/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.10035886]

Why was Virtua Fighter a miss in the west compared to the major hit it was in Japan?
>arcades
Tekken

[Anonymous No.10035907]

Because Tekken was on the ChadStation. I don't think there's much more to say. We're done here.

[Anonymous No.10035915]

>>10035907
Shiturnsisters, I'm not feeling to good... I think I'm going to need to go dilate again.

[Anonymous No.10035921]

>>10035907
Even in Japan, Tekken 3 on PS1 sold as much as VF2 on Saturn

[Anonymous No.10035924]

It had state-of-the-art 3D graphics, but other than that it was fairly lackluster.
>no blood
>characters are more or less model swaps of each other
>no crazy moves
>less graphical detail

[Anonymous No.10035929]

>>10035886
I defend VF1 and its Saturn port

[Anonymous No.10036041]

>>10035886
3D game development was moving so fast in the 90's that by 1995 when the Saturn and its port of Virtua Fighter released in the west the flat shaded polygon look was already starting to look dated to some. I remember people being more impressed with Battle Arena Toshinden at the launch of the PS1 with its texture mapped characters.

[Anonymous No.10036071]

>>10035886
I liked it a lot as a kid. I got a Saturn early too so I was really impressed having it at home.

[Anonymous No.10036141]

mortal kombat mindfucked the US market into thinking games needed all that spectacle prioritized over the fighting

[Anonymous No.10036165]

>>10035924
>characters are more or less model swaps of each other

Not even close.

>>10035924
>no crazy moves

Virtua Fighters move sets have always been grounded in reality. Each character basically has their own unique fighting style, and they all do play differently from each other. >>10035924

>>less graphical detail
Than what? At the time, it was the best, and perhaps only 1v1 style 3D fighting game available.

[Anonymous No.10036175]

>>10036141
It's not just MK. Capcom fighters, SNK fighters, Namco fighters are all vastly more interesting than generic-ass Virtua Fighter.

Japs having bad taste is nothing new.

[Anonymous No.10036184]

>>10036141
Yeah because Street Fighter II was so bare bones fighting like VF, not like it had shooting fireballs out of your hands, suma wrestlers flying, or stretch armstrong fire breathing indians

[Anonymous No.10036228]

>>10036175
Fuck your generalization of pre-2010s Street Fighter.
Also, SNK wasn't founded by any MENA group. Their roots are Japanese too. Its only very recently that SAUDI BOUGHT SNK by 96% FOR hundreds of millions of dollars, if not like, several billion dollars. Then there's the remaining 4%.

[Anonymous No.10036236]

>BUT
>MUH
>REALISM

Videogames are not meant to be "realistic"; they are meant to be Fun.

[Anonymous No.10036351]

>>10036165
>Virtua Fighters move sets have always been grounded in reality. Each character basically has their own unique fighting style, and they all do play differently from each other.

The OG Virtua Fighter cast:
Akira: Hakkyokuken (Bajiquan)
Pai: Mizongyi
Lau: Koen Ken (Kung Fu)
Wolf: Pro Wrestling
Jeffry: Pankration
Kage-Maru: Hagakure Ryu Ju Jutsu
Sarah: Martial Arts (A mix of Savate, Taekwondo and Karate) plus flamingo stances and grab attacks.
Jacky: Jeet Kune Do
Dural = adaptive fighting style. Adapts to whatever character the player is using. The fighting style will change.

yeah, the original Virtua Fighter still has moon-style jumps and isn't 100% realistic. But each character has a fighting style based on a real martial arts or wrestling, and their move sets are based on real fighting moves. It is like a MMA style game. The characters are a little on the bland side and fall into the character archetypes that were defined by Street Fighter II, like the Ken and Ryu archetypes, for example. The character personalities in Virtua Fighter are based around their fighting styles. It's like AM2 came up with a list of fighting styles they wanted and just made the characters for them after. the game seems like its' half way between a 'fighting simulator' and a 1V1 SFII styled fighter. Shenmue was suppose to be a Virtua Fighter RPG starring Ryu, and it would have simulated the life of Ryu day by day.

[Anonymous No.10036389]

>>10036165
>characters are more or less model swaps of each other

>Not even close.

Umm, in the 1st VF1 they are. Are we talking sequels or just the 1st VF?

The first virtua fighter wasn't excellent, it had great ideas but wasn't fun to play due to the lack of moves mainly. It was the 1st 3D fighter, it was just to show it could be done mainly. It works as a good 1st entry, the sequels all did much better and are great games. This is pretty much the same for Tekken 1, DOA1, Soul Edge, etc. Those games weren't very good (Soul Edge was fairly decent) but they proved a 3D fighter was viable.

[Anonymous No.10036402]

Because it’s boring as fuck

[Anonymous No.10036405]

>>10036184
I mean, SFII is bare bones for a fighter these days according to most. Of course, in the 90s it was very original, but after games like Mortal Kombat people were expecting Ninja demons from hell, Shaolin Monks with bladed hats, demi-gods, etc.

Let's be honest, Street Fighter is a game people come to play for the great fighting you get there, no one comes there for the lore or deep interesting characters. Like, besides the OG characters from II: Ryu (1) , Ken (1), Guile, Chun-Li, Balrog, Blanka (No one likes him), Dhalsim, Vega, M. Bison, Sagat (1).

Does anyone really remember any characters from Street Fighter?

