The first official art for Sega’s new Virtua Fighter eSports game has been published on PlayStation Network. It was discovered by Twitter tracking account PSN Releases on the Asian version of PSN. While there’s not much to go on here – the art is just a banner and an icon- the alternate name, Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown, which matches a listing published on South Korea’s game’s ratings board earlier this month, gives us a better idea of what the project might be: an updated version of Virtua Fighter 5.
Sega revealed a teaser trailer for a “Virtua Fighter X eSports” project during their Tokyo Games Show livestream in September, but didn’t actually announce what the project was. The only other information we got came from Sega CEO Haruki Satomi, who described described Virtua Fighter X Esports as “a project commemorating the 60th year anniversary of [Sega]” that would begin in Japan and would be a “restart” focused on eSports and competitive play.
Whatever the title is, a new Virtua Fighter would be excellent news for fighting game fans. The brainchild of legendary OutRun and Shenmue designer Yu Suzuki, who recently suggested he might return to the series, Virtua Fighter was the first 3D fighting game. The series is renowned for its incredible technical depth and excellent design. The last game in the series was Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, which was released on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2012. It is widely considered to be one of the best fighting games of all time.
The game Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown with id CUSA27067 has been added to the PS4 asian PSN! pic.twitter.com/jWZGM7PwJL
— PSN releases (@psnrelease2) April 21, 2021
