Full game discovered behind a few lines of code
In a fascinating and quirky revelation, a modder has discovered that a full build of Sega’sVirtua Fighter 5: Final Showdownis housed inside action-RPGYakuza: Like a Dragon, as well as its predecessor,Yakuza 6.
While hero Ichiban Kasuga has always been able to enjoy a few rounds of the excellent fighter by simply entering one of the cityscape’s arcades and parking himself in front of a cabinet, PC modder “Silent” was able to unlock the full Xbox 360 edition ofVF5: FSin its entirety – complete with training mode, challenge mode, arcade mode settings, and more.
It appears that rather than just adapt the fighter’s VS. Mode for inclusion within theYakuzatitles, Sega dumped the entire program in there, before gating off the unnecessary parts with a few simple lines of code. By altering this code with the smallest of tweaks (literally changing a “2” to a “0”), Silent has been able to restore the ROM dumpVF5: FSto its full state.
Obviously, many of the in-game options are unsupported as they were never intended to be accessible in the first place. As such, browsing features such as Leaderboards or the DLC store can soft-lock the game. Save games are also unsupported, so unfortunately you cannot save your custom characters, but it’s still a really cool and fun discovery. You can check out Silent’s full breakdown on the modeover on their blog.
But what about arealedition ofVirtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown? Well, Last weeka fresh listing appearedon the Korean Game Rating Committee’s website, denoting that the 2010 fighter had been re-certified for PS4. When you couple this listing with Sega’s suddenre-interest in the esports scene, it seems that Akira, Sarah, Pai and co. might be returning to the grand stage sooner than we think.
