Virtua Fighter Crossroads is a Turning Point for the Oldest 3D Fighter | IGN Preview

Very few fighting games are as historically important as Virtua Fighter. Street Fighter, of course, is the genre’s proud papa. But Virtua fighter was the first 3D fighting game. It pushed tech forward in incredible ways, and it’s been a pillar of the genre since. It also doesn’t hurt that the series is populated by some absolutely excellent games that have inspired a devoted community and one of the coolest competitive scenes in the space. But Virtua Fighter’s been absent from the scene for a while. Yeah, we got Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. in 2024 and its World Tour last year, but Virtua Fighter 5 itself is 20 years old. With the next game in the series, now titled Virtua Fighter Crossroads, Sega is at something of a…well, you know. What does it mean to be a Virtua Fighter game in 2026? How do you bring the series’ legacy forward while honoring what came before? During Summer Game Fest, I sat down for a presentation and Q&A with producer Riichiro Yamada and head of IP Toshihiro Nakaya to figure out what they thought Virtua Fighter was, and where it was going.

The first thing you need to know about Virtua Fighter Crossroads is that it’s set ten years in the future. A lot’s changed. Judgement 6, the evil organization from the previous games, is no longer around, and the legendary fighters from the past have largely been forgotten. Crossroads itself also sports a new setting: Vilasapara, a fictional setting based on real-life Southeast Asia. Guns are illegal here, so everything is solved through fights. But the lack of pistols and rifles don’t mean this ain’t a dangerous place. Organized crime is a big deal in Vilasapara.

One of the things Yamada and Nakaya emphasized was that Crossroads will just be a traditional fighting game. The narrative part of the package is taking cues from RGG’s work with the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, but it will be different in substantial ways. For one, how you play can change the outcome of the story, though they were a bit coy when it came to details. Secondly, you won’t just be fighting. There will be side content to find, minigames to play, and relationships to cultivate in addition to the main story. Yamada told me the team isn’t just trying to make a fighting game. They want to “go above the genre.” The increased focus on story is part of that ambition. The team for Virtua Fighter Crossroads is very experienced when it comes to fighting games, but they also want to make something that anyone can play, and something that will teach new players how to play fighting games as they play the story.

Speaking of that main story, Yamada and Nakaya told me that they were working with Western writers for Crossroads partially because they wanted it to be grounded and realistic. A lot of modern fighters have their inspirations in anime and manga, but Virtua Fighter has always spoken the language of the martial arts film, and Yamada wanted to be true to that part of the series. The team has specifically cited Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen as an example of the kind of believability they were going for.

Take Cielo, for example. He’s new to the series and one of the four characters who will be a major part of the story mode. Cielo is an immigrant from Paraguay, but his father is American. In Vilasapara, he’s gotten involved with the Chinese mafia. He’s an underdog, and that’s part of the more grounded stories Virtua Fighter Crossroads wants to tell.

That doesn’t mean that the old characters won’t show up. We saw an older Pai in the trailer, and it looked like she might be willing to teach some of the new characters, but the rest of the legacy cast might not be so friendly. “During the game, you'll meet all of the old characters,” Yamada told me, “and they won't always be allies. They might be enemies. It goes back and forth. So maybe not Cielo, maybe other people. You might learn from Pai, or you might not. You might learn from other characters. It's really something to really look forward to when you play.”

I had to ask about this new focus on story and Vilasapara as a place would alter the way things like stages and ring outs would work in Crossroads. “[Ring outs and stage interactions are] in there,” Yamada assured me. “So in the story it is a little different than just the PVP mode, but in the story mode first, we don't have to worry about balance or any of that kind of stuff. We just care about what's fun.” They also told me that stuff would still be there in the more traditional fighter, but that balance would be something they’d be thinking of.

Finally, I had to ask about Virtua Fighter’s signature blend of simplicity (it is and always has been a three-button game) and near limitless depth. How were they approaching that balance in Crossroads? Was this project an opportunity to re-examine what Virtua Fighter was?

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Yamada told me that he believed Virtua Fighter 4 and 5’s balance was excellent, and you can see that in the tournament results for those games. No single top-tier character dominates. But when a new player plays Virtua Fighter for the first time, it can be overwhelming. They don’t know how to win, or how to improve. But it’s not just about translating Virtua Fighter’s legacy to a new game; it’s about bringing new people in, too.

“When [we] were making this new system, [we] really thought like, ‘All right, what is great? What fun about Virtua Fighter?’ And [we] had to really decide what to keep and what not to keep because making a whole new system is a bit much. It would make it just so convoluted for new players, too. So the goal is taking the old system and making it so that all the new players can jump in, have a good time, and understand where to get better, but make sure to keep that sort of infinite depth. And that's sort of where [we] landed.”

There’s still a lot we don’t know about Virtua Fighter Crossroads, like how specific body part damage will work. It’s hard to say much about a fighting game without playing it; that’s just the nature of the genre. And unfortunately, I still haven’t played Virtua Fighter Crossroads, but there’s no denying the ambition on display. One way or another, Virtua Fighter is stepping into a new era. And I’m excited and hopeful about what lies down the road.

Will Borger is an IGN freelancer. You can find him on Bluesky @edgarallanbro.