The Tokyo Game Show is live and SEGA’s panel today has brought news to the esports scene. CEO Haruki Satomi announced the Virtua Fighter x Esports project at the Sega Fan Meet-up 2020.
This project will reboot the Virtua Fighter series to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the company. SEGA didn’t give any details about the project but will reveal more information in the future.
The series dates back to 1993 when Virtua Fighter was released as an arcade game. It became known as the first 3D fighting game and served as an inspiration for future games like Tekken and Dead or Alive. Four main sequences were launched with several spin-offs, counting 21 titles in total.
The latest one was a mobile game launched in 2014, Virtua Fighter: Fever Combo. The last time fans saw the series on a console, though, was in 2012 with Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, which is an updated version of the 2006-released Virtua Fighter 5.
It’s likely that SEGA will release a new version of the game with the Virtua Fighter x Esports project—and the teaser trailer indicates that there’ll also be a tournament coming.
The Tokyo Game Show started yesterday, Sept. 24, and will continue until Sunday, Sept. 27. Microsoft was the first company on the show and other major studios are scheduled to present, like KONAMI, Tencent Games, Bandai Namco Entertainment, and PUBG.
Here are the descriptions of the major publishers’ panels for the Tokyo Game Show:
- Sept. 26: “KONAMI information program”
- Sept. 26: Tencent Games- “Tencent Games presents two masterpieces, Dorabra and Saint Seiya, tonight’s excitement.”
- Sept. 27: “KONAMI’s Momotaro Dentetsu-Showa Heisei
Rewa is a classic.” – A special program for Nintendo Switch scheduled to be released on Nov. 19. - Sept. 27: “PUBG JAPAN Esports conference 2020″ – This will introduce the trajectory of esports deployment that PUBG has done in Japan so far, as well as future efforts.
