Virtua Fighter (Saturn) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
139A playthrough of Sega's 1995 versus-fighting game for the Sega Saturn, Virtua Fighter.
Played through with Jacky on the normal difficulty level.
For as much as this port, a US launch game for the Saturn back in May of 1995, got railed for how dated it looked compared to stuff like Toshinden, it's still a pretty good port of groundbreaking arcade title. I mean, in 1995, PlayStation or not, this way by far the best way to play Virtua Fighter at home (well, unless you had a $10k arcade machine in your house). It was cut back from the arcade version, of course, but I always thought it did a perfectly respectable job of replicating the look of the original - as much as I adore Daytona USA and its Saturn port, there's no arguing that VF looked much more faithful to the arcade version than Daytona USA ever did.
But still, Sega - even when gimping themselves with tight budgets and impossible deadlines - manage to pull out a pretty good product. It plays pretty faithfully to the arcade version (including the same AI routines you love to hate), and it has all of the moves, combos, and whatever-elses included. It feels odd in a few spots - at times it feels floatier than it should, and occasionally the controls seem to not like to cooperate (button mashing definitely tends to jam the works up a bit, unlike the other versions), but it's not much to complain about. A little bit of acclimation and you'll be set. Oddly enough, even though this one looks WAY WAY WAAAAY better than the 32X version, the 32X version has more responsive controls and feels smoother. Ouch, Sega. But like I said, it's not much difference. Unless you put them side-by-side, you probably wouldn't really be able to tell the difference unless you played them both extensively.
It also has a remixed soundtrack - it now is CD audio instead of the highly-compressed samples used in the arcade version - and most of it sounds pretty sweet. Though, and this again seems like an odd thing to say, I much prefer Sarah's stage music on the 32X version over this one - it's so much harsher and louder. Actually, I'd say that the 32X version of that song is probably my favorite theme out of any of the VF games.
If you really can't handle the graphics here, Sega did overhaul (or finish?) the game and released it a short time after as "Virtua Fighter Remix". It looks far less like the arcade game, but that's probably only because it was such a substantial overhaul. Either way you go, Virtua Fighter is Virtua Figher, regardless of the platform. Forget Tekken, forget Soul Blade/Edge/Calibur, forget Dead or Alive - here's the 3D granddaddy of the genre, and he still puts up quite a fight 25 years later.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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