As part of a mid to long term future that has so far taken
me up to two and a half years, I’m hoping to move out of my parent’s house
quite soon. The reason it’s taking so long is another story. But the point is
that when I do eventually move out, the Playstation 2 won’t be coming with me.
Why? Because it’s not mine; it belongs to my sister. Some – but not all – of
the games we’ve got for it are mine, but as the console itself is not mine to
take, I won’t be taking it. This being the case, I thought I’d better play
through some of my PS2 games.
Sega Megadrive
Collection
For clarity, this is not the same game as I own on the Xbox
360. Most of the games are the same, but the Xbox 360 version has more games
including the best game in the world, Streets of Rage II, so I was always going
to buy this once I had a 360! I’m not going to waste my time playing through
all the games that appear on both discs though, instead focussing my attention
on the three games the PS2 has that the 360 version does not: Ecco Jr, Sword of
Vermillion and Virtua Fighter 2.
Virtua Fighter 2
I would imagine that anybody who grew up in the 90s would
remember this game. Virtua Fighter was the first time I can remember seeing 3D
graphics in a fighting game, and for the time it looked beautiful. Virtua
Fighter 2 only improved on it, with better graphics, more characters and a
whole lot of pound coins dropped on it in an arcade somewhere in South Wales . That last bit was my contribution.
 |
| See? Rubbish. |
Let’s get this out of the way right now: This is not a good
port. The Sega Megadrive (Genesis to you Americans out there) just did not have
the processing power of the arcade machines. The Sega Saturn version presumably
looked a little better but the Megadrive version did not have the graphical
fidelity, the sound clarity or the fluid controls. The sprites probably would
have looked better on Streets of Rage. The sound and the voice acting in
particular are choppy and horrible. And the game controls are clunky and
unresponsive. For a Megadrive title, this was as good as it was ever going to
get,[1] but
compared to the ‘real’ version, this is not very good at all.
So, has the game got anything going for it at all?
Actually yes… ignoring the awful port for a second, I think
Virtua Fighter left behind an impressive legacy. It was the first arcade game
to use fully-3D graphics;[2]
Sony’s Tekken was not far behind but VF got there first, and set the standard
for what was to come in what at that point was the next generation. It was also
the first game that I am aware of to include a character that could mimic
others. A lot of fighting games have done it since then, but VF’s Dural was the
first character I can think of that could start the round as any character,
lending an air of mystery and a significant challenge to the final boss of the
game.
But what I really liked about Virtua Fighter was that it was
probably the most technical of the fighting games at that point – and for quite
a long time afterwards as well.[3] All
the characters had a certain move-set, but you could either block or counter
most of the moves and you wouldn’t take any damage in doing so. Contrast this
with other popular fighting games of the time; Street Fighter II and whatever
iteration of Mortal Kombat we were up to at that point, which all had ‘stun’
mechanics, where you could do a move or combo that would hold your opponent
still for several seconds. This meant that once your opponent started to build
up some momentum, it was actually quite hard to win. Not so with Virtua
Fighter. As long as you block and counter in the right places it is NEVER too
late to pull the fight back. Of course, the fact that in most cases this was
very, very hard made the challenge of actually doing it right all the more
satisfying when you did.
I chose Jacky for my playthrough, as his style (Jeet Kune
Do) is quick, efficient and gets the job done. Of course, the lack of an
instruction manual meant I had to work out a lot of the moves for myself, and
most of the time I managed to pull off his more damaging moves was a lot more
by luck than judgement. I managed to get through about half of the fighters
quite easily, but Sarah, Jeffrey, Wolf and of course Akira were rock hard and I
needed a few tries to beat them! I managed to get to the end of the game and
fight Dural but not beat her, because it is IMPOSSIBLE. You only get one chance
to do it; if you lose the fight it’s Game Over and you have to start all over
again.
Well, perhaps not impossible… but the fact is I don’t care
enough about the Virtua Fighter canon to do it. There was never much of a story
in the game and this port was no exception. If I hadn’t played the game in the
90s and been watching the characters fighting the demos pretty much since then,
I might have checked this game out and thought “Well, who are these people?
What are they fighting for exactly? Why should I care?” This version of VF2
does little to answer those questions, and since the fights always appear in
exactly the same order, there’s little variety beyond learning all the
character’s move sets. It probably would be more fun in multiplayer, but what
isn’t? So, having got to the end credits with one of the characters, I think
it’s safe for me to say I’ve got everything I’m going to get out of this one,
and put it to bed.
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