Will arthur and his knights of the round bring forth the goodness which once was vfalot???

I'm all for this article but to call the original roster "fascinating" is Bollocks.

So, in other words, this is a big waste of time...

Looking or not looking forward to this is based mainly upon (non)existance of translation from Japanese, at least for me

I'm looking forward to this. Will be nice to look back on what they feel made the series great as well as what didn't.

Well its today, so any news?

:[ According to The Best friends zaibatsu, VF6 was not discussed.

Famitsu article here.

http://www.famitsu.com/news/201312/27045861.html

Give me a while to go through it. I'll see what I can dig.

Edit:

Quick answer: When asked about the future of VF, Yu Suzuki replied with "So, what IS happening with VF6?" Of the panel members, only Shinjuku Jacky is currently working with Sega, but he evaded the question by saying "I'm only here today in my capacity as a player."

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First part of article is release information for VF, how VF2 became a big cultural boom, then introducing all the panelists.

Suzuki Yu - You know the guy
Kurokawa Fumio - Media researcher
Terada Katsuya - Illustrator and comic artists. VF2 character artist
Sato Dai - Anime and game scriptwriter
Haneda Takayuki - Legendary VF2 player, currently member of Sega development team



The roots of Virtua Fighter are in the pit crew of Virtua Racing.

After the huge success of Street Fighter 2, Sega found itself playing catchup. Sega president Nakayama Hayao asked Suzuki to make a fighting game. At the time, Suzuki had just finished up on Virtua Racing, and inspired by the pit crew, was looking into making his next game feature realistic human movement in 3DCG. They had thought about making a soccer or rugby game, but at the time for the amount of detail they wanted, the hardware could only handle 2 characters on screen at a time, so it was a good oppurtunity to make a fighting game "of the kind never seen before."

At the time, many developers had tried to challenge Street Fighter 2 and failed, thus there was much opposition to the development of VF from within Sega. Staff members and budget for the title was quite limited. Suzuki remembers a dev team of about 15 people, who, using the knowledge gained from creating Virtua Racing's pit crew, put together Virtua Fighter in only 8 months.

Development wasn't without its troubles. Making 3D characters move using the primitive hardware was hard enough. When they started, they hadn't even assigned anyone to code the 3D motion design. In order to compete with the beautiful 2D sprites of other games, Suzuki decided that having realistic character animation was key to VF's success. Unfortunately, the animators were novices at fighting arts, resulting in animations which looked like novice fighters. Thus Suzuki ordered his motion designers to go "practice punching and kicking." The true struggles of these gamedevs is chronicled in a manga called "Game Creator Retsu Den 1."

VF was scheduled for release in December 1993, but was revealed at AOU game show in August. According to Suzuki, the characters at that point only looked like marbles strung together, but it was enough to create a huge impact. "The movement of the characters was something you couldn't possibly get with just a picture. How the heck was I supposed to convey this amazing thing to my readers?" Sato Dai, who was a game reporter at the time remembers thinking to himself.



Everything was new with Virtua Fighter

Following on the release of VF, VF2 took things a step further, not only making its mark on gamers, but on the even wider audience of the general public. Kurokawa, who was in charge of Sega's promotion at the time, said it was because the players and media both were so excited about the game that it was such a boom. Haneda who was Famitsu editor at the time started a VF column promoting the game, as well as made his name as a player, beating 100 opponents in a row in a "100 man kumite" event. Sato wrote a VF article, which was matched in passion by many other game writers. Sato was DJ at the "Polygon Jacky" club event (featured in "VF2 Maniacs"), and Terada had an interesting episode where he got himself a VF2 arcade cabinet but couldn't get it into his house.

Why were people so taken by VF?

At the time, most fighting game command lists were kept secret, and only spread by word of mouth, until the guide books were finally released. VF with its 3 buttons was an anomaly in the era of 6 button fighters. Haneda remarked that "Unlike other games, finding out special moves in VF by yourself was a fun process."

Sato added "The sports-like mentality of learning and improving by yourself made the game very alluring." Getting that amount of depth from a simple 3 button control scheme was part of what made VF unique.

