Virtua Fighter Week

SEGA Retrospective: Virtua Fighter’s Spin-Offs and Crossovers

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When we kicked off Virtua Fighter week, we took a look back at the main titles from the series. Despite being only five games long, thanks to the many revisions, updates, and upgrades as well as arcade to home console ports, what was five games felt more like ten. While Virtua Fighter didn’t dip into bloody fatalities or energy blasts, there did exist the metallic cyborg final boss Dural. Despite this, Virtua Fighter could be described as a fighter that tends to keep things in the realm of the real world. So where did SEGA-AM2 unleash their pent-up wackiness? In the spin-offs of course!

From 1996 through to today, Virtua Fighter has done everything from turning their adult roster into children, to crossing over with other SEGA fighters and even sharing the ring with a rival franchise! Join us as we look back on the many spin-offs, cameos, and crossovers that the franchise has produced over the years.

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Classic SEGA Ads: Tiger Electronics puts the “L” in Virtua Fighter

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If you thought Virtua Fighter in arcades and on the SEGA Saturn was as real as it could get, Tiger Electronics asks you to think again! Released in 1995, Tiger’s R-Zone (not to be confused with Pizza Hut’s P’Zone) was a portable headset and attached controller that promised a virtual reality experience, but ended up just delivering a headache. Unlike other Tiger Electronic LCD games, R-Zone took cartridges.

Each cartridge contained a transparent LCD display, projecting the game onto a mirrored surface placed just inches from the players eye. As was the norm for VR at the time, red was the color of choice. Leeching off of popular franchises to survive, the R-Zone featured Men in Black, Jurassic Park, Batman, Star Wars, and SEGA’s own Virtua Fighter. Don’t let the ad above deceive you, despite being right in your face, R-Zone’s Virtua Fighter was as far from virtual Virtua Fighter as one could get. Wait… did that kid say “brain chop”?!?

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The SEGA Five: Virtua Fighter Facts

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Welcome to another unexciting episode of The Weekly Five where we create top five list on all things SEGA. I’m your host George and this week we will be talking about Virtua Fighter facts. This is a weird thing to do considering anything can be a fact, so I’ll try to keep it interesting. Who knows, maybe you’ll learn something new.

This will also be my last AM2 related Weekly Five for the rest of the year, so I hope you guys enjoy it! Let’s dive right in.

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SEGA in the Media: No Continue Kid shows SEGA lots of virtua love

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The arcades were a big part of Japan’s youth group up in the 80’s and 90’s, so its no surprise that a Japanese drama show based around these time periods would be created. No Continue Kid: Our Game History (ノーコン・キッド　～ぼくらのゲーム史～) is a TV show revolving around Reiji Watanabe, who in 1983 isn’t very interested in arcade games. The only reason he has to put up with them is because his father owns a game center. Reiji sees a girl he likes come in daily named Fumiyoshi Takano, she usually plays Xevious and leaves. Reiji decides to give this Xevious game a try to impress her and gets the best local player, Akinobu Kido (who goes by ‘Kid’, his high score handle) to teach him.

The show focuses on the friendships of these characters along with a new ‘Game Center’ trends throughout the decades (this show spans from 1983 to 2013 in 12 episodes) and even some console gaming love. Today we will be looking at some of the SEGA centric episodes including one for Columns, Fantasy Zone and two whole episodes based around the Virtua Fighter 2 fighting phenomenon. Let’s take a dramatized trip to the arcade scene in Japan from the 80’s through the 90’s, SEGA style!

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Play Virtua Fighter 2 with SEGAbits on XBLA this Friday!

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To celebrate the last week of SEGA AM2 month with Virtua Fighter, the SEGAbits crew are planning on having a couple game sessions over on Xbox Live Arcade by playing Virtua Fighter 2 with our visitors and forum members. The game session will begin on Jan 30th, Friday at 12pm EST (9 AM PST).

To join us in a couple of matches, you could either follow us on Twitter and send us a direct message with your XBL gamertag or add “KoriSX15” with a message typed “VF2” to the gamertag. So be sure to put your skills to the test and show us what you got this Friday! Juunen hayainda yo!

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SEGA Tunes: Get moving with Virtua Fighter’s pumping soundtrack

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Virtua Fighter was a ground breaking game for its time and was going up against some of the biggest fighting games made in that era. SEGA needed the whole game to be excellent and in my opinion they got a great complementary soundtrack to go with the revolutionary gameplay.

The first theme we are looking at is Akira’s Theme, this one is more up beat than they would later use. This one doesn’t seem like a theme for a character usually shown meditating and honing his martial arts skills. This is just a good action track, that gets the blood flowing. Its what I would love to hear when I’m in a middle of a fight and any move I make can win or lose the match. Great track, but as Akira’s theme, probably not. Seems the developers agreed as they would give him a more epic tune in Virtua Fighter 2.

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SEGA Retrospective: Kicking off Virtua Fighter Week

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As SEGA-AM2 Month enters the final week, we thought it would be fitting to shine the spotlight on the developer’s longest running and most influential series – Virtua Fighter. One of SEGA-AM2’s defining traits is their ability to create “pure” gaming experiences. Looking at their catalog, they seem to have a penchant for taking a simple concept – be it fighting, racing, flying, or shooting – and translating it to a near-perfect 3D arcade experience. I hesitate to call SEGA-AM2’s games simulations, as gameplay is simple enough for any player and often AM2 titles have a bit of an elastic reality. Virtua Fighter didn’t have any gimmicks – there were no fatalities, weapons, adjustable bouncing breasts, or cutscenes. Players simply chose their fighter, each with their own defining style and moves, and fought. This why the term “pure” feels like the best way to describe their many games, and why the Virtua Fighter series is the purest fighting game franchise to ever exist.

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