Virtua Fighter 2

Virtua Fighter is an amazing fighting game providing much enjoyment. If you thought the first version was great, wait until you see Virtua Fighter 2 by Sega. It has everything that the first version has to offer and a whole lot more!

All you have to do is place the Virtua Fighter 2 CD into your Saturn and you will see what I mean. Without touching any of the buttons on the control pad the game will load into a demo mode where you will witness the transformation of the characters from color shaded polygons in Virtua Fighter to rounded off textured polygons in Virtua Fighter 2. The characters morph from their old selves to their new forms resembling real people as they fight a polygon character without any colors or textures. The graphical improvement is very impressive and it is much harder to identify the polygons.

All nine characters of the first version are present in the second along with two new characters. They are Shun-di, Chinese herbal doctor of eighty-four years old, and Lion Rafale, a French high school student who is sixteen years old. This brings the total number of characters from nine to eleven including Dural. Each character has many new moves making the game more lifelike. One of these moves involves picking up your opponent by their legs, swinging them around, and then letting them fly.

The graphics in the game are quite outstanding. Each ring has a different texture and is sometimes made of stone, bricks, wood, rocks and others. The characters are in 3D, but the background is still in 2D. There are two backgrounds though, giving the impression that it is in 3D with the first background being much closer than the second. Woods, mountains, hills, old stone buildings, lakes and Asian architecture are just some of the backgrounds you will have while fighting. Skies will be either clear, partly cloudy, overcast, stormy, or orange from the sunset. Character movement is smooth and very fast as they punch, kick, jump and scuffle in battle. You will even see them making bubbles when fighting under water against Dural.

Music and sounds in the game resemble those heard in the arcade version. An extra feature found in the Saturn version is a remix of the music tracks that makes the already great audio a little better. Characters have several extended victory and defeat voice tracks that are clear and easy to understand. Some phrases you will hear are, "Imagine losing to this bozo," "Even good guys blow it," "Pretty good match wasn't it," and "I want to fight more" just before the "continue game" counter runs out.

Three new selections are found in the main menu that are Expert Mode, Team Battle Mode, and Watch Mode. Expert Mode takes you to battle against all 10 characters in the game just like in the Arcade Mode, except this time your opponents are experts. Team Battle Mode lets you select five characters to create a team and fight against another team whether it is the computer, another player or even watch the computer fight itself. You can choose whether you want your health replenished or the damage retained. The object will be to defeat all five opponents of the other team before the other team defeats your five. Watch Mode is exactly what it sounds like, you watch the computer play against itself. It could have been called Demo Mode too. Other menu options from the previous version are present such as Arcade Mode, VS Mode, Ranking Mode, and Option. At the end of a Ranking mode, if you get to enter your initials, you'll literally be punching them in.

In the Option menu you can set up the matches the way you want to play them. New features are: no damage for life gauge, stage select, stage size, replay time, background music volume, slow mode, and learning mode which can be turned on or off. With the learning mode on, the computer will quickly learn your usual moves creating a much harder opponent to beat. Simple punches and kicks won't work for too long with this mode on and will force you to learn more special moves. Stage select allows you to select which player you'd like to start your fight with (each player represents a different round), and the stage size can be either 4, 8, 14, or 42 meters. Replay time after the fight can be three or six seconds, the whole set or set to no replay at all. The background music volume can be set between off and five. The slow mode when turned on lets you fight under water. Everything is half the regular speed and requires a little more skill to succeed at this level. One last option is the Backup Data where you will find the Records for VS, Time, Ranking, and the Learning Data. Each can be viewed and cleared if wanted.

Conclusion:

Virtua Fighter 2 is a major improvement over the first version and is well worth it. The new characters cause the game to be longer and are superb additions to the others. If you liked playing with Virtua Fighter, then it just wouldn't make sense if you didn't like the Virtua Fighter 2.