Vtuber fans absolutely lose it after legendary streamer Coco gets announced for free fighting game coming next week

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Fan-made game Idol Showdown welcomes Kiryu Coco to its roster

Idol Showdown
(Image credit: Besto Game Team)

The unbelievably good-looking vtuber fighting game Idol Showdown now has a May 5 release date plus a complete roster of eight playable characters, and the last streamer to the party, Kiryu Coco, has rekindled a shockingly large fan base.

To bring you up to speed, Idol Showdown is a free, fan-made fighting game starring vtubers from the Hololive group owned by Japanese company Cover. The folks at developer Besto Game Team have been working on it for about two years, and it's finally out next week. In the runup to launch, the game's been rolling out debut trailers for its fighters, and Kiryu Coco's reveal has quickly stolen the show. 

As is often the case with the surprisingly frequent and fascinating crossovers between gaming and vtubers, there is some Deep Lore behind this, and once again I've had to learn all of it. Kiryu Coco, you see, is technically retired. She left Hololive – or as the fandom puts it, "graduated" – about two years ago after a relatively short but absolutely explosive career as a streamer. 

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Coco's YouTube channel is still up and has over 1.4 million subscribers, but the numbers that really blow my mind have all come from her final stream, which capped off a month-long sendoff. This two-hour stream alone has racked up 6.8 million views, apparently peaked at nearly 500,000 concurrent viewers, and reportedly brought in several hundred thousand dollars in viewer donations alone. So yeah, people really liked Coco, and those people are now really happy to see her character honored in a fan project, especially once that's so lovingly detailed. 

COCO-KAICHOU IS GONNA BE IN IDOL SHOWDOWN! I'm so happy! o7o7o7 from r/Hololive

One of Idol Showdown's other playable characters, Shishiro Botan, previously brought a flood of weebs to Deep Rock Galactic after streaming the game, and the space dwarves welcomed them with open arms. 

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.