Speaking to Eurogamer, producer of the new Virtua Fighter project Riichiro Yamada revealed that there’s an extraordinary level of excitement around the upcoming 3D fighting game at SEGA, especially among the company’s older generation.
When asked about the internal mood regarding Virtua Fighter’s revival, Yamada stated (through a SEGA-provided translator): “In SEGA, the upper executives are very fond of Virtua Fighter, they feel it’s very special to them because it has a very long history with SEGA.”
This extends to the chairman of SEGA Sammy, Hajime Satomi. According to Yamada, he’s taken special interest in the project: “He is also very fond of Virtua Fighter. He’s very high up in the company and a very important guy, so even though he participates in so many meetings he doesn’t really say anything. But when it comes to Virtua Fighter meetings he actually gives detailed comments because he’s very fond of the series.”
This excitement, according to Yamada, has trickled down to even the younger folks at the company that are unfamiliar with Virtua Fighter: “There are a lot of people in upper management who are really looking forward to this. Thanks to this hype from the upper management people, the younger generation who may not have touched or been handling Virtua Fighter before, a lot of them are very interested in being involved with the new project. [I] feel with SEGA’s history, Virtua Fighter holds a very special place in every [developer].”
This should come as no surprise. Virtua Fighter is a legendary video game franchise that has sadly fallen by the wayside in recent years. It was revolutionary back in the arcade days, pushing the genre forward with a no-thrills simulation of hand-to-hand combat. That’s why the Virtua Fighter Project reveal was so exciting, a technically staggering in-engine look at a game sticking to its roots.
In fact, Virtua Fighter only really survived in some forms in recent years thanks to the RGG games! In the Yakuza series, Virtua Fighter games could be played within the in-game SEGA arcades. This, according to Yamada, acted as a spark to get a new Virtua Fighter going.
“The RGG team were very good at AMD stuff, and that’s why they wanted to implement those elements. But at the time, Virtua Fighter fans were a little bit sad that in order to play Virtua Fighter they had to play an RGG game. So because there was no environment where we could actually provide a Virtua Fighter game on its own to those fans, there was a feeling that we had to provide something for those fans.
This revival has been in discussion for a while within SEGA, but hadn’t got the green light until recent years. Yamada elaborates: “The new sequel for Virtua Fighter has come up within Sega many many times, but there was approval or green light to proceed. So as for when we started to think about a new project, it’s been a very long time.”