Sega stunned fans last year when the gaming juggernaut announced an enhanced remake of Virtua Fighter 5 would be coming to modern consoles with the reveal of Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown as a PS4 exclusive. The franchise had not seen a new release aside from mobile-only games since 2010's Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, with the arcade game later being ported to home consoles and eventually being made backwards compatible on new Xbox consoles. Now, the 3D fighting game recently announced a new crossover honoring another legendary fighting game franchise.
The newest entry in one of gaming's original 3D fighting games has seen plenty of new content since its release with the Virtua Fighter 5 remake seeing DLC not only honoring the franchise's history, but paying homage to Ryu ga Gotoku Studio's namesake. Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown's "Legendary Pack" offers fans cosmetics and music based on older Virtua Fighter games, and a recent collaboration saw a plethora of cosmetics from the Yakuza franchise added to the game. Now, Virtua Fighter will be paying homage to another fighting game titan as Sega announced Tekken skins will be coming to Ultimate Showdown.
Sega officially announced the skins based on Tekken 7 during Virtua Fighter 5's Challenge Cup stream with a short trailer introducing some of the new costumes. The trailer shows off skins for Akira and Lau with the two characters donning outfits inspired by a pair of Tekken's most iconic fighters, Kazuya and Heihachi. While only the two costumes were officially revealed during the announcement, the scope of the game's past expansions should suggest plenty more fighters to be featured in Virtua Fighter 5. No official release date was given for the collaboration.
A collaboration between Tekken and Virtua Fighter seems like a match made in heaven as the upcoming DLC will merge two of the pioneers of 3D fighting games. While Virtua Fighter has been largely dormant in recent years, Tekken 7 has been a mainstay at major tournaments like EVO since its release in 2015 and saw four seasons worth of DLC adding a wide variety of new characters. Meanwhile, Virtua Fighter 5 had only seen updated versions of the 2006 game until Ultimate Showdown released as an enhanced remaster.
Sega's renewed focus on Virtua Fighter with the release of Ultimate Showdown has caused many fans to wonder what's next for the long-running series. With the last main-series Virtua Fighter game releasing sixteen years ago, producer Seiji Aoki has previously expressed his desire to make a sixth Virtua Fighter stating that the future of the franchise would largely be dependent on the success of Ultimate Showdown. The collaboration with Tekken and Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown's budding esports scene should bode well for the franchise's future prospects.
Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown is available now for PS4.
