Fighters MegaMix - Sarah (Goal I - SECRETS) SSF Emulator
29Here's a quick playthrough of Fighters MegaMix on the Saturn being played on SSF Emulator. This was footage I'd originally obtained for my "25 years of Daytona USA" video. I wanted to use some footage of the Hornet's (from Daytona USA) guest appearance in Fighters MegaMix in the video. At first I'd just planned on using a little bit of footage from YouTube, but then I decided I'd rather have some footage of me actually playing the game, even though it meant I'd have to go through all the motions of actually unlocking The Hornet in the first place...
Although I still own a Saturn, I sold my copy of this game many, many years ago, so I downloaded a copy to burn to CD-R and play on SSF Saturn Emulator. The Hornet is the very last unlockable character in the game, so that same Sunday afternoon, I sat down and unlocked every. Single. Character. in the game in one sitting. TBH, whilst it was a bit time consuming it wasn't too difficult (I'd set the game to easy as I wasn't looking for a challenge, just wanted to get to the Hornet as quick as I could). I decided to video capture some of the gameplay as I was doing so, so here's me playing as Sarah Bryant en route to the end of Goal I to unlock the Hornet as a playable character. Unfortunately, SSF didn't want to play any of the background music and most of the sounds effects are missing, apart from the announcers voice and a few random SFX like, weirdly, the Hornet's engine sounds, so I've added the corresponding Characters and stage music back in afterwards. Nothing I can do about the SFX though...
Despite my love of all things Sega game related, I was never a massive Virtua Fighter fan back in the day (although I did of course own the original, as it came with The Saturn, and the second game - particularly as Virtua Fighter 2 was a bit of a 'showcase' Saturn game, that showed how good The Saturn could do 3D when it was done right). Fighting Vipers was something I'd never played at all. I picked up Fighters Megamix really near the end of the Saturn's life when I was after a new game, as it was secondhand and going cheap, and by that point in the Saturn's life cycle new game pickings were getting slim. Glad I did though as it really is a superlative fighter, packed to the rafters with content, unlockables and nods to old (and at the time not that old) Sega games - I didn't play through the whole thing in one sitting back then! It's got lots of great music as well. It's not as pretty as Virtua Fighter 2, as compromises obviously had to be made to fit so much stuff in, but it's got a lot more lasting appeal in my opinion.
I always hoped Sega would release a Racers Megamix at some point, combining the cars and tracks from their greatest arcade racers with a play style that manages to fuse them all together coherently. I guess Sonic and All star Transformed is the closest thing we've got to that so far...