Virtua Fighter 6 has its first proper gameplay video, and the fighting game continues to look amazing on the graphics front.
Sega has only released reveal videos and a tech demo for its upcoming ‘New Virtual Fighter Project,’ so this new trailer, revealed during the EVO fighting game tournament, shows us just how impressive the visuals and animations are shaping up to be in actual gameplay.
We see series stalwart Akira, wearing an outfit fans of Donnie Yen’s Ip Man film series will know well, going up against new character Stella on the Training Stage.
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New VIRTUA FIGHTER Project
Combat Gameplay First Look
-Training Stage◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢
Check out the latest #NewVF trailer that just premiered at #EVO2025.
More info coming at #TGS2025.Follow the official global VF account… pic.twitter.com/jPzmsSUKwt
— VIRTUA FIGHTER (@VF_SEGA) August 3, 2025
In truth, the gameplay here doesn’t look that far off the eye-catching tech demo that was shown at Nvidia’s CES event in January. At the time, Sega released what it called a “pre-development concept video” for Virtua Fighter 6, but made clear it did not reflect how the upcoming fighting game would look and play when it eventually comes out.
The video, below, shown during Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech at CES 2025, features incredibly realistic and fluid animations for a fighting game. We see an Akira mirror match with the kind of combat usually reserved for a martial arts movie.
But this new video, which Sega is calling a ‘Combat Gameplay First Look,’ shows buttery smooth animations and cool transitions, with a slow-motion effect for whiffs that makes Virtua Fighter look much more realistic than its fighting game rivals.
“No infinite juggles, no crazy magic, no stupid invincible ex, no stupid rage art, no spamming rage drive, focus attacks etc. Just pure fighting, I like that,” commented one fan on YouTube.
“VF6 is feeling like those old martial arts films,” added another. “No drive impact, no heat system, no rev system, just straight up hands. I cannot wait for this to drop.”
We do see some sort of debilitating effect in the gameplay, where Stella appears to suffer damage to her face, but overall it’s a very clean, back to basics approach for video game fighting.
Virtua Fighter 6 is in development at Yakuza / Like a Dragon studio Ryo Ga Gotoku and is without a release window or target platforms. Virtua Fighter hasn’t seen a mainline release in years, leaving mini-game appearances in Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Yakuza games and the 2021 release of Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown to tide fans over.
Expect more on the battle system at the Tokyo Game Show in September. There is no release date yet.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
