The original Virtua Fighter could be considered the Sega Saturn’s first big hit. It started in, and dominated arcades in Japan, but by and large coin op gaming was on it’s way out in the West. Unfortunately the Sega Saturn was quite underpowered when it came to polygonal titles, but Virtua Fighter came out at launch to great fanfare. Unfortunately the graphics had been surpassed already so it wasn’t particularly impressive visually. Sega released a follow up, Virtua Fighter 2, in arcades with more advanced hardware and graphics that seemed unreal at the time. It appeared there was no way the Sega Saturn could handle a home port. Fortunately that didn’t stop Sega. They did the impossible and released a port on the console with minimal concessions. The graphics were worse, sure, but they looked better than almost every other home game at the time. Let’s take a look!
What’s immediately odd is the fact that Virtua Fighter 2 has almost no story. We get no exposition or even endings here. That’s not a big deal because in my opinion fighting games don’t need a plot because they’re so centered around gameplay. I had to do some digging and in the manual I found a blurb. The plot centers around a tournament of the worlds best fighters. Unfortunately an evil syndicate is using this to gain information about these combatants to combine them all into one super being named Dural. It’s pretty weak but honestly I couldn’t be bothered to care. On the plus side characters have short samples of spoken dialogue after each battle, and it adds a lot of character to each one. Even just Jackie screaming “yeah!” is highly memorable.
Virtua Fighter 2 is a pretty standard polygonal fighting game at first look. You duke it out in 3D arenas but gameplay is strictly two dimensional in nature. Characters can be knocked in different directions but by and large can only move towards and away from the foe. There isn’t even a side step function here. Each character has a life bar and your basic goal is to drain that of your foes in a best of 3 match set up. What sets this game apart from it’s contemporaries is the very basic design. Each character has a punch, kick and block by default. This means that it is played with only three face buttons. Compare that to the six which was the standard at the time and that seems questionable. Pressing both face buttons at the same time results in a throw for every character.
Virtua Fighter 2 takes a much more realistic approach to the genre than most others of its kind. Not only does each character have a fighting style based on real world martial arts, but they are all animated using motion capture techniques. Virtua Fighter 2 was one of the first titles to take this approach and it pays off extremely well. The animations are absolutely bonkers. The characters move with fluidity unheard of at the time in the genre, and everything from their punches to kicks are fluid and dynamic. This is one of those rare fighting games where you won’t find special moves like projectiles or anything really over the top. Sega stuck to the fundamentals of the genre, but went really in depth in terms of detail and polish. The only downside is the floaty jumping from the original returns, but it’s easy to get used to this.
The limited number of buttons is a design choice rather than limitation. The developers add a ton of function to these basic attacks using the d-pad. Holding a direction while attacking has different results. What’s more is that these are more than simple high or low strikes. Each character has different effects with directional inputs paired with their attacks. These are the special moves of the game. Each fighting style is based loosely on real world martial arts including various forms of kung fu, wrestling, etc. It’s really interesting and it’s clear that the developers put in their research because all of this is highly detailed and truly in depth. There are also more technical special moves requiring more complicated inputs, but none of these are incredibly difficult to pull off. Each character has a remarkably large special move list and learning all of these takes some practice.
This is where all of the technical aspects of the game come from. The huge move lists of each character, and just how differently their fighting styles affect gameplay are huge. In addition you also have various counters to enemy attacks. To be successful with this you must memorize enemy character’s frames, and because they all move differently this is a tall task. By striking at just the right time when they are about to attack you can stop them in their tracks and redirect the momentum of battle. You can also block throws. To do so requires quick reflexes and a fair bit of memorization on the player’s part. Learning the ins and outs is no easy task and the in depth mechanics prevent players from simply mashing buttons to victory. There are few fighting games where such a rift in experience between the players is so immediately apparent.
If there’s one complaint I have it’s that the roster wasn’t expanded enough. The nine fighters from the original all return, and we only have two new faces. This includes Shun Di and Lion respectively. Only two new faces is kind of disappointing, but they’re actually really interesting. Shun Di in particular with his drunken fist style has some crazy detailed and hilarious animations. He’s also a lot of fun to use because of how unpredictable some of his moves are. Lion is also a decent addition and uses the mantis style of kung fu. To make up for the lack of new characters Sega went back and refined all of the old ones. They each have a ton of new moves which make them functionally different in a lot of ways from the original. I’ve seen very few sequels that offer so many additions to returning characters as this.
Virtua Fighter 2 was an absolutely insane looking game by console standards at the time of release. No other fighting game was as fluid with detailed graphics as this one. The animations have crazy amounts of detail and a huge number of frames for absolutely everything. What’s more is the game runs in the Saturn’s high resolution mode which does away with a lot of the sharp edges the platform was known for. The textures, especially on the ground, looks better than in most 32-bit titles. This includes later PS1 releases. What’s more is it runs at a higher resolution than almost any console game at the time, and runs at a solid sixty frames per second. Virtua Fighter 2 may just be the best looking title on the platform. The soundtrack is also really good and has that classic AM2 ‘in your face’ quality to it. I love it.
