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Fans of Virtua Fighter are encouraged to tune into twitch.tv/gamrah on Saturday 16th September at 3PM AEST (or 1AM EDT for those on the East Coast of America, and Fri 10PM PDT for those on West Coast America) to catch the Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown Tournament at Australia's longest running Fighting Game Major.

Recently streamed on the GODSGARDEN niconico channel, legendary VF players Ohsu Akira (now plays El Blaze) and Homestay Akira took part in some highly entertaining exhibition matches on console versions of VF5FS and VF2! Both players are mic'd up with the more vocal of the two being Ohsu Akira, and even if you can't understand Japanese you can certainly feel, and be entertained by, his struggle against the might of Homestay's Akira!

This year's New York Gathering, NYG 12, the longest-running western Virtua Fighter tournament, is back again this year at the world famous Next Level Arcade!

Today, Microsoft's Larry Hyrb aka Major Nelson announced on Twitter that Virtua Fighter 2 (and 3 other titles) are now backwards compatible on Xbox One. Like Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown before it, VF2 will use the same servers on Xbox One as it does on Xbox 360, so players on either system will be able to play against eachother. Additionally, DVR features such as screenshots, clip recording and streaming will be available when playing VF2 on Xbox One.

Every now and then the topic of the Low Punch makes the rounds, and when it does it seems to polarise the community. This debate recently surfaced again on the VFDC Shoutbox, where criticisms of the 2P varied from the functional (nerf 2P or should players just get better?) to the aesthetic (does punching someone in the shin look ridiculous?) From a simplistic RPS analogy, the Low Punch is the "paper" that beats the Standing Punch "rock" which makes it universally important to the core of Virtua Fighter and has been subject to a number of refinements over the entire series. Let's revisit this age-old philosophical debate and let us know where you stand -- or sit (hah!) -- on low punching!

Preregister for this year's NYG!
After a lot of ups and downs this year, NYG 12 is a go. This year will feature a VF5 FS full tournament with cash prizes and a team tournament. Our venue this year will be Next Level Arcade. Read more...

In a recent video interview by HipHopGamer, Tekken director and producer Katsuhiro Harada was asked if, given the opportunity, he would use Virtua Fighter characters in either a Tekken or VF-cross-Tekken game? His answer may surprise you.

In the Exploring Fighting Games series, episode four describes an approach one might use when learning a 3D fighting game for the first time. While it uses Tekken 7 as the game to demonstrate the approach, you'll find that most of the ideas put forward apply to Virtua Fighter as well, especially for new comers to the game!

A curious tweet came from Sega's official Japanese twitter account today. A picture of Lau and his model progression through the Virtua Fighter series, with the text 'I TL, cook this year!'.

You may remember recently that Sega published a short, but great piece on the history of Virtua Fighter, and it's massive boom in popularity in Japan. Obviously, there's a bigger story to tell with Virtua Fighter's illustrious history, and part 2 of this piece has just been published.