Virtua Fighter is the originator of the 3D fighting game genre, and in today’s discussion, I’ll be looking at the groundbreaking home console version that put the arcade juggernaut onto a cartridge for the first and might I add, the only time. This is the Sega Mega Drive 32X version of Virtua Fighter!
As the first fully 3D fighting game, Virtua Fighter was a big hit in Japan, and Sega hung the launch of the Sega Saturn on the power of the game. Sega obviously saw the game as a massively important weapon in its arsenal as they also brought the game to the 32X a few months after it released on Saturn.
It’s a shame that Sega didn’t think to put Virtua Fighter on the 32X at launch as it’s one of the best games to show off what the 32X was capable of, and perhaps the best example of why the 32X was a next gen upgrade to the Mega Drive and capable of things not possible on the Super Nintendo. Heck, Virtua Fighter on 32X even makes games on the next gen Atari Jaguar seem outdated.
Virtua Fighter for the Sega Mega Drive 32X features all the fighters and moves from the arcade version, and even goes one step further than the Sega Saturn version by including the all new Tournament mode. This is a mode where you set brackets and then only need to win quarter, semi and finale rounds to win. To be honest, it’s a way to feel you’ve won after three fights and offers less than the regular arcade or Ranking modes.
My go to character to play as is usually Akira, but I surprised to read in the instruction manual that apparently, he is ‘an especially difficult character to use well’ and states that this is because most of his high powered moves require button combos. I mean, by the time Virtua Fighter released on the 32X both Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat in particular were world dominating and relied heavily on button combos, so thought this was odd to include in the manual and would only serve to put players off using what is essentially the game’s poster boy as their fighter. Unless it was some weird psychology trick where players would then just feel they’re really skilled if they do use him.
When you then read his special moves, the most complicated they get are right, right, C, C for the Renkan Tai kick and left, diagonal down right, B and C together. Hardly like pulling off a fatality, babality or friendship in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
There’s more fun to be had in the manual of Virtua Fighter as it’s the only place you’ll get any story or learn about the characters. I’ll be honest, I’d never given much thought to the story of Virtua Fighter, and was surprised in the Game Gear Virtua Fighter Animation/Virtua Fighter Mini, that there were story cut scenes. Apparently Akiri is a a Kung Fu instructor as his profession and his hobby is Kung Fu…that’s excellent world building there. really helps round out the character.
Pai Chan is an action film star it would seem and her hobby is dancing. She is the daughter of Lau who is a cook and likes Chinese poetry. I’ll be honest, Akira having a hobby of Kung Fu may actually be the best one as Canadian professional wrestler Wolf is into Karaoke, Australian fisherman Jeffry…and yes he’s a fisherman is into reggae music, and Kage who is a ninja…is into Majong. Sarah is a student, though we’re unsure of what she is a student, but her hobby is skydiving, and finally they decided on something to make one of the fighters seem cool here. This continues with her brother Jacky who is an Indy Car Racer…although his hobby being training is mysterious. I assume he’s training a dalmatian to do tricks, or training to become a surgeon, as no further details are given.
Well, all these fighters are gathers to take part in the World Fighting Tournament, where the strongest fighters have gathered to determine who stands supreme in the art of hand to hand combat. Any and all techniques are allows…wait a minute. This sounds suspiciously like Ultimate Fighting Championship. And both Virtua Fighter and UFC started in 1993…and when UFC was first pitched, it was pitched as a real-life fighting video game tournament. Hmmm…now by this stage both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were probably the bigger influences, but with fire balls and blades used in those games, it was Virtua Fighter that was the first to be purely based on hand to hand combat.
I can believe Akira is a worthy bad ass, who the manual puts over as the last remaining master of Hakkyoku Ken. This was the eight point fist kung fu technique it says was developed by the Japanese Army during World War 2 to create the ultimate fighting force…wait the manual even calls it ultimate fighting…Damn, Sega need to sue Dana White and TKO.
As for the other characters though, I’m not sure they’ve convinced me that brother and sister Jacky and Sarah, and daddy and daughter Pai and cook Lau are coincidentally also in the fighting elite. And although the idea of kayfabe wasn’t completely dead in professional wrestling by this stage, the idea that a pro wrestler would be the ultimate fighter is a stretch. It just depends on is Wolf is closer to be a Brock Lesnar rather than a CM Punk.
