Fighting Games Friday: Missing Evo Japan 2024 Games
Evo Japan 2024 came with more announcements than expected, despite most of them being unsurprising. There were character reveals for many games featured in the tournaments held at the event. The likes of like Akuma, Lidia Sobieska, and Marco Rodriguez were revealed in Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, respectively. But there were still let downs in the form of announcements I was hoping would be there, and damn-well should have.
It’s been a rough week personally and for the world, so I’m having a little fun by talking about one announcement that I cross my fingers for but didn’t materialize, and another one which surprised me with its absence.
The potential for Sega announcing a new Virtua Fighter game at this venue was lower than I wanted to believe, but I wanted to think there was solid potential for it. The development team members of Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown from Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio appear to be keeping hope alive for a new installment. Chief producer Seiji Aoki would have no need to mention how rollback would be essential for the next project if there was nothing coming, right? Japan was the most popular country for the Virtua Fighter franchise. Fighting games have fallen slightly out of favor in the country on consoles and arcades (the verdict is still out on PC), it still would have been nice for the new title in the franchise to be revealed here.
It was not, but this probably wasn’t the best place to expect it. I mentioned that there were more announcements at Evo Japan 2024 than I expected, but there were no brand-new title announcements. Those ranged from character reveals like those mentioned above, to updated versions like for the niche-though-enjoyable Breakers Revenge Chicago. A new Virtua Fighter game would have been one of the biggest titles ever announced at an Evo Japan event, so the chances of this happening were low despite me believing in it.
You know what this means? Well, I just didn’t believe hard enough. I still have faith that a new game is coming. Sega is currently bringing back several old franchises, and one more could always join the mix.
Tekken’s Katsuhiro Harada is also hoping for a new VF title. That makes sense from him, as someone who enjoys promoting fighting game competition. Tekken sure as hell needs a good rival considering there aren’t any other 3D fighters like it left. The last two Soulcalibur games both felt like the final installments, with their directors leaving Bandai Namco afterward. The remaining team members are likely working on Tekken and perhaps a few other projects. Team Ninja has provided not even the slightest hint of reviving Dead or Alive as a fighting game franchise.
A new Virtua Fighter title would be great for RGG studio to work on in between the two Like a Dragon games recently released. Let’s hope.
The other title I was surprised not to see was a smaller one, but more genuinely shocking in its absence… kind of. Arika announced Fighting EX Layer Ver. 3.0 at Evo Japan 2023 after several teases, a new version of the game originally revealed as an April Fool’s joke back in 2017. This version was planned to come with the kind of balance updates that new version would have, and 3D movement destined to add a literal new dynamic to the game. Its release seemed like it would come shortly after the update was announced, considering it was playable during the event last year. It would perhaps arrive alongside native PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series versions.
That’s a lot of speculation there, and not just on my part. I wish I could tell you that I came up with all those scenarios. But I sure didn’t predict that this version would just vanish without a word from Arika for over a year now. It’s a worrying sign for the game’s remaining fans, a number that admittedly isn’t very high. But there’s at least a reasonable explanation for this one.
Arika assisted with the development of Tekken 8, a title chiefly developed and published by Bandai Namco that will be updated for years to come, as Tekken 7 was before it. They’ve also worked on other games, including the soon-to-release Endless Ocean: Luminous for Switch being published by Nintendo. These are two projects for two big clients, and it’s no surprise that they would have taken priority. I don’t know how large Arika is, but I figured there was a chance that a small team within the company could still be working on this one. Perhaps that’s not the case. It’s possible we’ll see it soon, maybe at Evo 2024. It’s clearly been put on the backburner, but damn would I hate to hear that it’s cancelled.
It should not go unnoticed that both the anecdotes about the missing games here mention the Tekken franchise. Therefore, everything is Tekken 8’s fault. Clearly someone tempted fate by asking Harada for something. I’ll mentally keep my fingers crossed for another Virtua Fighter game for several more months.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
