We spoke with Riichiro Yamada, the producer of Sega’s new Virtua Fighter project, who told us why it took the company so long to make a new installment and how it plans to shake up the world of 3D fighting games.
In 2025, there aren’t really any other 3D fighting games dominating the market outside of Tekken 8. Soul Calibur VI has seemingly fallen out of the public consciousness, and Dead or Alive exists in its own bubble within the broader fighting game community after its last game released in 2019.
Virtua Fighter, however, was once a force to be reckoned with. In fact, Yamada told us that VF players and Tekken heads used to clash back in the arcade days — and that’s something he hopes to avoid with the new Virtua Fighter project.
Bringing back the 3D fighting game renaissance
With Tekken reigning supreme in the genre, Yamada doesn’t want to necessarily poach the game’s player base. Instead, he wants to “go global” and appeal to fighting game players both new and old, while becoming a strong competitor in the space to offer dedicated players something different to sink their teeth into.
“I don’t wanna say anything bad, because it might go viral,” he chuckled. “But you know, doing this job, I felt that by looking at the community sentiment, Tekken players and Virtua Fighter players aren’t very fond of each other.
“Originally it began with Virtua Fighter, but then Tekken was created. These games aren’t exactly brothers, but they’re also not completely different games, either. Tekken evolved into the product it is today, and Virtua Fighter came first.
“I’m not thinking, ‘What do we need to do to fight against Tekken?’ I have a respect for other games, and I do a lot of research, but I don’t feel the need to compete against them or ‘win’ against them. It’s more like, okay, they have their games. What can we do? There are things they don’t have that we have. So, I’m more focused on how to bring something new into the world.”
Sega brought Virtua Fighter back because they believe in it
Our conversation with Yamada took place at Evo 2025, where Sega showed off never-before-seen gameplay footage for the VF project. The fighting game community was pleased with the comparatively raw and realistic nature of the trailer, which is in stark contrast to basically any other fighting game on the market at present.
Graphically, the new Virtua Fighter game is stunning. We asked Yamada if players can truly expect such high-fidelity visuals in the new game — and he said it’s ‘go big or go home.’
“I really want people to feel excited just by looking at the footage and eventually inspiring them to play. If we can’t get to that standard and are unable to produce those high-quality visuals, then I wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.
“That’s my goal. I really want to create a game and show people on a global scale, and get them excited. If I can’t, then what’s the point of doing this?”
Sega knows they can’t go halfway on Virtua Fighter
It’s been nearly 20 years since Virtua Fighter 5 was published. Since then, the game has experienced remasters and re-releases, leaving long-time fans disappointed that no new titles had come out… until now. We quizzed Yamada as to why it took Sega so long to revive the series, and he says it’s partly due to a new strategy Sega is pursuing.
“For Sega, Virtua Fighter has been a very historic franchise,” Yamada said. “As you may know, it originally started from a gaming center. That went on for a very long time, but no one actually had the answer for, ‘Okay, what do we do next? What do we do in terms of expanding the Virtua Fighter franchise?”
“I did a lot of thinking. The head of Sega [Shuji Itsumi] has a mindset of ‘go big.’ He’s always telling employees to ‘go big. You have to go big, you have to go global.’ And at that point, I came up with the idea: Alright, if that’s the company’s strategy, we’ll go big. We’ll go global.”
However, there’s a big challenge in marketing such a classic fighting game to a new audience, on top of taking such an arcade-focused series into the world of home consoles and PCs. For Yamada, it’s all about merging these two worlds in a way that makes sense.
“Not many young people know about this franchise,” he mused. “In Japan, it’s more of the older men. Maybe worldwide, the age might be a little bit younger, but it’s not that well-known. That’s why we really need to create an amazing game — otherwise, I don’t think it’ll sell.”
Making a fresh Virtua Fighter that both lives up to the expectations of die-hard fans and manages to be appealing to new audiences is a tall order. Yamada is well-aware of this, telling us that he feels the pressure to make an “amazing” game.
“I can’t really hide anything. I really need to be at the top level and create an awesome, very cool-looking game. It can’t be mediocre. That’s probably the most challenging thing. I can’t be like, ‘Oh, this is just okay.’ I need to give it my very best.”
“The series needs to keep going on. It needs to keep evolving. So, with that in mind, in terms of a battle system, I’m always thinking about how we can improve. How can we make a better battle system? How can people who have never played Virtua Fighter really enjoy it?”
The new Virtua Fighter project has no set release date just yet, but more details will be revealed at Tokyo Game Show in September.
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