Fighters Megamix

Moby ID: 14634
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Description

Virtua Fighter 2 was full of many brand new gameplay elements implemented into the realistic fighting engine of the first Virtua Fighter. The Virtua Fighter series has been heralded before as the fighting game with most involving gameplay.

In Fighters Megamix, another game has been added, a game called Fighting Vipers. Fighting Vipers has drastically different gameplay than the more popular Virtua Fighter 2. Instead of being sophisticated, Fighting Vipers is simplified to appeal to a wider audience of video gamers and was meant for "casual" gamers.

Mixing a simplistic video game and a sophisticated video game must have been difficult. But Fighters Megamix manages to do so by offering many options. The most important option available is the choice of having Fighters Megamix run under the Fighting Vipers style of gameplay or the Virtua Fighter 2 style of gameplay. Other options are unlockable while playing the game.

One good thing about mixing two games into one is that the game would include more selectable characters. Not only are there the 22 characters from Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers but there are also 10 other hidden characters that can be unlocked by playing well in the Saturn version, including two from the arcade-only Sonic the Fighters. There are only 4 characters from Virtua Fighter 2 and 4 from Fighting Vipers in the Game.Com version.

This game was one of the very last games to appear on the Sega Saturn in the United States and was directed by Yu Suzuki.

Spellings

  • ファイターズメガミックス - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Credits (SEGA Saturn version)

29 People (26 developers, 3 thanks) · View all

Director
Game Coordinator
Chief Programmers
Programmers
Chief Graphic Designer
Graphic Designers
Motion Designer
Character Designers
Sound Designer
Publicity by
Jacket Designer
Special Thanks
  • Virtua Fighter 3 Team
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 17 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 22 ratings with 1 reviews)

Two games and an half for the price of one

The Good
Two of the key selling points to the game are simple: a huge cast and unlockables. A lot of them. Some of them will just take a few minutes of play, for others you'll need a lot of dedication. Starting with the obvious, the fighters. From the initial pool of 22 fighters, which is the whole cast of VF2 and Fighting Vipers, including bosses, 10 more are added by completing the 1Player mode courses. These include one of the most bizarre characters ever seen in a fighter - the Hornet from Daytona USA, and others from varied Sega games: Janet from Virtua Cop 2, Rent-A-Hero from the same-titled (and sadly, never translated) RPG of the same name, Bean and Bark from Sonic The Fighters and even the resurrection of Siba, a little-known character who was replaced by Akira at the finishing stages of development of Virtua Fighter. While unlocking the whole cast shouldn't take more than a few hours of play, hidden options are an whole different deal, and for them you must complete courses, finish training, and well, generally play a lot.

Which isn't a problem at all. Either playing on VF or FV fighting modes (yes, you can choose both), the game is a superb fighter in all aspects. All characters have more than 60/70 moves (VF characters also got a "sampler kit" from VF3) to be learned in the training mode, and the additional "escape" move really adds what was missing to 3D fighters - a real "third" dimension. If the 1-on-1 and the 1P courses get tiresome, there are two more game modes: Survival and team battle. Survival can be resumed to beating as many opponents as possible in 3, 7 or 15 minutes and team battle is a battle between two teams of eight fighters, where the goal is to eliminate one by one the opponents until the eight falls down.

Gameplay works like a charm, with the three down buttons used to block, punch and kick, the uppers for combinations (P+D, K+D, P+K+D) and the shoulder buttons to escape. Of course, this can be selected to fit players' tastes, but the default form is perhaps the best. The movements should be no surprise for Sega players, with combos done by quickly repeating action buttons (PPPK or Back Front PK, for instance), and are as fluid as ever. With the exception of the most esoteric combos (such as the Super Washington Treaty), all of them are perfectly accessible to everyone, from newbies to veterans. Improving from VF2, the camera now sways smoothly around the rink when required instead of changing abruptly.

Finally, it takes a measly 24 memory blocks compared to the 180 in VF2. Of course it lacks the extended book keeping, but let's put it this way: you won't need the memory cartridge to play Fighters Megamix without remorse for the other games deleted from the internal memory.

The Bad
Graphics are a mixed bag. While the lighting engine adds more volume to the fighters, it does that at the expense of polygons being more visible than in VF2. In the closed arenas some of the sections partially outside the viewing range will occasionally "clip out", leading to a bit distracting environment, bit nothing serious. Finally, because of the size and format disparity between characters (from the giant Kumachan to "Chibi" Akira and Sarah), some of the animations don't work as well as they should.

Perhaps where the game took a stronger hit were voices. They all seem a bit muffled, and a lot of times imperceptible, which is strange, as the clonks, thuds and crashes are all in crystal-clear quality.

There's also some issues to the balance between Vipers and Virtuas. While with some characters (mostly from VF) the player must work to get a victory, with others like Mahler/B.M. from FV it's just a matter of push the opponent into the walls and punch until he/she drops out cold. As FV is mostly a game for beginners, combos are quick and too easy to pull when compared to the slower, one-hitting characters from VF. And to add to injury, most of their hardest hitting moves have their priority higher.

The Bottom Line
This is the must-have fighting game for the Saturn. Intended as an introduction to the never-released VF3, Fighters Megamix can well be considered a worthy replacement. Even when compared to more modern titles, FM still shines thanks to the varied selection of fighters and smooth gameplay, and perhaps if it had been released a few months before, the luck of the Saturn could have been better.

Personally, the game that would make me think (for real) on a new console would be Fighters Megamix 2, with added characters from Last Bronx (the third big fighter released by Sega for the system) and all those Dreamcast titles (Shenmue, Crazy Taxi, JSR, etc) and other classics (Why did they missed Axel Stone?), all packed in current-gen graphics. A man can dream, can't he ?

SEGA Saturn · by Luis Silva (13444) · 2006

Trivia

Fighters

While it was the first vs. fighter developed by Sega exclusively for the home console market, only five characters did not originate from arcade games: Rent-A-Hero (from the same titled Mega Drive RPG), Deku (original FM character), URA Bahn (faster, stronger, version of Bahn) and Mr. Meat/Yashinoki (a piece of meat and the AM#2 palm tree, alternate versions of Kumachan/Pandachan and not really new characters). Siba, on the other hand, was cut from early VF prototypes and replaced by Akira.

Music

The background music playing in the name entry menu is no other than Hiroshi Kawaguchi's Last Wave from the classic Sega title Outrun.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Saturn Game of the Year Runner Up (Readers' Choice)

Analytics

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by SegaMon.

Additional contributors: Alaka, Luis Silva, ケヴィン, Patrick Bregger.

Game added September 3, 2004. Last modified February 15, 2024.