Virtua Fighter

I can hear you thinking, "oh great, not ANOTHER review of Virtua Fighter! Like we haven't seen enough of those on Defunct Games and other gaming sites!" Well, I certainly can't help it that Sega likes to exploit one of their most successful products endlessly, can I? So stop your whining, because I'm about to tell you all about the 32X version of the game.

When I first plugged the game into the system, one of my buddy's said: "It's BLOCKY. And if I want to play with something BLOCKY, I can return to the box of Lego I used to play with in my childhood. So let's play some Mortal Kombat." Well, I can't say Virtua Fighter isn't "blocky" but it's a bit unfair to trash the game just for using Sega's early polygon engine.

The biggest problem with Virtua Fighter on the 32X is its pointlessness, not only now, but even in the time it was released. It came out when the Saturn version was about to hit the market, so there wasn't really any need for a 32X port. But that doesn't mean that this 32X version isn't a high quality port of an arcade classic. Because it is, I would even say it's an excellent version. Yeah sure, maybe the graphics aren't great compared to the Saturn, but for a 32X game they're very well done.

All the characters are available; all the moves are in the manual; you can play arcade, versus, tournament or ranking mode; all the necessary options (camera, stage size, time limit, pad control - which even can be set to 'beginner' - are all available. It moves fast, though (as usual in Virtua Fighter) and the jumps are slow.

I find it hard to say anything about Virtua Fighter you don't already know. It's a nice game, and though all the moves are in the manual, we all know we use no more than five of them, 'cause the rest are too hard to perform or too ineffective to use.

The sound and music is really well done in this 32X port as well, with some exciting music and nice punch and kick sound effects. I especially like Sarah's stage, with the blocky lit floor and the fast-paced music.

Overall, there isn't much unfavorable to be said about 32X Virtua Fighter. It's probably, next to Virtua Racing Deluxe, one of the best games available for your Sega 32X. But, I'm not sure if that's a very big achievement, since most of the other 32X games are unbelievable crap. Virtua Fighter 32X is a nice showcase for one the most failed console add-ons of all time, but completely unnecessary if you already bought the Saturn version.