Tag Archives: Virtua Fighter

EVO 2026 Day 3 Recap: Who Won and What to Watch Tonight

Las Vegas is wrapping up its biggest fighting game weekend of the year, and EVO 2026’s final Sunday has already produced some memorable moments. Five game brackets have been settled, the competitive scene is buzzing, and Singapore’s FGC community has been tracking every bracket update from GMT+8 — with the most anticipated finals still ahead tonight.

GBF Rising: Kojicoco Goes Back-to-Back for Japan

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising gameplay at EVO 2026
Image courtesy of Cygames

PAR|Kojicoco has now won Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising at EVO two years running. The Japanese competitor carried Beatrix through the entire bracket on Sunday, resetting the grand finals and closing out the deciding set 3-0 over GS|Shio, who played Lowain throughout. Back-to-back EVO titles in a single game is a rare achievement in any era of the FGC, and Kojicoco’s combination of footsies and neutral control with Beatrix set the bar for the field all weekend. The decisive finish leaves very little room to debate who the world’s best GBVSR player is right now.

Evo 2026: Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising Top 8 — via Evo Events on YouTube

Guilty Gear Strive: RedDitto Dominates with Ramlethal

Guilty Gear Strive combat scene
Image courtesy of Arc System Works

RedDitto claimed the Guilty Gear Strive EVO 2026 title running Ramlethal, defeating BMS|Verix — on Nagoriyuki — 3-1 in the grand finals. NitroNY rounded out the top three. It is a strong result for the Ramlethal camp heading into the back half of Season 4; notably, the DLC calendar keeps filling up too, with the just-announced Robo-Ky returning on 2 July. Arc System Works had a banner weekend across multiple titles at the event.

Evo 2026: GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- Top 8 — via Evo Events on YouTube

Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O.: GentlemanThief Wins at a Historic Moment

Virtua Fighter 5 REVO World Stage gameplay
Image courtesy of SEGA

SF|GentlemanThief won the Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage championship in one of the weekend’s most dramatic finishes, defeating GKJ|Gakusei Sarah 3-2 across five tense sets while rotating between Akira and Jean. The result lands less than 24 hours after SEGA revealed Virtua Fighter: Crossroads, the long-awaited full-series revival — a coincidence that felt almost scripted. If you missed the Crossroads announcement from yesterday, that context makes GentlemanThief’s win feel all the more significant for the franchise’s future.

Under Night In-Birth 2 and Rivals of Aether 2

PAR|BigBlack took the Under Night In-Birth 2 Sys:Celes title with Byakuya, edging out BNP|Knotts 3-2 in a close deciding set — another Arc System Works-adjacent title, another PAR squad win, cementing the team’s weekend as arguably the best of any organisation at EVO 2026. Meanwhile in Rivals of Aether 2, Eggdog|Plup claimed the top spot with Orcane and La Reina.

Arc System Works fighter in action at EVO 2026
Image courtesy of Arc System Works

SF6 and Tekken 8 Finals Tonight: What Singapore Fans Are Staying Up For

The two biggest titles of the weekend have not crowned champions yet. Street Fighter 6 — which drew over 2,400 entrants, the largest pool of the tournament — and Tekken 8 are both running their Top 8 finals this Sunday evening Pacific time, putting them deep in the Monday early hours for Singapore viewers. Defending SF6 champion MenaRD is in the mix, as is Tekken stalwart Arslan Ash. The Tekken 8 Season 3 reveals this weekend — including Bob and Yujiro Hanma — have the community buzzing heading into the bracket’s climax.

Results will be updated on our social feeds as they come in. For all the EVO 2026 game reveals and DLC announcements from this weekend, head to the GameTrader events archive.

Virtua Fighter Crossroads: First New VF in 20 Years, Made by the Yakuza Team

Virtua Fighter is back. Twenty years after VF5 launched in arcades, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio — the team behind Like a Dragon — has announced Virtua Fighter Crossroads, a new mainline entry for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, set for 2027. This is the first genuinely new mainline Virtua Fighter since 2006, and it looks like no one has forgotten how to build a fighter.

