A new Virtua Fighter might be coming in 2026, and whether its released faithful to the original formula or as a dumbed down modern fighting game is yet a mystery, no matter what reassuring words the devs use.
But i am not waiting for Virtua Fighter, i am playing it.
I have never played a Virtua Fighter before, because i never had the chance. I only had a SEGA Megadrive/Genesis as a kid so Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were the only fighting game franchises i played at home.
I had friends that owned the latter consoles but they had either tekken or some kind of dragonball game. I don't recall seeing VF at the local arcades either. The only thing i knew was what i saw on the magazines, and as a kid i wasn't a fan of the VF 1 blocky graphics. I didn't even knew that the series went further than the 1st.
Anyways, since i got back to fighting games, i have been hearing tales of how good and deep the series were. I can't remember what
DJOGamer PT said of the series but it was enough for me to think "thats it, i am getting into this series"
I got VF4 working on the fightcade, and have enjoyed the arcade mode against the CPU. Haven't bothered fighting a human player yet.
I also got VF5 for PC. The Yakuza games have this thing of inserting old SEGA games on the game world's arcades, so i looked it up and Yakuza 6 was discounted and had VF5. This version of VF5 is not a light version, but actually a full game.
I found this mod that allowed me to unlock all the mods of VF5. Its actually a xbox port, and stuff related to costumes and multiplayer don't work but so far the dojo and arcade modes have kept me occupied learning the game.
If any one is interested you can get the mod at
https://cookieplmonster.github.io/mods/yakuza-6/#vf5fs-unlocker.