Virtua Fighter General

And also the voice acting. OH GOD the voice acting.

Yeah, that too.

Okay, another topic that's come to my mind; knowing that Akira was the last character created for the first game, it makes me wonder how the entire presentation of the series would have been affected if Akira had NOT ended up in the games at all, much less as the main character.

Consider this; out of all the VF 1 characters, only Jacky, Sarah, Kage, and Dural have any kind of significance to what little plot there was in the first game. Akira, Lau, Pai, Wolf, and Jeffry all have very simple motivations. Jeffry fights for the prize money, Wolf seeks a challenge, Lau seeks mastery of his art, and Akira wants to test his strength. Pai wants revenge on her father, which is a bit more interesting, but overall these motivations are pretty much typical and generic. The same can be said about several of the later characters too. These motivations don't really make for an interesting story, but the story involving a brainwashed sister, a cyberized mother, and the men trying to save them could.

Now, here's what I'm getting at; before Akira was added to the game, I believe that Jacky was originally intended to be the main character of the series, and/or possibly Kage. However, I believe that adding Akira and making him the poster boy for the series effectively took the spotlight away from what little story there was.

Akira is essentially a Spotlight-Stealing Squad; he was designed to be a typical heroic male Japanese character in the same vein as Ryu (I do give him points for an iconic and original fighting style though), and so was made the main character to appeal to a Japanese market. The overall presentation of the VF series focuses on him, but he has very little relation to the actual main plot, and so this ends up drawing attention away from the plots involving J6.

Compare to Tekken. The Mishimas are definitely the main characters and their plot is definitely the main plot of that series. Even people who don't play Tekken much probably have some grasp of the conflict between the father/son/grandsons. Imagine if Jacky and Sarah were the poster boy and girl of Virtua Fighter right from the beginning, and the presentation in the advertising and the game itself had put more focus on the conflict between them. SEGA kind of did that in the VF 1-3 era if you look at a lot of the promotional material from that time, but still Akira was always front and center.

I will say though that the story in VF 4 actually did, relatively speaking, a lot to help advance the plot after it really kind of stagnated during 3. Lei-Fei made the Pai/Lau conflict more interested, and we finally got more characters related to J6 with Vanessa and Goh.

Another Namco comparison; I think what happened with Akira and Virtua Fighter is like what could have happened if Namco had kept insisting on making Mitsurugi the main character of the Soul series instead of giving the it to Siegfried. The whole plot involving the two swords would have ended up as the B plot to Mitsu's quest to improve his skills.

Now, Street Fighter's Ryu is kind of the same deal, but he was created first and before the main plot of that series was ever even thought up, and SF made many popular characters related to the main plot, so Ryu didn't really end up stealing much focus from it, and at the very least he and characters related to him do have their own subplot, regarding the conflict with Akuma.

edited 6th Oct '14 6:32:10 PM by StarOutlaw

Some actual news this time;

There's an online petition to get an HD console release of VF 4: Final Tuned here: https://www.change.org/p/sega-corporate-release-virtua-fighter-4-final-tuned-in-the-west-optimised-for-xbox360-ps3-with-online-features-2

Some new tech has been discovered in VF 2 after almost 20 years that essentially lets you option select either a throw, low throw, or low punch.

And, Virtua Fighter is featured in the Sega Hard Girls anime, which I have yet to check out but it looks really funny from the gifs I've seen. It streams on Crunchy Roll.

Sega Hard girls is actually FUNNY? Color me surprised.

VF 4 was the one where Akira looked like he had boobs huh?

It's very silly and there's a ton of Sega references in just the episode I saw. The VF episode basically is about them trying to win 100 matches in a row, but instead of using the teamwork and skill that was working for them, they just keep exploiting one insanely powerful move and win that way. And they end up fighting a bunch of other random Sega characters in addition to the Virtua Fighters.

Now I want to try it out. I love sega stuff lol.

Goodness, I still have a Saturn and the 2nd game,...haven't played it in ages.

Some news that popped up a little while ago. There is going to be a version B of Final Showdown released for arcades, but all that's known right now is that it's going to shut down the online play for arcades. No idea if this update will apply to console versions. I'm hoping this is a sign that VF 6 is coming soon.

So much for Final Showdown. :P

Yeah, VF 6 would be nice.

