Virtua Fighter dot com

First Final Showdown Location Test Announced
Sega has announced that starting today, VF5 Final Showdown will be on test in the following locations until July 7th (Wednesday)

Ikebukuro GIGO
Club Sega Akihabara
Club Sega Shinjuku West Exit

After the location test is finished, the game will continue to be on play at the Shinjuku location only. This news is troubling because Sega has only been holding location tests in the Tokyo area (the most popular area for VF) for the past several years, and has not given the rest of the country a chance to play the game, which is the complete opposite of what Capcom, Examu and other companies have done with their recent releases.

I will be in Tokyo at the end of July, so any gameplay movies and impressions will have to wait until then. Fortunately, there should be some gameplay videos floating around starting tomorrow, so be on the lookout for them in the usual places.

» VF5FS Discussion Thread
» VF5FS Location Test Videos

Twitter Support for Final Showdown!

Sega has announced on the official Virtua Fighter page that the upcoming Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown will be officially supporting Twitter, making it the first arcade game in Japan to make use of the popular service. Twitter has been extremely popular in Japan, with 16% of Japanese internet users using the service, and has recently dethroned the popular mixi as the #1 service in the country.

By creating a Twitter account and linking it to your VF.net account (via PC or cellphone), your Twitter account will be automatically updated when you are playing. Also, if you are viewing VF.net and look up a certain player, you can automatically add them to your Twitter following list if they have a Twitter account registered and visible (of course, you can set it to invisible if you wish). Not only that, but since you can look up recent players you’ve encountered with VF.net already, if they have an account, you can follow them on Twitter as well.

Katagiri’s blog also mentions how Twitter will be incorporated with your play in Virtua Fighter. Whenever you pull off something impressive you can have it automatically post on Twitter. Of course, if you’re wary of cluttering up your Twitter feed with VF tweets, you can manage what kind of updates will be sent to Twitter. Katagiri gives these examples:

“DK’s Lau has just been promoted to 5th Dan at Club Sega Shinjuku West Exit #VF5FS”
“DK’s Lau has put together a 10 game win streak at Club Sega Shinjuku #VF5FS”
“DK’s Lau has earned the “Dragon Wing” item from a Basic Capsule (Rare) #VF5FS”

Also, you can follow the Virtua Fighter team via Twitter right now, as they have created an official Twitter account !

»...

Virtua Dojo Movie Database

Kamaage of vfdojo.net has worked very hard at providing the VF community with a database of VF5R competition and tournament matches! With this excellent resource you can search for your favourite player by their Ring Name in English!

For more information, check out the Virtua Dojo Movie Database thread.

Official link » vfdojo.net Movie Database

On the 19th of May 2010 Kamaage received an official reply in the mail from SEGA in regards to our petition to port the latest version of Virtua Fighter to console.

For a translation of SEGA's reply, head over to the SEGA Replies to the Console Petition thread.

VF5FS Coming Soon!

Announced in the developer diary on the Official Virtua Fighter Site was a further look into the upcoming release of Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, likely to be hitting Japanese game centers very soon.

This diary entry includes a demo VF5FS movie, broadcast on SEGA's YouTube channel, which showcases many new moves and gameplay elements.

The question on everyone's lips is, of course, will this see light of day on a console? Here's hoping!

» Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown Discussion

Thank You VFDC!

This is an official two-part thankyou message to all members of VFDC.

The Console Petition
Firstly, thank you to all members that assisted with the Console Petition. You'll be pleased to hear that VFDC, combined with kamaage's contribution from vfdojo.net, produced a petition exceeding 500 pages!

As a sign of thanks, kamaage enlisted Homestay Akira's help to provide some pointers to the community on how one can improve in VF. In what hopefully turns out to be an ongoing series, Chapter 1 in Homestay Akira's Virtua Education is titled The Road to Becoming Strong. Check it out!

The Gift
Last, but not least, I want to personally thank everyone involved for the wonderful gift and donation sent to me recently. I hope to put it to good use soon!

Due to personal reasons I haven't been online much lately, so I apologise for taking this long to formally acknowledge it. The power of this collective gesture makes me feel vindicated though I struggle to find words that adequately convey how appreciative I am.

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Shoryu-what? An obvious April Fool's joke, but nonetheless a hilarious trailer! Like a bad car accident you just have to see (perhaps over and over), you'll either laugh, cry, or momentarily lose yourself in the "what-if" fantasy of VF crossing over into SF territory.

SoCal VF Party 2010
VF5: UNLAGGED 3

From May 27th to the 30th, 2010, everyone who wants to kill the lag is gonna wanna be in one place - Riverside, California. For the last four years, players from around the world have come to SoCal in the Spring. This year looks to be all that and more!

- Team Battle Tournament
- Singles Tournament

Event Information »
SoCal VF Party, May 27th-30th, 2010

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown
Today at AOU2010, SEGA unveiled the latest update to the VF5 series titled Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown. A movie demo has been made available for download at SEGA's official VF5 website, and here's a YouTube link for good measure.

The movie shown gives a taste of new costumes, items, and more importantly, changes to gameplay. We can only speculate at what these gameplay changes are given the brief glimpse the video affords.

To discuss this news further, check out the Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown thread!

What about the VF5R for Console Petition?
As many of you would know, VFDC in collaboration with kamaage of vfdojo.net are conducting a petition to get the latest version of VF5 ported to consoles (see Petition announcement). Yesterday that version happened to be VF5R, but today it is VF5FS.

Let's not lose sight of our original goal, which was to send SEGA a message -- a message to say that we, outside of Japan, want the opportunity to play the latest version of Virtua Fighter. The petition is the vehicle by which we will deliver that message. If you haven't already posted in the petition thread, then perhaps VF5 Final Showdown can be that extra motivation you need?

Petition for VF5R on Console
A well known and respected VFer in Japan, Kamaage, was invited to meet with SEGA on the 28th January 2010. Leading up to this meeting, Kamaage approached VFDC with an opportunity to express our desire to have Virtua Fighter 5R ported to console directly to SEGA. He suggested we put together a document that explained a little about VFDC along with personalised messages from players in the community. If the document could reach 100 or so pages, then surely SEGA would be impressed, or so Kamaage thought!

After his meeting, Kamaage informed us that while the document was impressive, it simply wasn't enough. Kamaage now has another opportunity to pass our document to SEGA, but it must have more impact, at least 5x more!


How You Can Help!
Simply post a reply leaving a message expressing your desire to play VF5R on console. Feel free to share your VF playing history, why you like the game, etc. To lend weight to your message, please leave your real name, and your location along with your post.

» Kamaage: VF5R for console effort