Prior entries in this series: Introduction | NiGHTS into Dreams | Virtua Racing and more
Another day, another 1/7th closer to the day Andrew and I play Saturn games. Our playing is getting far ahead of these write-ups as sitting on the couch, controller in hand is moderately easier than telling chatGPT to write these things then performing deft copy/pastes, so let’s say this session took place in November of 1986.
Fighting never felt so virtual
The first time I remember playing Virtua Fighter was at Six Flags Great Adventure in the new Jersey. It may have been the visit I was finally tall enough to ride Lightnin’ Loops and Free Fall. My brother repeatedly told me in vivid detail about the woman who was scalped because her hair got caught in the gears at the top of the Free Fall cage before it dropped 30 trillion feet or so. Virtua Fighter was fun and smooth, and not at all like losing your scalp to a ride malfunction. I’d played a considerable amount of Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat 1-3, some Killer Instinct, and even some Time Killers by that point. I wasn’t a time traveling e-sports champ but I was annoying enough with fire balls and dragon punches to provide good resistance to average players. One time on a middle school trip to the ice rink, I wiped the floor with every challenger in the class and all the girls gave me their phone numbers as a result. With credentials about as good as an 11 year old could have, I knew Virtua Fighter had something.
The next game in the series I played was Virtua Fighter 4. Pat and I put considerable hours into it on the PS2 in some sort of prolonged wake for Sega and the Dreamcast. Neither of us were interested in fighting games at that point but playing the series that gave Shenmue its battle system felt nostalgic and slightly mournful. The game was great but seemed very hard to penetrate, and why was the coolest character a chef? After hours of the practice room with multiple characters, I was still bad. The more I learned the more I over complicated things and tried landing complex moves and combos only to inevitably lose. This was exactly how I played Soul Calibur so I was consistent, at least.
Virtua Fighter 2 was a big fucking deal. The Saturn port was widely regarded as great and the arcade game was considered greater. It had absurdly good graphics and animation for the time. And it all makes how Andrew and his son Ruttiger reacted to it sadder. Admittedly, It does look like shit now. It is weird how the third dimension seems to barely matter, or at least is not easily accessible to a new player. And the ring really seems too small. Before I brought the game to them I tested it out to see if the ISO file was good (I have the fucking disc you fucking cop – but then notice how often I don’t say that). It was and I ended up playing through Lau’s matches on arcade mode maybe. Durral was the final match but we were under water for some reason. And why does Lau look so god damned awesome in 4 and not at all cool in this game? Anyway, I had fun but it felt sort of constrained in what I could do. Undoubtedly this is because I’m bad at it but also somedoubtedly it’s because this is a quieter series about making the right moves a la chess and less about flashy big moves a la gun chess.
Andrew and kid were unimpressed and mostly laughed at the 5 second matches they were having that were races to knock the other player out of the ring. I sat silently, praying to Yu Suzuki for forgiveness. “How many more classic games would fail to astonish and amaze these cultureless brutes who were also very nice people and may read this,” I ended my prayer. At this rate, I would be playing Shenmue with Andrew next year as reward/punishment. Here is his traditional review haiku:
Virtua Fighter
Juggled through the air
My fighter blown like a leaf
A ring out KO
As I alluded to 58 years ago, when we have so much else to play we undervalue what we are playing now and assume better things await. Just as internet dating promises an endless number of suitors, each with an alluringly smaller penis, we can treat games similarly and not delve beneath the surface to find the interesting, less obvious yet rewarding wrinkles. Much like a man thinks there is always a woman with smoother elbows out there so refuses to stop dating and thus never learns of the woman he passed up who has sensuously taught armpit skin, so it is with games. If you give up after 5 minutes, how will you ever see the nude men shitting skulls in Alex Kidd the Lost Stars? How will you find the miracle ball? This is but one of the myriad problems facing players of retro games, but first a little background on the next Saturn game followed by another tangent, some more writing about stuff, and possibly a shower.
Game Over, yeah
Dayton USA, like Virtua Fighter 2, was a big fucking deal. Unfortunately, the rushed Saturn port of the arcade game was also an important event in gaming. While the original version of Ridge Racer in arcades was considered graphically inferior to Daytona, according to the Wikipedia article I just edited to say that, the PS1 port of Ridge Racer was more impressive than the Daytona port the Saturn received (though sources I don’t control may disagree). This helped establish the kind of true idea that the PS1 was superior to Sega’s console at rendering 3D graphics. Had Sega handled the Daytona port with more finesse the popular opinion may have been less lopsided and slower to develop.
A highlight of living on earth is Sega’s vocal music from the Saturn era. Daytona USA is perhaps the crowning achievement of this crown of music sitting atop the head of the king of video game music. Besides the obviously incredible Let’s Go Away, Sky High is (probably not) responsible for giving a name to Sega’s famous Blue Sky aesthetic. The game has an iconic soundtrack thanks to longtime Sega composer Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, who is also responsible for the greatest game theme, and my one time ringtone, ever composed.
It’s widely thought that there is no great port of Daytona USA on the Saturn or Dreamcast. Sega tried again with the Saturn’s Championship Circuit Edition looking better than the original port but playing unlike the arcade game. The Dreamcast update reportedly suffered a similar fate and had excessively responsive controls. Both relying so heavily on arcade to home ports but also not consistently nailing these ports was a perplexing business decision from a company respected for making perplexing business decisions.
Comparing the driving between the Saturn Daytona USA port and Virtua Racing, which we recently played, was difficult – it clearly looked better but may have been worse to play. The game received a muted response from Andrew and son which was interrupted only by the jeers they gave the soundtrack. By this point, arcade-weariness had set in. Daytona USA may have had some depth, but it was still an arcade game and each lap felt fairly similar to the prior and the course selection was meager. I resolved to move on to longer console experiences next time like Virtual Hydlide.
Daytona USA
Acceleration
Which button makes the car go
Suddenly slowing