The Present
Even when staring at the amazing textures of the recently released Virtua Fighter 5, there’s something about the flat shaded polygons of 1993 that has an indescribable visual appeal. The booming soundtrack is memorable, and if you called Sega for technical support during this period, you’d be listening to Jacky’s stage theme when on hold.
Still perfectly playable, the game can hold its own. The annoyingly floaty jumping is a tough hurdle to overcome, and while the technique is definitely a step back from modern 3-D fighters, there’s no way to deny that it still takes practice to master this classic. Many titles from the early 3-D era cannot stand out after this period of time. Virtua Fighter easily passes the modern day game play test.
Facts and notables
Released at launch for the Sega Saturn, the buggy graphics and game play were quickly fixed by a mail-in update, called Virtua Fighter Remix. This new version added textures to the characters, and was also an arcade release.
While the Saturn version suffered, Sega’s ill-fated 32X add-on became the surprising recipient of the best home port. While the character models were stripped down to their bare minimum, the steady frame rate an accurate response time pushed this port over the version on the higher-end hardware.
To promote the release of the 32X version, the company released a now rare promotional package containing a t-shirt and video showcasing the game play.
A Windows PC release was one of the first Sega games in a line up of console ports, including (amongst others) Comix Zone and Sonic the Hedgehog in distinctive white and blue packaging. As an early 3-D fighter, the game required a massive 8MB of RAM at minimum.
A Virtua Fighter arcade cabinet is on display at the Smithsonian Institute Museum.
Article comments
1 - RCM
"It's amazing to think that after 14 years, the series has remained this way. Little has been altered"
Ah, but you forget the "massive" overhaul Yu and co tried with VF3. An added button and elevated/different terrain gives this game a different feel when compared to the other titles. It's the best entry in the series and the best fighting game ever.
The original VF certainly hasn't aged well. The series holds strong from VF2 on. All of the surviving 3D brawlers are rooted in the 32-bit era. Those being the Virtua, Tekken, Soul, and DOA series.
Also, the US release of Saturn VF was "cleaned up" slightly when compared to the Japanese release. Also, while the Saturn version looks like it's flat shaded, in reality they "fake" some of the graphics with textures. I prefer the Saturn version, I could tolerate the glitches (mostly in replays) back in 95 and the soundtrack and effects were perfectly replicated from Model 1. The 32X version is nice, but I'll stick to Saturn.
Oh yeah, VF Remix was free to folks who registered their Saturn's for a limited time and came in a cardboard sleeve, as opposed to those clunky, fragile, plastic Sega CD cases.
Not a bad VF article for noobs to the series
2 - Ken Edwards
Gotta say, I am loving VF 5. It should be online, there is no excuse. The die hards would bitch but the general players would have a blast playing it online.
Losing the exclusive to the 360 is a big deal, a blow in the ever growing list of games that are going multi-platform.
Great article Matt. Now I need to get my VF 5 review done.