{"id":240363,"date":"2025-10-03T21:57:35","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T21:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/article.php?article_id=2099162"},"modified":"2025-10-03T21:57:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T21:57:35","slug":"on-the-trail-of-the-odd-one-out-in-the-virtua-fighter-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/on-the-trail-of-the-odd-one-out-in-the-virtua-fighter-series\/","title":{"rendered":"On the trail of the odd one out in the Virtua Fighter series"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/on-the-trail-of-the-odd-one-out-in-the-virtua-fighter-series.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p> <em>Editor&#8217;s note: After an outrageously long hiatus, Sega&#8217;s Virtua Fighter is back with the release of Ultimate Showdown on PlayStation this coming week. To celebrate, we&#8217;re republishing some older pieces on the series, including this piece from June last year.<\/em> <\/p>\n<p>SEGA has just celebrated its 60th anniversary &#8211; happy birthday you mad, beautiful bastards &#8211; which seems as good a time as any to reflect on the company&#8217;s finest. Maybe it&#8217;s OutRun, in all its iconic glory, Super Monkey Ball with its minimalist brilliance or perhaps you could even look a little closer to the modern day and put Yakuza 0 forward as the best of the bunch. For reasons entirely my own, it&#8217;s Virtua Fighter 3 that&#8217;s my personal pick. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not the best in AM2&#8217;s series &#8211; Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown easily takes that crown, providing a crisp take on the no-frills pugilism that&#8217;s as close to perfection as we&#8217;ll get while we endure the indefinite wait for a follow-up &#8211; nor is it the most groundbreaking. The original takes that title, shaking up the industry as it did with its military-spec hardware and the move into muscular 3D. You could argue that Virtua Fighter 2 was the series at its most iconic, too, capturing the series at the height of its mainstream appeal. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/articles\/2020-06-07-capturing-a-piece-of-segas-golden-age\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/articles\/2020-06-07-capturing-a-piece-of-segas-golden-age\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editor&#8217;s note: After an outrageously long hiatus, Sega&#8217;s Virtua Fighter is back with the release of Ultimate Showdown on PlayStation this coming week. To celebrate, we&#8217;re republishing some older pieces on the series, including this piece from June last year. SEGA has just celebrated its 60th anniversary &#8211; happy birthday you mad, beautiful bastards &#8211; which seems as good a time as any to reflect on the company&#8217;s finest. Maybe it&#8217;s OutRun, in all its iconic glory, Super Monkey Ball with its minimalist brilliance or perhaps you could even look a little closer to the modern day and put Yakuza 0 forward as the best of the bunch. For reasons entirely my own, it&#8217;s Virtua Fighter 3 that&#8217;s my personal pick. It&#8217;s not the best&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerpt-more\"><a class=\"blog-excerpt button\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/on-the-trail-of-the-odd-one-out-in-the-virtua-fighter-series\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":240364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eurogamer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>On the trail of the odd one out in the Virtua Fighter series | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Editor&#039;s note: After an outrageously long hiatus, Sega&#039;s Virtua Fighter is back with the release of Ultimate Showdown on PlayStation this coming week. To\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/on-the-trail-of-the-odd-one-out-in-the-virtua-fighter-series\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On the trail of the odd one out in the Virtua Fighter series | Arcader News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Editor&#039;s note: After an outrageously long hiatus, Sega&#039;s Virtua Fighter is back with the release of Ultimate Showdown on PlayStation this coming week. 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