Virtua Fighter 2

Review

by Arjan van Rossen

Virtua Fighter 2 is the sequel to a groundbreaking game. At the time of the original's release nearly every fighter was a Street Fighter clone. That mold was broken by Virtua Fighter with its original look and pure fighting, nothing supernatural like fireballs was included.

Gameplay is smooth and controls are accurate. Characters can each perform around 10-15 of the same basic moves and a huge number of their own moves (about 25 a piece). Pulling off moves is not too difficult with the gamepad but much easier to perform with a joystick. Virtua Fighter 2 includes both Arcade versions, 2.0 and 2.1. They look the same as all of the differences take place during the action.

To make the battles against the computer more challenging Sega has created a computer learning system. The computer will take note if you use the same move over and over in order to force you to learn other moves. However, if you don't want the highest challenge this game can provide then you can turn the computer learning feature off. Although even with this setting on the game is not very difficult. Despite being able to know if you are repeating the same move, if that move is hard to block then you will still be able to land it.

Graphically is where this games sets itself apart from most other fighters. Characters are polygon based and contain a lot of details. They are all very sharp and move quite realistically. Backgrounds are bright and look great but some of them do not contain a lot of items.

Virtua Fighter 2 is one of the best fighters available for the Saturn. However, if you like fighting games that include supernatural moves and lots of blood then this game is not for you. You won't find any fireballs or fatalities here. This is a pure fighting game as each character has their own style of fighting and it certainly shows, especially with the Drunken master Shun-di. The game's only flaws are the endings. Endings consist of showing pictures of the winning character and then rolling the credits, nothing about the character accomplishing their goals that are mentioned in the storyline.