30 Years Later, Virtua Fighter Remains Foundational For the…

After an initial launch in the arcades in October 1993, Virtua Fighter would make its North American console debut on the Sega Saturn on May 11, 1995, and fighting games would never be the same. The legacy of Virtua Fighter stands shoulder-to-shoulder with pivotal, paradigm-shifting games like Super Mario 64 or Half-Life, and that's without it even being a "full" 3D fighter despite its place as the commonly accepted first 3D fighting game. But Virtua Fighter's lasting impact goes beyond its innovations in visuals and instead rests solely on its mechanical complexity and technical precision; two elements that should serve as the foundation of both the fighting game genre and the resurgence of the Virtua Fighter franchise.

At the time of its release, Virtua Fighter wowed players thanks to both how it looked and how it played. While other popular fighting games added more buttons and off-the-wall combatants to try and appease general audiences new to the fighting game genre, Virtua Fighter took the opposite path by emphasizing the fundamentals in its design and keeping the playing field level through a simplistic control scheme and near-perfect balance among fighters. On the 30th anniversary of the title's Saturn debut, this design philosophy deserves examination, as it is a pillar of both the series and the genre as a whole - making it something worth gravitating toward in the upcoming Virtua Fighter 6.

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By Cameron Lucas

Despite Its Influence, Modern Fighting Games Continue to Drift From Virtua Fighter's Lessons

The release of Virtua Fighter would serve as a signal to fighting game developers that the genre's transition into 3D had begun, resulting in a wave of titles that closely followed in its footsteps. One of the earliest and most renowned titles to take inspiration from Virtua Fighter was none other than Tekken, kicking off an era in which 3D fighting game franchises' competition with one another would provide the spark for a string of genre innovations and evolution. But since that initial "boom" of the 3D fighter, the most well-known series in the genre have slowly but surely drifted away from the fundamentals embraced by earlier games in favor of enticing a general audience.

The original Virtua Fighter was a major hit and one of the Sega Saturn's killer apps thanks to its faithful conversion of the arcade cabinet, but it also helped introduce a whole generation of players to a new style of fighting game. Virtua Fighter's simple button scheme — which only utilizes kick, punch, and guard inputs along with an eight-way joystick — allowed for the game to be finely tuned and balanced in such a way that no one fighter had a distinct advantage against another, which also kept each match grounded and skill-based rather than allowing for easily-determined fail states in certain match-ups. But despite initially taking influence from Virtua Fighter, Tekken and other similar 3D fighters are now leaning into flashy visuals and gimmick fighters rather than focusing on core gameplay.

What the Original Virtua Fighter Can Impart to Virtua Fighter 6

After several months of rumors regarding the title's existence, Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio announced the next game in the Virtua Fighter series at The Game Awards 2024. As the first new mainline entry in the series in almost 20 years, that announcement was certainly cause for celebration among both series fans and fighting game fans, in general. But it also raises questions about what kind of fighting game the new Virtua Fighter will be, especially given the genre's current shift toward appeasing general audiences along with the fighting game faithful.

It's now been almost as long between new numbered Virtua Fighter games as it's been since the release of the original Virtua Fighter on home consoles, and there's a golden opportunity for the next entry in the series to look to the franchise's origins for its greatest source of inspiration. Rather than following in the footsteps of like-minded series like Tekken, RGG Studio's Virtua Fighter has the chance to stand out by looking to the original game in the series and embracing mechanical complexity and grounded fighting game design. Before RGG Studio was known for the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games, it was an in-house arcade division for Sega, and there's a chance that bridging of two eras of game design could result in a new Virtua Fighter that both honors the original and breathes new life into the series. Considering that today serves as a landmark 30th anniversary for the IP, such a game releasing in the near future would be the perfect way to celebrate the milestone.