It took a while, but we’ve finally been shown some proper gameplay footage from the new Virtua Fighter, and it looks incredible.
The Virtua Fighter series is one that I consider to be “serious” in terms of how each of the games plays. There is a genuine and impressive level of functional complexity and nuance in these games, and outside of Japan, they haven’t been properly appreciated.
Decades ago, when I lived in Japan for the first time, I remember vividly how Virtua Fighter 4 was received in the arcades. It was treated as something apart from other games at the time, and the scene surrounding it was verging on academic in terms of its gameplay analysis.
So a new Virtua Fighter has a lot to live up to, not least because both Street Fighter and Tekken have pushed the graphical bar already very high for modern fighting games.
Thankfully, from the new gameplay trailer (shown below), it’s clear that both the graphical and functional benchmarks have been undertaken with impressive diligence for this new Virtua Fighter.
While not much is known about this new Virtua Fighter game, the good news is that it will receive more information around the time of the Tokyo Game Show, which is next month.
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To be honest, to have a new mainline Virtua Fighter showcased at the Tokyo Game Show definitely takes me back, and it’s nice to see a major game like this given the old-school Tokyo Game Show treatment.
Now if only Sega would do something similar for the criminally overlooked Virtual On series.
It’s also worth mentioning that Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage is readily available on most platforms already, with Switch 2 support to be announced at a later date. So, if you have a hankering to brush up on your Virtua Fighter skills, then that’s a very good place to start.
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