Kick'em In The Ghoulies

      'Virtua  Fighter '

Virtua Fighter ,i have decided not to do a over view of Virtua Fighter in the game pages as i am unable to do justice there and i would like this page once completed to be a permanent feature on the site .Why? you might ask,well in my humble opinon it is the best Martial art game out there so it's no point scoring it.

The reason i put forward for this is there are no special fire ball attacks or flying through the air ,i am unable to do these when i train so i know they can't be done unless any one would like to say other wise .Each of the characters has his or hers own fighting stlye which you can clearly pick out the moves as fighting moves from the various arts .

Even the likes of Tekken has some fire effects on impact n also has some fantasy characters .Now some may say that Dural is a fantasy character ,but in fact all she is ,is the epitome of all we Martial artists would like to be ,having learned all the arts and filled with all the knowledge we reqiure .So as a tribute to AM2 and SEGA  i give you the Virtua Fighter page .

I will cover all aspects of the game through thourgh play testing of each version i can get to play from the Mega drive Version to the XBOX 360 version at present .I will even include Saturns Fighters Megamix even though they did include the fighting Vipers and a bear and a car ,but even still AM2 did not add any special moves for these characters ,the car fought just like a human where it's wheels were it's limbs .It will take a while to fill the page ,but first up will be Virtua Fighter One  on Saturn and PC .

Well here we go Originally released into the Arcades in 1993 Virtua Fighter  took the beat'em up genre and shook it up as it featured full 3d character models and fighting arenas, and on Sega's new arcade board looked magnificent .

While we were at home still playing the likes of Mortal Kombat and other 2d martial art games ,came along this game which featured characters with real martial art styles and fighting moves brilliantly captured for us all to enjoy .But could you believe that with the event of Sega''s Saturn console that we would be able to play this masterpiece  at home .

I remember going to the Yohan Plaza in Colindale to play the arcade version and getting whooped by some Japanese guy that was very serious about it all .So in 1994 'well in japan and Asia at least Virtua fighter one was released on Saturn,so as the people in Asia got to play this we in the west had to wait a whole year to get our hands on it that is if we could not afford to buy a import Saturn that is .

1995 the Saturn is released into the west Europe gets it in July ,but at a price of £400.00 a lot of money when playstation was only £300.00 'still a lot of money . But as a big fight fan and game fan  i frequented my local game store were i was known ,i got play this on Saturn but only at lunch time as i would not spend £400.00 on a games machine at that time .

Now i remember how bright the graphics were and the response of the players ,my fav 'character being Jacky because of all his long kicking moves like they came from martial art flick and Lau that Old School Devil.Featuring 8 characters plus Dural the boss making 9 in total ,the play list was sparse compared to the latest Mortal Kombat at that time but that did not matter was that the Saturn arrived late in Europe playstation had Tekken by now and looked better in some ways and in the east AM2 the guys behind Virtua Fighter had just released Virtua Fighter 2 into the Arcades and it looked awesome ,but then you had to remember Virtua Fighter one had over 700+ moves for all the Characters and was quite mammoth in comparison to most fighters at that time and with no fire balls or flying it was pure Martial arts all the way and you must commend AM2 FOR THIS .

But all is not lost as sega new it was a long way of releasing Virtua 2 on Saturn they compromised and 3 months after the release of  no'1 on Saturn in Europe they released Virtua Fighter Remix .

So as a stop gap and because the better looking Tekken had been released on Playstation ,SEGA released Virtua Fighter Remix ,which in effect took the rendered more rounded characters from VF2 and put them in to the VF1 game and with a bit of tighting of the engine gave Tekken an adversary again.

The thing about this game was that in Europe it came with an extra disc 'the portrait disc which was a small bonus as even though more indeph 'you had to buy these for each character in the east.

And with the nice Japanese style box packaged in a cardboard outer it was a nice thing to own along with it being available only for a short period. This all happened before Christmas 1995 less then six months after the originals launch.

1996 and Sega releases the sequel everyone was waiting for having played it in the arcades  i was on the edge of my seat playing this for the first time as SEGA had recreated from a multi thousand pound arcade machine  a game you could play at home that looked and played just like it's arcade counter part for a mere £49.99 .

Not saying that it was arcade perfect but it looked and felt like the arcade in that the characters were identical in style and the game play was spot on .With new rendered backgrounds and more polygons per fighter model along with some lighting effects and a rip roaring score Sega were ruling the Beat'em up market once again as Namco's Tekken looked dated compared to this .

 So what else was new well 'well more characters were added namely Lion & Shun-Di plus the game ran at twice the speed of the original and along with over 2000 moves at hand you could be assured of some great battles ahead whether playing the computer in arcade or team battle mode or playing a friend in vs mode .

This game just gave hours of play and still keeping to the rule of Martial arts as each and every move was a real move from an art .

It's just one of those games you can still stick on today and it holds up against it's current version in the game play stakes without fail.It was some time before Sega had to worry about it's crown being taken as the best beat'em up available,even though Tekken 2 did get released some time after in my opinion it was not better then VF2 even though it had more characters and modes.I would say VF2 remained supreme till   Tekken 3    was released .

So all in all one of the best Beat'em ups ever to grace our screens and a game that should go down in the hall of fame for video games if there is one.                                                  

Next came the like's of Virtua Fighter Kids and Fighters Megamix on Saturn ,these will be looked at next time i update this page .

 From the Arcade version of VF2

 From the Saturn Version