Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown Director Discusses Previous Games

By Ishaan . February 9, 2012 . 11:00am

Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown is still scheduled for a summer 2012 release, and Sega have released a brief behind-the-scenes video of the game with Makoto Osaki (developer) and Daichi Katagiri (director) of their AM2 department.

Osaki and Katagiri discuss previous Virtua Fighter games, and touch upon how they went about selecting characters for certain games. In particular, they share why sumo wrestler, Taka-Arashi, wasn’t included in Virtua Fighter 4.

“One of the reasons we didn’t include Taka-Arashi in VF4 was the motion system,” Katagiri shares. “We simply weren’t able to express the character in the ideal manner. Another reason is, we were pushing overall for a fast-paced, speedy game for VF4, and his character — due to his size and movement — felt somewhat out of place.”

“We added him back in VF5R and by that time, the technology we had supported the motion we wanted to express. We were able to create better movement for this large-size sumo-wrestler.”

Due to his size, Taka-Arashi also had a separate shadow in Virtua Fighter 5 R, and needed his own unique animation system.