter will bring the series back to its glory days or end up crashing and burning remains to be seen, but what’s for certain is that the stage is set, everything is aligned for them to succeed… all that’s left is for Sega and their Virtua Fighter development team to stick the landing. I think we’re all hoping that they will.
