Virtua Fighter

Description

Virtua Fighter was one of the earliest Saturn titles, being one of the Japanese launch titles. It is a port the pioneering 3D fighter title. The Saturn version adapts the arcade original’s polygonal characters and arenas to home hardware, reducing detail but preserving the core fighting system. The game features a number of martial artists, each defined by distinct move sets and styles. The game mechanics focus on timing, spacing, and the use of guard, punch, and kick inputs combined with directional movement. Matches unfold within square rings where victory is achieved either by depleting an opponent’s health or by knocking them out of bounds.

As the first ever 3D fighting game, it can retrospectively feel slow and dated. At the time the Saturn release brought the groundbreaking arcade experience into households, with slightly diminished graphical fidelity compared to Sega’s Model 1 board. The game’s integrity however remained intact. There was a genuine novelty of fully polygonal fighters and the realism of martial arts styles. The main drawback was the Saturn port’s animation was less fluid than the arcade original. A later 32X adaptation was quite inferior although both translated the arcade depth into a home system.

For its era both the arcade and Saturn versions of Virtua Fighter were amazing and a landmark in fighting game history. The game received both sequels and side games. The sequel, Virtua Fighter 2 on the Saturn, was truly amazing when compared, seeing how far the Saturn could be pushed. There were also several other Virtua Fighter titles on the Saturn, including VF Kids, VF Remix, and it also directly inspired titles such as Dead or Alive and Fighting Vipers. Virtua Fighter should be seen like groundbreaking titles such as Doom, where a genre was established, and the title established a clear before and after mark on the industry.