Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution

Virtua Fighter 4 became much more streamlined and user friendly than its predecessors, while expanding on old ideas and adding new techniques. The evasion system was revamped from Virtua Fighter 3, the evade button was removed, and evades were split into two types, successful and unsuccessful. When evades were not performed with the proper timing, they were unsuccessful leaving the fighter vulnerable. The evade + throw escape option select, which was an advanced technique discovered in Virtua Fighter 3, was expanded upon.

Virtua Fighter 4 allowed the player to escape as many throws as they could, and lengthened the window for performing a successful throw escape during an [unsuccessful] evade. A new move type called a Sabaki was added; an attack that also doubles as a reversal versus one or more move types.

Virtua Fighter 4 and Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution have a two-part storyline. VF4 started out with thirteen fighters entering the tournament for their own personal reasons, while Judgement Six used them for gathering data for Dural. Evolution adds two more fighters to the mix, one of them works for Judgement Six who is ordered to kill everyone in the tournament.

It was also revealed that for the Dural project, Judgement Six targeted Sarah Bryant as their next volunteer for a new Dural model. Akira fell short during the third tournament. In order to find out what the "real power" was within him, he enters the fourth tournament to find that answer. Pai discovers that her skill was close to her father's despite her loss in the third tournament.

Like previous Virtua Fighter titles, the game's development was led by Yu Suzuki.

The Naomi 2 arcade version uses about 12,000 polygons per character, and 50,000 polygons for the backgrounds. It also reportedly uses 128 MB of texture data. For the PlayStation 2 port, the graphical detail was reduced, particularly in terms of texture details.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Virtua Fighter 4 on their September 15, 2001 issue as being the most-successful arcade game of the month.

In July 2001, IGN's Anthony Chau praised the graphics of the arcade game, stating it is "one of the finest looking video games I've laid my eyes on" and "demonstrates the highest quality in visuals I've seen."