3D fighting game fans, here’s your first look at Sega’s return to Virtua Fighter, this time with close-to-real in-game footage and gameplay so that you have a rough idea how the sequel will look like.

During NVidia’s keynote presentation from CEO Jensen Huang at CES 2025, he talked about NVidia’s foray into making GPUs with Sega, developing the tech for their breakthrough 3D arcade game back in 1993: Virtua Fighter. Fast forward to now, and Jensen shows off a clip of the next Virtua Fighter. We’re talking in-game footage that’s close to gameplay here, as the short clip shows off a mirror match between main character Akira.

Check out the video below.

Update: Full 30-second video below, complete with stylized intro and actual damage from Akira’s counters. 

It’s really short, but it does highlight a couple of things:

• Akira has some new costumes for the next Virtua Fighter.
• We still have cinematic-style moves and hard body blows like in past Virtua Fighter games. They’re just fancier-looking.
• While the disclaimer below the video says “in-engine footage” and “not actual gameplay”, that’s usually put there for legal reasons. Everyone who knows how Virtua Fighter plays out will know that what you’re seeing here is pretty close to the real deal, changes in graphical detailing & sounds notwithstanding.

On a related note, developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio said that the new Virtua Fighter will be honest and not flashy, reminiscent of K-1 karate tournaments. Here’s a quote from the Famitsu interview (translated by Eventhubs):

“[Y]ou can look at games that have a Hadoken or flashy special moves like a Pro Wrestling-type of entertainment while the entertainment that Virtua Fighter is aiming for would be closer to what K-1 was. So rather than change the rules or fill the screen with flashy things, we’d like to keep it plain and honest and trying to enhance that side of it as its draw. From my perspective, that’s what we have to do.”