Virtua Fighter 2

[cowboyscowboys]

I just learned about this port early this year when I found it on ebay for 15,-€(PAL Version). Sega didn´t bother making it public the game even existed in Germany; I never saw a single review or even an anouncement of it, nor did I notice the stores in town selling it (and Frankfurt is not a backwater village). They were already working to kill the Saturn at that time and left the Genesis to die on it´s own...
So I bought it.
I played it.
I was confused.
What the heck did Sega use those 32 MBit for?
Only 8 Fighters, no intros or outros, few sound tracks, sound quality is not worth mentioning, character sprites are pretty small, backgrounds lack details, few options and only the very basic game modes.
Don´t get me wrong, Sega managed to get that VF feeling over to the Genny, but even Street Fighter 2 SCE from 1993 had lots more to offer visually and in the way of replay-value!
I know, they just converted the graphics down to Genny-Bitmaps, but without camera-zooms and stuff the stages looked just awfully boring. The characters do look pretty much the same as in the Saturn game, but since this is bitmap-stuff they should have been newly drawn to look good on the Genesis, not just authentic like barely textured polygons.
With those 32 MBits I would have expected that Sega gives their most successfull machine one last bomb of a game, maybe with pre-rendered graphics like Big N´s Killer Instinct, Yuzo Koshiro sounds, and so on...
Kind of a goodbye-gift to the fans!
But they ended up producing not a bad adaption, but a medicore one.
We all know what the hardware was capable of, if not pre-rendered graphics it could handle super-smooth (and larger) bitmap-sprites, a wide variety of modes and all 10 fighters.
I guess that half of those 32 MBit memory is empty, only built in cuz it sounds so cool.
VF 2 has earned it´s place in my collection, but only because it is so bizarre and it could have been so much more...

Is VF 2 for the Genesis 32-Megs? I thought it was only 24-Meg. Which would make sense considering all of your gripes. If it is 32-Meg it was a damn crappy use of them.

[Bones Justice]

I remember that 32X with VF1 was clearancing for around $30 at about the same time that Genesis VF2 was still selling for $60. There's really no comparison, either, the 32X version is far superior.

[Ecco]

No one mentioned the boss fight -- I just played thru the game for the 1st time, and the boss fight was like half the speed of the rest of the game!!! Does this happen every time, to everyone???

If so, this is very stupid and unforgivable, if it's really such lame programming that the boss sprite / sprites make the whole game run at half speed. The metal guy doesn't even look that great.

There are many fighters with bigger characters that don't slow down at all, so they could have programmed it in a diff. way that had no slowdown...

[Bones Justice]

I think they should have done something like Vectorman for this game. Then the characters could have had really smooth animation like the Saturn game. They might have even been able to give it some pseudo-3D effects of scaling and/or rotation, too.

[sheath]

Virtua Fighter 2's Rural match is under water, it is slower by design. Did they not add the water wave effect in the Genesis version?

[Aarzak]

Recently read that the Genesis port of VF2 was handled by a Japanese developer named "Gaibrain", which previously handled the Genesis ports of Fatal Fury 1 & 2. The latter two were good ports for the console (although they screwed up FF2's engine big time), but not even 32 MEGA POWER (the biggest Japanese-developed MD game) could help them make a good down-port of VF2. It was also released in March 1997....dang, I thought the Genny's swan song was in the last months of 1996! That would make it, along with "Sonic Classics" the last first-party Genesis releases before "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" later that year.

[chessage]

Recently read that the Genesis port of VF2 was handled by a Japanese developer named "Gaibrain"...

... And 'Winds' and 'Cube'...

It was also released in March 1997....dang, I thought the Genny's swan song was in the last months of 1996!

No, according to a Business Wire article from January 13, 1997 it had "... shipped late last year". It also had a spotlight on Sega.com in December of 1996.

That would make it, along with "Sonic Classics" the last first-party Genesis releases before "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" later that year.

You're forgetting about 'World Series Baseball 98' and possibly 'NFL 98'.

--

Also, read this.

[Aarzak]

... And 'Winds' and 'Cube'...



No, according to a Business Wire article from January 13, 1997 it had "... shipped late last year". It also had a spotlight on Sega.com in December of 1996.



You're forgetting about 'World Series Baseball 98' and possibly 'NFL 98'.

--

Also, read this.

I stand corrected. Nice research on that other thread! Gave me another perspective on Sega's post-1996 treatment of the Genesis.