How about Fighters megamix 2?

With Ryo Hazuki as a secret character?

That'd be the next best thing, though I can't help to think that a FM 2 would be more like Smash.

Beat Tribe Cup tournament right now: http://www.twitch.tv/gamenewton

This happened:

Gotta say, it's weird seeing a fighting game crossover that Capcom isn't involved in. That said, I knew this has gonna happen the moment Akira was announced for DOA 5. With the amount of influence that VF had on the DOA series, a crossover was inevitable. I'm just surprised that it took this long.

Any word on who's actually developing it? Most likely AM 2, since Team Ninja's busy with Final Round.

For once, I'm actually pretty enthusiastic about this crossover. Most crossovers combine two wildly different games and try to find a good medium between their style and presentation, which I think has been established is a bad idea. However, a lot of VF's elements made their way into DOA 5 that with hard knockdowns and sidestepping and whatnot, and we've seen the VF guest characters have a faithful transition into DOA 5.

This does make me wonder, however, how they will handle DOA's counter system. Will they be universal, removed entirely, or will they just be for the DOA crew?

And what about the stages? Huge, crazy, over-the-top stages have been a staple of DOA since DOA 2, while VF's stages are just shapes with a various assortment of walls. Normally this would just be an aesthetic thing, but DOA's stages are integral to the game itself. DOA is not DOA without massive, crazy stages.

And then there's the dumb aesthetic things that only I care about (music, sound, outfits, character voices, etc).

But yeah. I'm pretty hype for this.

I will be astonished if the plot does not revolve around Hayabusa vs. Kage

Fun fact; DOA 1 was the first time Sega licensed out their arcade hardware, in this case the Model 2 hardware which Virtua Fighter 2 ran on. Must be why that's shown in the beginning of the trailer. I'm assuming.

It kinda has to. The major plot of DOA revolves around the ninjas. The major plot of VF revolves around Judjemnt 6, which Kage has the most involvement in. Sure, Jean and Goh are members, Vanessa's a former member, Sarah was kidnapped and brainwashed, and Jacky was almost killed by them, but none of those things are really explored.

Neither of these games have a good plot. Hell, the VF guest characters were given literally no explanation as to why they were there. They show up, get beat, and vanish. I bet the "plot" of this will be "Oh shit! DOATEC and J6 teamed up."

Honestly, I'd rather this crossover have no plot whatsoever.

Eh they can use J6 and DOATEC teaming up/having a war or something.

But they better have some MAD customization going on. But knowing Team Ninja, instead we'll get a bunch of DL Cs.

To be fair, all of those DLC packs is how Team Ninja makes their money. But who knows, maybe since DOA is starting to be recognized as a legit fighting game, it'll get more support from the FGC. I highly doubt it, but I can dream.

That said, I assume that there will be customization on a least the default 4 outfits. Probably with more costume parts as DLC (or the entire costume as a bundle).

Looks like that video you posted was a fake. While some VF characters were guest characters in the last DOA, note how that video showed absolutely nothing new. All the arenas and pictures are pre-existing, and it never actually showed them fighting characters from the other game.

I also found absolutely no press releases about any DOA vs. VF game.

Not to mention the one comment on the video is a guy accusing the video maker of lying, and he doesn't deny it. So yeah, probably a fake.

I know. I'm the one who made it.

There's rumors that VF 6 is going to be announced next year: http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2014/dec/23/rumor-new-virtua-fighter-game-works-according-guy-who-leaked-final-fantasy-15s-name-platform-change-e3-2013/

I thought it was fanmade, but pretty good job regardless.

Found something on tumblr, what appears to be a manga from the VF 1=VF 2 days called "The Legend of Sarah." It seems to focus on Jacky too though. The pages were scanned and made a video out of with voice and sound effects. It's an official release for what seems to be the Saturn, though I'm not sure about the details.

Part 1 - http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16446391 Part 2 - http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16480293 Part 3 - http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16527444

EDIT: Okay, found out these come from a kind of digital magazine called Game-Ware, released for the Saturn. The manga itself was released separately.

edited 9th Mar '15 6:49:13 AM by StarOutlaw

Sure does a lot of focusing on Jacky, though understandable. Not like Sarah would've been doing much interesting being under J6's control and everything.

That was a nice read despite having to use pictures to understand everything.