Editorial

An interview with Hiroyuki Miyazaki, Deputy General Manager of SEGA Japan Asia Publishing Division by Manabu Okayasu from the My Navi News website. It is a fairly detailed interview that not only focuses on Japan's gaming community but also discuss Virtua Fighter in other countries.

In two articles on dashfight.com, Graziano Fabiano (Gillstolemyride) interviewed various members of the VF community - AdamYuki, Blessy, BlitzballChamp, Juicebox, Mister, Sabin, TPT, and Tricky. In the latest article, you can read how theirs and others contributed in keeping the VF scene alive for so many years without any new game (or remake!) to garner interest.

On Wednesday 16th June 2021, 12:00 PM JST, @Homestay Akira will be holding a live stream aimed at the overseas audience (that's you!). It will be streamed on @Tetsuko_Yamada's Twitch channel with translations by @Renzo. Feel free to leave your questions in advance within this thread, or save them for the stream, but be sure to tune in when it goes live!

Famitsu published an interview with Daichi Katagiri that looks back at his illustrious, soon-to-be-30 year career at SEGA which has been recently translated into English by Brian Clark (thanks Brian!) Katagiri-san reflects on his youthful days spent in the arcades, obsessing (and rage quitting!) over OutRun high scores, the importance of music in games, riding in Yu Suzuki's ferarri for "research purposes" and exclusive behind-the-scenes developer tales of the Virtua Fighter franchise dating back to the original. This is a fascinating interview, celebration and reflection on Katagiri-san's amazing journey at SEGA, which he believes "set my life on a great path."

THINK! A brilliantly written article by Jin (@jin_hm) for Virtua Fighter players of all skills, backgrounds and experience levels. Packed with many tips and words of wisdom that are applicable to other fighting games as well. Check it out!

On this day in 2010, SEGA released Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown for Japanese arcades, followed by a international console release two years later for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. To celebrate this occasion, I compiled a blog on Destructoid looking back at the journey with VF5FS and how it still holds to this day compared to other modern-day fighting games. Happy 10th Anniversary, VF5FS!

Ed Boon, the co-creator of Mortal Kombat & Injustice and creative director at NetherRealm Studios, recently echoed what the entire VF and perhaps the greater Fighting Game community have been wanting, needing, requesting and even demdaning: "Someone needs to reboot VIRTUA FIGHTER".

Yuzumo Design's next project is a fan book called "SEGA60" to celebrate SEGA's 60th Anniversary. You may remember Pin from Yuzumo Design when he reached out to the international VF community during the production of Virtua Fighter Heatwave - a fan book celebrating VF's 25th Anniversary - which included interviews from a number of VFDC members. This time around, Pin is now reaching out to any and all fans of SEGA to help with this next project with stories, photos, cosplay, fan art, and more!

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown was originally released in Japanese Arcades in 2010, then later ported to the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles, two years later, in 2012. Over this nine year period, there has been some movement in the Tier Lists according to Japanese standards, and more recently, there has been some renewed discussion on Twitter on what the list currently looks like. Notably, Homestay Akira has contributed his latest version, so this is probably a good time to review the evolution of the Tier Lists to date, and take a deep dive into what determines a character's ranking in a game like Virtua Fighter, and why, ultimately, it doesn't really matter.

Did you know there have been references to Virtua Fighter in the X-Files TV Series? How about the Anime series Ben-To? Or the pop song "Ready to Go!" by Republica?