Yu Suzuki, the legendary ex-Sega sport designer who has but to be apprehended for his function in creating the Shenmue collection, has gotten a brand new gig. VGC (opens in new tab) stories that Suzuki has partnered up with Oasyx, “an NFT challenge developed on the Oasys gaming blockchain,” to provide a collection of covetable JPEGs based mostly across the Virtua Fighter collection, which he created.
The partnership implies that “followers can purchase limited-edition ‘VF MAYU’ NFTs” of “particular Virtua Fighter characters,” which might be, uh, “incubated and revealed” subsequent month. That faintly gross-sounding course of will produce 1,000 Virtua Fighter NFTs—that includes “11 characters from the primary three Virtua Fighter video games”—for somebody, someplace to spend an excessive amount of cash on. They’re going to additionally “function a base for future Metaverse avatars,” due to course they’ll.
It is not completely clear what Suzuki’s function within the challenge truly is. In a press release, he mentioned that he’s “supervising the event of OASYX’s distinctive worldview,” which I am not gonna faux is a press release overburdened with which means from the place I am sitting, and that he is “delighted to mix modern expertise within the type of blockchain-based NFTs, with three titles from the Virtua Fighter collection”. It sounds to me like Yu Suzuki’s function on this endeavour was telling Oasyx it might Yu Suzuki’s identify on this endeavour. It seems to be like Sega hasn’t completed a lot past licensing out Virtua Fighter, both.
If there is a silver lining to all this, it is that Oasyx is a proof-of-stake, not proof-of-work, blockchain system. Meaning it would not require the identical energy-guzzling, environment-wrecking computation energy {that a} community like Bitcoin does. Whereas the Virtua Fighter NFTs are eyeroll-worthy, they’re a minimum of not consuming the planet. So, take consolation in that, I suppose.
Final yr we mentioned that NFTs had been efficiently bullied out of mainstream video games (opens in new tab), and I nonetheless suppose that is true. However it’s at all times a bit of dispiriting to see the swamp bubble up and spit one thing out like this or Sq. Enix’s terrible-looking NFT sport (opens in new tab), even when it isn’t the identical NFT goldrush that appeared to briefly seize videogame firm C-suites around the globe for some time. And whereas I perceive that Suzuki has, it appears, signed a deal that rewards him for doing barely something in any respect, it is unhappy to see once-great creators put their names to this nonsense.
