Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown

Sega announced Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown at AOU2010. Virtua Fighter Official site has a preview video that gives glimpses of some of the changes in this final iteration of Virtua Fighter 5. It’s predecessor Virtua Fighter 5R introduced a new character Karateka Jean and reintroduced an old Sumo fan favourite Taka-Arashi. There doesn’t seems to be any new characters in Final Showdown, but it gives glimpses of many new animations as well as different moves and hit properties that makes the games new again and perhaps gives a preview of the direction in gameplay that Virtua Fighter 6 will take. From the short video characters don’t appears to float unnaturally anymore in like previous instalments but go into different staggers animations as they receives hits from the opponents. Maybe Taka-Arashi will be as difficult to knock down as he was in Virtua Fighter 3. He seems to be immune from knock down in the video, but this is early days, things will change as Sega-AM2 rebalances the games constantly.

Details are scarce now but with the expected arrival of around mid-year, they will trickle through sooner than later. It is safe to assume that Final Showdown will feature modified stages as well as many upon many new items. There is also a question mark on console ports, with arcade on life support in Japan and graveyard in developed countries, console ports are normally a given but Sega did not port VF5R as it remains arcade exclusive. More news on Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown as they come.