After nearly two decades, Virtua Fighter is coming back in full force, and Sega is trying to make it bigger than ever.
We recently had the chance to interview Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. Producer Seiji Aoki and new Virtua Fighter project Producer Riichirou Yamada about revitalizing the series and their views on the competition.
The realm of 3D fighting games finds itself in a particularly interesting spot right now compared to its 2D counterparts.
Tekken 8 has faced issues and player pushback after the launch of their Season 2 update following a pretty successful first year on the market.
Meanwhile, other storied franchises like Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive have seemingly gone dormant, which leaves a bit of a gap in the space that Virtua Fighter will be trying to fill.
We asked Sega about their views on their competition in the modern fighting game space, and their response was pretty surprising.
“We are not particularly conscious of other companies’ 3D fighting game titles,” said Aoki. “As mentioned, we believe that Virtua Fighter’s unique features and appeal lie in its simple controls and sense of realism, which set it apart from other titles.”
This is a fairly fascinating response considering how long Virtua Fighter has pretty much been out of the game, but they didn’t say they aren’t paying attention at all.
Hopefully, Sega is paying closer attention to some of the missteps of recent fighting games at least to try and not repeat them themselves.
Things are so far sounding and looking pretty good, however, we’ve still barely seen anything out of the new Virtua Fighter project to know how it’s going to fully shape up.
We also asked Sega about organizing the Virtua Fighter Open Championship this year, and this is what they had to say.
“The Virtua Fighter Open Championship will be the first official global tournament in the VF series, with a grand prize of $100,000 for the champion,” said Aoki. “As the name suggests, this will take place across the world, and we are excited about the possibility of seeing new champions emerge from regions we have yet to witness. We hope many players will participate, and we look forward to sharing the moment when a new world champion is crowned with all of you.”
You can check out the previous parts of our Sega interview where they discuss positioning Virtua Fighter as a major fighting game contender again, what VF5 R.E.V.O. still needs to draw more players in, and the importance of keeping Virtua Fighter alive after all this time if you haven’t already.