During The Game Awards 2024 ceremony, Sega announced that a new Virtua Fighter was in development via a special sneak peek trailer. Though Virtua Fighter 5 has featured many remakes and updates, it’s been nearly 18 years since the latest numbered iteration in the series was released.
Since then, much about this new Virtua Fighter remains shrouded in mystery, but Sega did recently tease some key details in a sit down with Famitsu. The article is in Japanese, but luckily we have Nicholas MajinTenshinhan Taylor providing us with his top tier translations as usual.
In the interview, the developers explain how they will compete with Street Fighter and Tekken in this modern era of fighting games. Of course, the developers acknowledge that this will be no easy task.
“On that note, when it comes to Virtua Fighter and the story around it, it feels similar to K-1 to me.” — Masayoshi Yokoyama
We recently took notice of a leaked image of the new Virtua Fighter that seemingly displayed an extra gauge within the user interface during gameplay. Many have theorized that this could be some sort of EX or super gauge, but there’s also the possibility that it might just be a stun bar.
Regardless, it would seem that we won’t have to worry about Virtua Fighter reworking its identity to be more like Street Fighter or Tekken. In other words, the developers have explained that they intend to have Virtua Fighter’s revolve around “plain and honest” fighting techniques.
“On that note, when it comes to Virtua Fighter and the story around it, it feels similar to K-1 to me,” said Masayoshi Yokoyama, Sega executive and Sega CS Research and Development No. 1 head.
“K-1 was originally a straight-laced karate organization event started by Kazuyoshi Ishii. The K-1 fighters would use karate, kickboxing or things that had been around for a long time and there wasn’t anything new,” continued Yokoyama. “The entertainment of the matches was quite different from something like pro wrestling, there wasn’t anything flashy and it was a very plain fight. But by adding in the path and story which had led the fighters to this point, it became top level entertainment.”
“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
Essentially, the developers are indicating that Virtua Fighter is intended to be closer to the fighting techniques of the real world. We won’t be seeing a character suddenly throwing a fireball during a match despite what’s been working for Street Fighter and Tekken.
“That’s why you can look at games that have a Hadoken or flashy special moves like a Pro Wrestling-type of entertainment while the entertainment that Virtua Fighter is aiming for would be closer to what K-1 was,” declared Yokoyama.
“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.”
With the aforementioned leaked image, many longtime Virtua Fighter fans were worried that the series would take on these flashier techniques that we’ve seen in Street Fighter, Tekken, and Mortal Kombat. Ultimately though, it seems that Sega intends to compete with other modern fighting games by sticking to their roots.
Indeed, during the short gameplay sequence shown to us during The Game Awards 2024 trailer, Akira (now wearing a fedora and coat) is seen engaging in a skirmish against someone who was initially believed to be Sarah Bryant, but is actually known as “Stella.”
During this gameplay snippet, we only saw Akira and Stella throwing out realistic moves that we’d expect from the Virtua Fighter franchise. The two remained relatively close to one another, indicating that the new title may emphasize rush down.
Of course, neither fighter threw out a fireball or something one might expect from Street Fighter or Tekken. It was a segment that could easily be recognized as being Virtua Fighter.
There’s still a lot about this upcoming fighting game that we don’t know about just yet, but we’ll be sure to keep an eye out for more reveals as they happen.