As for the 32X version vs the Saturn or arcade games, I’d say that on 32X the game plays pretty much as well as the others. The graphics are perhaps ever so slightly worse than on Saturn, but the difference isn’t so noticeable that most people would be able to know instantly by looking at it that it wasn’t on Saturn.
It shouldn’t take most people too much effort to get through the game as their chosen fighter, and there is replay value in tackling the game as the various characters to learn their moves and techniques as they feel different from one another. It’s a shame there are no story cut scenes, as this would give you something more to incline you to play through as each character. Even when you go against final boss Dural, you don’t see anything different if you win or lose that fight because as soon as that fight is over you go straight to the credits.
When you do face Dural, who is everyone’s favourite T-1000 chick, it’s a first to three wins fight and you cannot continue if you lose. This is something you don’t discover until you fight her and lose and then the end credits roll. It’s just a shame that there isn’t just a little extra reward for winning.
The ranking mode is basically a one credit run, and so this is the true way to test your metal to get the higher rank. When I play Virtua Fighter, I will usually only do arcade mode, as I just know I’ll lose that pesky mirror match against the same fighter as you, and have to start again.
It’s unfortunate for the legacy of the 32X version of Virtua Fighter that Sega were going through their least thought out and communication lacking time period. With the arcade version of Virtua Fighter having released in 1993, and the Saturn game being a launch title in 1994 in Japan and mid 1995 in the rest of the world, you may understand that the late 1995 release of the 32X version was perhaps a little late to the party. But the situation is actually much worse than that.
The 32X version of Virtua Fighter not only released a few months after the Saturn port, but it also released a few months after the upgraded Virtua Fighter Remix hit arcade and Saturn, so whilst the 32X version may hold its own against the Saturn Virtua Fighter, compared to Virtua Fighter Remix, the 32X game looks quite dated.
Add to this that Virtua Fighter 2 had already hit arcades, and this seemed yesterday’s news by the time it came out. It’s a shame, as if Sega had been smart and not competed with themselves by releasing both a new 32-bit console in the Saturn as well as a 32-bit add on in the 32X, but then decided to demonstrate no strategy between the two products, this could have launched at the same time on both new platforms.
As one of the later 32X releases, this perhaps represents the upper limit of what the 32X was capable of, in that it’s not far off the Saturn release, but in my opinion, is in ways a more limited version. If Sega could have skipped over this port of regular Virtua Fighter 1, and instead put Virtua Fighter Remix on here, people would perhaps have found new faith in the 32X as people would have looked at it and not only seen that the 32X could hold its own against the Saturn Virtua Fighter Remix, but it would have looked better than the original version that had launched on the Saturn initially. It may have even given players hope that Virtua Fighter 2 was also possible on the 32X.
This of course is something that we didn’t find out and may never know. The 32X fizzled out so quickly, that it’s probably fair to say that developers were not yet at the point where they had seen everything that the 32X was capable of. The games Metal Head and Dark Side on 32X did show that it could have textured polygons, and that’s all Virtua Fighter Remix was above the original Saturn and 32X games.
If you have a 32X, I think this is one of the essential games to own along side Star Wars and Knuckles Chaotix as the must have reasons to even own Sega’s mushroom cloud add on device.
On the site, I’ve previously covered both Virtua Fighter Mini which is the Sega Game Gear game, which is also known as Virtua Fighter Animation in Japan, and I recently also covered the Sega Mega Drive Virtua Fighter 2. It’s such a shame that whilst Mega Drive and even 32X owners would be able to get Virtua Fighter 2 to plug into their 32X, it would only be the Genesis level demake. And that’s not to say that the 16-bit version fo Virtua Fighter 2 is bad, as I said in my video, I actually quite like it, but there must have been something of a bitter taste in the mouths of 32X owners to see that the standard Mega Drive had Virtua Fighter 2, but after the fine job of porting the first game, the 32X would not be blessed with its sequel.
I’ve been covering all of the weird versions of Street Fighter games here on xstreamed.tv and the Geek Battle Gaming YouTube channel, so if you’re into fighting games, and haven’t seen those yet, do check them out. This is now my third Virtua Fighter game, and once again, I’ve started my journey with the lesser loved games in the franchise, but there are still plenty more Virtua Fighter games to plough through in future discussions.
What would you rate the game?
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