If you’re in Japan right now, you could be the first to play the new, officially licensed Street Fighter VR arcade experience, which pits you against some of the universe’s most iconic warriors.
Capcom released a trailer this week for the single-player arcade game, called Street Fighter VR Shadaloo Enhancement Plan (ストリートファイターVR シャドルー強化計画). It isn’t just a brand engagement vehicle that’s flavored like Street Fighter; hands-on reports suggest it’s actually a pretty solid basis for what might be an honest-to-goodness VR game one day if Capcom really wanted to put the effort in.
According to a hands-on by GAME Watch (Japanese language), Street Fighter VR recruits you as a junior soldier of the evil secret society ‘Shadaloo’, led by M Bison. Matched up against the warriors of Street Fighter V, you battle up the ranks to become the strongest.
The game, which plays on HTC Vive Pro 2, is said to first offer a basic training mode stage which was ostensibly ported directly from Street Fighter V. Although the number of attacks you can do are limited to punches and fist-focused moves like Hadouken and Shoryuken, the rules of the VR game are the same as the original, GAME Watch reports.
Opponents include Ryu, Zangief and M Bison (known as ‘Vega’ in Japan), although another opponent was seen in Capcom’s official art, including what appears to be the shadowy silhouette of Blanka at the end of the trailer. So maybe more yet to come? As it is, if you don’t win a single match, there are actually eight different endings depending on what you play—sounds like a fair amount of replayability.
“To be honest, before playing it, I thought it was just a VR game with a Street Fighter motif,” Hiroyuki Endo of GAME Watch writes, “but when I actually touched it, there were fighting game elements everywhere, and I was surprised that I was able to enjoy a full-fledged Street Fighter in a VR game from a first-person perspective.”
Street Fighter VR kicked off on February 17th at the Plaza Capcom Store in Hiroshima, Japan, priced at ¥1,200 (~$9 USD) per gameplay session. It’s also set to expand on April 17th to Miraino Aeon Mall in Toyokawa, Japan.
There’s really no indication whether we’ll see a release outside of Japan, although we’ve seen similar projects make it across thanks to sustained popular demand, such as the once Japan-only Mario Kart VR racer—so it doesn’t seem too farfetched if Street Fighter fans are vocal enough.
Note: We’ve corrected the name ‘Shadroo’ to ‘Shadaloo’. Thanks go to our reader ‘IIDX’!