VIRTUA FIGHTER CROSSROADS | Official Reveal Trailer — via VIRTUA FIGHTER on YouTube

What Is Virtua Fighter Crossroads?

Developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by SEGA, Crossroads was first revealed at Summer Game Fest 2026 and showcased further at EVO 2026 this week. It is a ground-up new entry — not a remaster, not a re-release — with a confirmed 2027 launch window on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam.

The game merges traditional 3D Virtua Fighter combat with a full narrative adventure campaign built along the lines of RGG’s Like a Dragon titles. SEGA describes it as “a narrative adventure that transcends the boundaries of fighting games,” and from the content shown so far, that is not marketing hyperbole: Crossroads features chapters with completion tracking, side quests, multiple protagonists with interlocking stories, and a richly detailed open city to move through.

Meet Cielo — and the New and Returning Fighters

Virtua Fighter Crossroads character select screen showing Cielo and Stella with their fighting styles and nationalities
Image courtesy of SEGA

Cielo is the game’s new protagonist: a Paraguayan-American underground MMA fighter who calls the walled city of Villaspara home. He enters the Vila Fight Fest after refusing to throw a match, and his story spirals from there. His moveset is MMA/Balanced — a grounded, read-heavy style that fits squarely into VF’s design philosophy of clean, style-pure combat.

Alongside Cielo is Stella, an American kickboxer, among other new characters yet to be revealed. Returning veterans Akira Yuki, Pai Chan and Wolf Hawkfield confirm that the series’ iconic cast has not been replaced, only expanded. The creative team behind the narrative is formidable: scenario writing draws on Shinji Yamamoto (Persona 5 Royal), direction from Takeshi Furuta (Yakuza series) and world-building by screenwriter Brad Kane, who was lead writer on Ghost of Tsushima.

VIRTUA FIGHTER CROSSROADS | Cielo Story Trailer — via SEGA on YouTube

Villaspara Looks Like Somewhere You Know

Virtua Fighter Crossroads — a detailed Southeast Asian street market in Villaspara
Image courtesy of SEGA
Virtua Fighter Crossroads — atmospheric underground arena corridor in Villaspara
Image courtesy of SEGA

Virtua Fighter Crossroads is set in Villaspara, a fictional walled city in Southeast Asia divided into a city centre, entertainment district and resort area. The environments shown so far — a sun-lit street market dense with local goods, a gritty underground fight corridor opening onto an arena — are assembled from the visual language of the region in a way that will feel immediately recognisable to players across Singapore and SEA.

This is not a generic pan-Asian backdrop. RGG Studio built Kamurocho over the course of two decades, and that same obsessive environmental detail is visible in every Crossroads screenshot. Villaspara is a city you want to walk through, which is exactly what the narrative mode asks you to do.

Story Mode, Side Quests and the Like a Dragon Blueprint

Virtua Fighter Crossroads story chapter select screen showing Vila Fight Fest missions and chapter completion tracking
Image courtesy of SEGA

The story campaign is structured in chapters with completion percentages and branching side objectives — exactly the loop RGG has refined across every Like a Dragon entry. Chapter missions carry names like “Vila Fight Fest: Round One” and “Glad Tidings of Betrayal,” pointing toward an underground fighting circuit narrative with political undercurrents. Supporting characters have their own dedicated side quests tracked alongside the main story.

Crossroads also supports fully competitive online versus play for players who want to skip the story and go straight to ranked matches. Both modes appear to run off the same underlying fighting system, so every hour spent in the campaign builds the muscle memory that transfers to competitive play.

Platforms, Release Window and What Singapore Players Need to Know

Virtua Fighter Crossroads launches in 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam. No exact date has been announced, and no Nintendo Switch 2 version has been confirmed as of this writing.

Singapore players will access it through the PlayStation Store or Steam. No SGD pricing has been announced yet. Given RGG’s track record on Like a Dragon titles — which have consistently released simultaneously worldwide — a global day-one launch is the expected outcome, though SEGA has not confirmed regional release timing.

The franchise returning after two decades is significant in itself, but the choice of developer matters more: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio knows how to build a game that makes you care about the world and the people in it before the fights even begin. Keep an eye on the latest game news as we get closer to 2027 and SEGA reveals more of the roster and story.