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—Tell us about yourself and your career so far. Riichiro Yamada (hereafter Yamada): I’m Riichiro Yamada, the producer of this project. I joined SEGA in 1999 as a game designer, and over the years I’ve been involved in all sorts of projects, from console titles to mobile games. At one point, I actually left SEGA and worked on game development at Warner Bros. Entertainment, but I returned to the company in 2023. I’m what you’d call a boomerang employee (laughs). After I came back to SEGA, the idea for a new Virtua Fighter started taking shape, and I’ve been involved in the project since its inception. —How did the New VIRTUA FIGHTER Project come to be? Yamada: Many players have long wanted to see Virtua Fighter revived and hoped something would be done about it. Since arcades have shrunk as a market for fighting games, we decided to focus our efforts on the console market instead. Meanwhile, within SEGA, the Virtua Fighter team was integrated into RGG Studio, which prompted discussions about properly revisiting older IPs. Before long, people started saying, “Let’s make Virtua Fighter,” and I was assigned to oversee the project as producer. —When the project was first launched, did you have a shared goal or vision within the team? Yamada: Of course, our goal is to make a game worthy of being nominated for Game of the Year. Like the very first Virtua Fighter, we want a title that doesn’t just sit within the “fighting game” mold. The fighting game genre tends to be seen as a special, niche category. But Virtua Fighter actually isn’t like that; it’s easy for anyone to pick up and play, and I think that’s one of its strengths. If a game isn’t something anyone can enjoy, it won’t reach the level of recognition needed to ...
