Virtua Fighter 2

The Good
Graphically, the game ranks among the best in the platform. Nicely detailed backgrounds, high resolution, nicely designed characters, flicker-free graphics, and all this running at an impressive frame-rate, showing what the Saturn can do, as long as the developers know the internals. Which many didn't, sadly. If graphics are impressive (even lacking a lighting engine), gameplay is the true king in the game. All moves can be pulled with a bunch of punk/kick presses and d-pad nudges, and the result is awesome to look at. The animation of the moves is perfect, and if you are a wrestling fan, after playing with Wolf for a while you start wondering "why haven't Sega done a wrestling game?". It's a joy to pull some of the combos, like Sarah's double punch followed by her trademark somersault or one of many of Akira's moves, and personally, as long as I'm having fun throwing away the moves, the game is good. Simple as that.

The Bad
The game lacks a lot of unlockables that would be featured on other Sega fighters, such as the CG renders/drawings and extra fighters of Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix or the FMV clips of Last Bronx. Yet, it requires 180 memory blocks for bookeeping, when most other fighters are happy with taking 20 - that's like having a 2006 PC game (considering an average HD is 200 GB) requiring a 60 GB installation. The unlockables available are hardly notable - Sega's trademark "Option+" menu with stage select, rink size and fight with underwater physics aren't in par with games that held me until I could unlock everything, such as Super Puzzle Fighter 2 or Fighters Megamix. And with only 10 fighters to choose from, VF2 is more a matter of perfecting your style than to spend hours trying to find out what winning "like this" would do.

Finally, sounds (particularly voices) sound a little muffled, and incredibly, at a quality barely better than the Mega Drive version.

The Bottom Line
VF2 is a gem - the killer app of the Saturn, and one of the best 3D fighters of the 32-bit generation. However, until I find a memory card, it will be regularly played only when I'm terminally bored and don't mind deleting a few savegames from other games - while I do like bookeeping options, VF2 goes too far. For me, hours played, a top 20 in the arcade mode and a move checklist is enough. Of course, hardcore fans really don't mind that much, but would it harm to allow the player to select the level of bookeeping ?

In the end, VF2 is a title every Saturn owner should have. Had Sega followed it with another mainstream titles of the same quality, and the platform might have succeeded.

The Good
Virtua Fighter has good graphics and a nice "arcade" feel to it. The vocals are good and the gameplay is decent.

The Bad
The characters move too slow and are sometimes difficult to control. Special attacks are at a minimum, which is disappointing news to many gamers.

The Bottom Line
A good game, but try Last Bronx if you really enjoyed this game in the arcade.

The Good
All 1200+ moves from the arcade are there, and gameplay is still deeper than any other PC contender. The 3-button controls make learning the moves easy, but the demanding combo system makes every 5-hitter a real payoff. Every single character has won a tournament somewhere, meaning game balance is amazingly good. Characters look very nice and are based on real martial arts, so there are no super lightning moves or fatalities, but the realistic animations more than make up for this. The game will run at arcade-perfect 60fps. New features to the PC version include team battle, saving replays, included matches between 3 of Japan's best players, and plenty of CG character renders.

The Bad
The system requirements are very steep (your average Pentium 2 will have difficulty running on medium detail) and the "endings" for each character are just CG art. The stages aren't as impressive as the arcade version. The music and sound is still cheesy. The characters move like they would in real life: most moves are slow to recover and will miss completely in some situations, so it's very very difficult to pull off impressive combos.

The Bottom Line
If you liked VF2 in the arcades, this game is a no-brainer. If you like games like Tekken or Soul Calibur and want to try something new, be prepared to spend several weeks learning to beat the excellent AI, much less human competition. If you're new to 3D fighters, this is way too hard; try something else instead.