Type: a summary of Famitsu’s interview with Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama and producer Riichiro Yamada.
In a Famitsu interview published on December 20, 2024, Masayoshi Yokoyama and Riichiro Yamada explained what New VIRTUA FIGHTER Project was aiming for.
The conversation followed the Game Awards 2024 reveal and VF Direct 2024 (related article).
At the time the final title had not been announced, and the game was still presented as New VIRTUA FIGHTER Project.
How the project got moving
Yokoyama said the Virtua Fighter team had remained in his Division 1, working on titles such as VF esports while continuing basic research and revisiting sequel pitches many times.
Finding a proposal that would convince today’s players proved difficult, which delayed the announcement.
Yamada added that Virtua Fighter is one of SEGA’s landmark IPs and many staff wanted to revive it, but building something appropriate for the current market took a long time.
SEGA leadership had also kept discussing how a new Virtua Fighter could fit its broader legacy-IP efforts.
Inside the studio, some wanted a straight evolution while others wanted a wholly new revival, and the project landed with Yokoyama in that split state.
He argued that a simple extension of a conventional fighting game would struggle worldwide, and needed a true planner who could reconnect Virtua Fighter’s history of innovation with “a little of the near future.”
That person was Yamada: on Yamada’s first day back at SEGA, Yokoyama asked him to take on Virtua Fighter; Yamada first thought it was impossible, but said the project got moving within about three months.
The core: innovation and reality
Yamada doubted whether chasing Tekken and Street Fighter on the same vector would work.
Virtua Fighter remains a fighting-game series, but the stated goal became making something that would not stay only inside that box and could reach more people.
He concluded that the series’ long-held core was to “stay innovative,” and that same obligation had made it hard to ship a new numbered entry for so long.
“Reality” mattered too: when the first Virtua Fighter arrived, kung-fu cinema was still popular, and that mix of kung-fu movement and realism helped keep projectiles out of the game.
Close-range tension and mind games remained distinctive, but the conceptual foundation he wanted to protect was innovation plus reality.
Yokoyama described Virtua Fighter’s look as plain and stoic battle footage, yet saw that grounded fighting as a good fit for a realistic story.
He used the line that if Kazuma Kiryu fired a Hadoken it would become fantasy, while a Tetsuzanko could still support realistic drama.
He also pointed to Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio strengths—drama, direction, and the ability to build whole cities—as assets to fuse into a new form of Virtua Fighter.
Reforms beyond the fighting-game frame
Yamada said Virtua Fighter is not fundamentally a hard game, but the path to understanding basic fighting is hard to follow.
He wanted to lower that “I don’t know what to do” barrier.
He called characterization the series’ weakest point, noting that why characters fight was rarely explained in-game.
Story elements or something like a story mode were being considered to fix that.
Yokoyama compared flashy special-move spectacle to a pro-wrestling style of entertainment, and said Virtua Fighter’s entertainment should be closer to K-1.
Keep plain, serious fights, but deepen interest by adding the path and backstory that bring a fighter to the match.
That meant amplifying the appeal of grounded contests rather than changing rules or making the screen flashier.
Yamada’s side of the split was to pursue the game’s own mechanical appeal—moves, rules, and match design.
The plan was for home platforms, including consoles and PC, and characters and story would differ from arcade-era entries.
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s drama and tech would be used, but the experience was meant to be more innovative than a Like a Dragon-style copy.
He described a large overall package that still contains Virtua Fighter’s competitive fighting core.
An arcade version was “not being considered at the moment,” partly because matching the same quality on current arcade hardware would be a high hurdle.
What Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio brings
Yamada said the studio’s biggest strength is city-building and constructing a world that feels solidly present.
Yokoyama added that drawing culture and daily life as background gives characters a stronger sense of place.
According to Yamada, the teaser visual was finished in about a month after he asked studio staff for footage to make the pitch persuasive, and that speed and quality became a confidence boost.
Project Century was announced in the same period; the interview noted only briefly that the two projects use different engines.
Controls, ring-outs, setting, and cast Q&A
Yamada said the top priority for controls was keeping them simple.
They did not necessarily have to be punch, kick, and guard, but he still wanted an input scheme that respected longtime fans.
Pad optimization would also be needed for home play, and players would likely end up able to choose preferred control setups.
Ring-outs would remain in some form: stages with them, without them, and with conditional ring-outs.
Battles with stronger situational staging might work differently, and the teaser already reflected that premise.
The setting would continue from past Virtua Fighter continuity, and playing the new game should reveal parts of the lore that older titles left unclear.
The teaser location was not Japan, and the time period was still secret.
The man in the teaser is Akira Yuki in a new design; the woman with him is Stella, not Sarah.
Details were still withheld, but Yamada said both series fans and newcomers should enjoy the cast, and play would make the connections feel natural.
Old and new characters would likely coexist; whether there would be a season pass was completely undecided.
Release timing could not be discussed yet; development would involve repeated scrap-and-build work, but they did not intend to spend many years on it.
The Legacy Virtua Fighter Project
While the new game aims at a wider audience, Legacy Virtua Fighter Project was started so core fans would have something to play with intensity until release.
Moriharu Aoki is leading that side.
SEGA planned Virtua Fighter Open Championship as an official world tournament, and developed Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. on Steam to support it.
Steam-only shipping was explained by PC being the most solid online environment and a good fit for rollback netcode.
A global official Discord with Japanese and English servers would provide community space, community managers, tournament info, and two-way feedback to rebuild trust.
Even so, Yamada stressed that the new Virtua Fighter remained the top priority.
No half-baked Virtua Fighter
Yamada said he met Yu Suzuki, explained the new concept, and was told it was similar to something Suzuki had once thought about; Suzuki also liked the video.
Yokoyama said Virtua Fighter is carved into SEGA’s history, so they would not ship something half-baked—and would rather stop the project midstream if it headed that way.
Yamada added that they wanted to keep the attitude of “don’t make games from games”—that is, to make something that has not existed before.
What this interview did not confirm
The final title, release date, platform list, and named combat systems were not confirmed here.
Season-pass plans, the exact time period, Stella’s details, story-mode scale, and match-rule specifics also remained undisclosed or undecided.
A later TGS 2025 developer interview discusses reality and new battle systems in more concrete terms (related article).
Only statements confirmed in the Famitsu interview are included here.
Sources