Besides the realistic movement of 3DCG, that VF was all new and yet so incredibly deep was definitely a big factor in its popularity.

Even though the decision to have fewer buttons was in order to appeal to a broader player base, Suzuki during development also toyed with the idea of having many more buttons, which allowed more combinations to be done using just the buttons. This idea was similar to what many touchphone apps do nowadays, and was a very straightforward approach. Having this sort of idea which no one else would have thought of is what defines Suzuki. Of course, this couldn't be done due to costs. Sato added "And you'd have a hard time with maintenance if even one of the buttons was broken." to which Suzuki quickly replied "Actually, if you had that many buttons, maybe you wouldn't even notice." Perhaps he'd actually tried it out during development....



What of Virtua Fighter here on?

When asked about the future of VF, Yu Suzuki replied with "So, what IS happening with VF6?" Of the panel members, only Shinjuku Jacky is currently working with Sega, but he beautifully evaded the question by saying "I'm only here today in my capacity as a player." Suzuki went on to say that he wasn't good at Virtua Fighter because his poor execution prevented him from doing what he wanted to do in many situations. He would prefer a game where the player who made the better judgement won. He thinks perhaps it is time to try a different input method from the traditional joystick, which allows players to better communicated their thoughts into actions. He added "If the input method changes, the game changes." He also suggested using hologram technology to create a new fighting game, implying that he wants to make another fighting game "of the kind never seen before", the way Virtua Fighter originally made people feel.



After 20 years, what is in store for the next 20?

Haneda: Games in arcades have always felt special. I hope they will continue to be that way. Smartphone games are so popular now that it's a time when distancing yourself from games is difficult. It is a time when we should ask questions about how we should interact with games.

Sato: I play a lot of FPS and TPS. I think I game even more than I used to!
Haneda: You're shifting to more immediate gratification aren't you?
Sato: Yeah, that might be true. Network games are on the rise, and meeting with strangers that way can be interesting. Smartphone games are also pretty fun. Many people think "The shift to smartphone spells the end of gaming", but I think you can't just blame smartphones. Otherwise, why hasn't Japan come up with Titan Fall or Watchdogs? To be blunt, Titan Fall and Watchdogs are like Votoms and Ghost In The Shell with FPS elements. Why wouldn't something like that come out of Japan? Come on Japanese gamedevs!

Terada: Besides VF2, I've also worked on the game series Tantei Shinguuji Saburou, and there are still people who remember my work. I'd love to continue doing work on games, as it's something I cannot bring myself away from.

Suzuki: Unlike before, the sound is much better, and the graphics are movie quality now. To add to that, games have interactivity as well as all other aspects of entertainment. Network connectivity is such that people can be connected in their own homes now too. Thus, the job of game centres to provide a unique experience has become much harder. That means it might be ever more important to push new and interesting gimmicks. Like maybe having a screen in the sky.... *laughs*

20 years from the birth of VF, All guests are now in very different positions from back then, making it really feel like 20 years have passed. The game landscape has changed much, so what will happen to VF from here on? Having great expectations of the next VF, hoping to be taken with it the same way VF2 and VF3 hooked me, this editor would like to see a new game on either current gen or next gen systems. What do you guys think?

END ARTICLE
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Let me know if there are any major mistakes. I have paraphrased many of the lines in the article, so there may be stuff that has been lost in translation.

There are other reports on the talk at the following websites, but I'm not game enough to go translate those as well. From skimming the articles, they more or less cover the same stuff.

http://www.4gamer.net/games/148/G014897/20131227047/

http://japan.cnet.com/entertainment/35042020/2/


All in all, it sounds like Sega's being hush hush about the next VF game. It does seem like there is the expectation that another game is coming at some point, so I'm not sure where people got the idea that the devs shot it down. If anyone's got more info on this rumour, I'd like to hear it.

for the lazy


When asked about the future of VF, Yu Suzuki replied with "So, what IS happening with VF6?" Of the panel members, only Shinjuku Jacky is currently working with Sega, but he beautifully evaded the question by saying "I'm only here today in my capacity as a player."

thanks for the translation!