The latest update to Virtua Fighter 5 is soon to crash down in Japanese Arcades with at least one highly unorthodox feature. As standard for the series now you will be able to track your progress and customise your character with unlockable attire, however by linking up your VF.NET account with your Twitter account the game will actually report the results of your battles online in varying degrees of detail depending on how happy you are to clutter up your feed with it.
Admittedly I can be rather cynical when it comes to most social networking support, but this actually sounds like it could create a rather interesting dynamic I’m not used to in Arcade culture. After a one-off encounter with a mysterious fighter, the player could then check up on their twitter feed to find out more information about the person they battled. They may have simply shook hands before and left their rivalry at that, but now he could arrange to meet up for a rematch. Perhaps he read of his rival’s victories in an arcade at the other end of the city and decide to take the fight to them next time. Maybe he could dig around and research their fight history, trying to suss out what fighters their opponent can’t so confidently pummel to death. It’s a system which actively encourages the participants to forge relationships long after clashing against one another, either openly or covertly.
As I understand from the source, this is the first time a fighting game has ever incorporated such a feature, so I’m definitely interested in seeing what effect this has on arcade fighting as a whole. And maybe, just maybe, the added attention will get us a console port this time.
[Source: Arcade Heroes]
That sounds pretty rad. It reminds me of when you could plug your Gamecube memory card into a F Zero AX machine.
It also reminds me of how dead the arcade scene in America is 🙁
I’ll try it out if I actually can afford a ticket to Japan this year. I actually think it sounds kinda neat.