I'm not saying this to insult Street Fighter, it is historic, but we have to keep in mind it was setting the stage, it was really the 1st fighting game that was fun and marketable. Those characters from II were so iconic that they invented tropes and changed pop-culture. No matter what new whacky characters are introduced I doubt they will really be well remembered.

[Anonymous No.10036416]

>>10036405
>Blanka (No one likes him)
Correction, no one likes fighting against Blanka. Blanka is awesome, at least I think so.

[Anonymous No.10036420]

>>10036416
The general consensus seems be that he is a stupid character. If he never returned I don't think many people would notice, lol.


Even the Characters introduced in Super SF2, with the exception of Cammy are forgotten.

[Anonymous No.10036421]

>>10035886

Because it's generic as fuck. It's literally Fighting: The Game.

[Anonymous No.10036427]

Didn't have enough flash to hold the attention of anyone aside from actual game enjoyers. Most people who play games mainly play them for any reason except gameplay.

[Anonymous No.10036434]

>>10036405
My point was simply that SF was still full of over the top and flashy superpower type special moves, no different than MK in that regard.

Hell I never played VF growing up but I remember as a kid being disappointed by Tekken for not really having projectiles or anything, I was like wow....lightning effects during a spinny punch, that's it? I couldn't understand what the fuss was about other than it being 3D

[Anonymous No.10036440]

>>10036421
>>10036351
I can see why some people find it boring, but that's something I always liked about VF.

[Anonymous No.10036447]

>>10036434
You have to keep in mind that Tekken was so different from Street Fighter. I mean this as no insult, but every fighting game up to that point was just Street Fighter but with (insert gimmick)

Tekken had a new control scheme, No more light, medium, heavy. The combo system was different, the had strings and juggles. It was a game that clearly was different from Street Fighter, you could tell just by looking at it.

[Anonymous No.10036448]

>>10036405
I remember Karin.

[Anonymous No.10036703]

The game looked like shit, it was too blocky, even with the Remix it was still awful looking, only got good with VF2 and forward. People liked Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix but they hated Last Bronx.

[Anonymous No.10037493]

>>10035921
he asked for the west, not japland

[Anonymous No.10037586]

>>10035886
graphics

[Anonymous No.10037610]

It has nothing to offer casual gamers
>familiarity and nostalgia from being the first big fighting game
Street Fighter
>gratuitous violence and cool and memorable characters
Mortal Kombat
>fun character design and satisfying easy to pick up gameplay
Tekken
>weapons and tits
Soul Calibur
>tits
Dead or Alive
>animal transformations
Bloody Roar
>recognizable non-fighting game characters
Marvel Vs series
>big roster and team fighting
King of Fighters

What about Virtua Fighter appeals to someone that’s not a fighting game autist?

[Anonymous No.10037624]

>>10037610
Why does enjoying fighting games for the games make one an autist, but those 12 other things you listed don't?

[Anonymous No.10037641]

>>10035886
There was no way it was beating Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat in 1995, let alone Tekken which pretty much killed it. Even on Dreamcast you had better games like SoulCalibur and DoA 2.

[Anonymous No.10037645]

>>10037610
I completely forgot about Marvel vs. Those games were super popular when they came out

[Anonymous No.10037663]

>>10035907
Yeah and also Tekken arcade was much cheaper since it was just a souped up ps1

[Anonymous No.10037689]

>>10037624
Because Virtua Fighter's only appeal is in fighting game autism a.k.a. Ooh dah frame data ooh dah counter ooh dah mindgames.
Casual gamers pick up Mortal Kombat to see this year's fatalities, DOA for bouncing tits, Tekken because they mash buttons, Marvel because the movies are popular, Street Fighter because brand name from being the first proper fighter, etc. What does Virtua Fighter give them? Its characters are cardboard cutout archetypes, no sex appeal, no multimedia IP, and the gameplay is intensely unappealing to casuals.

[Anonymous No.10037702]

You get hit 2 times and your lifebar is gone

[Anonymous No.10037706]

>>10035886
VF1 was really popular in Arcades, but then Tekken 2 happened and no one cared about VF anything at all anymore.

[Anonymous No.10037753]

Playing arcade games is just a quick break not a lifelong investment if you're not autistic. Just look at the arcade racers, you pay to go fast and have fun, there is no real simulation of the intricacies of driving a car.
Virtua Fighter is boring as fuck if you're a beginner, especially compared to king of pick up and play Tekken. Just two blocky dudes slowly flailing limbs at each other. On Tekken you can mash buttons and have fun pretending to be Bruce Lee. And then there are the 2D fighters that were still extremely popular with fast gameplay and magic that fills the screen. In fact 2D fighters remained the most popular, Tekken is more well known for the Playstation ports than for arcade success.

[Anonymous No.10037763]

>>10037689
You didn't answer the question.
Why didn't you list it as:
>Gore autism
>coomer autism
>anime autism
>capeshit autism

[Anonymous No.10037767]

>>10037610
>>10037689
Basically this.
Virtua Fighter didn't even have endings that could give some background to the characters and the final boss was always the same boring mechanical girl. It's almost as if they went out of their way in order to make the games as dry as possible in terms of personality.

[Anonymous No.10037772]

>>10037689
>gameplay is autism
lmao

[Anonymous No.10037791]

>>10037763
>>10037772
You don't need autism to enjoy violence, sex and heroism. You don't need autism to enjoy arcade gameplay. You need autism to enjoy obsessive repetitive slow learning curve gameplay, especially in public spaces.

[Anonymous No.10037815]

What the hell is up with these Virtua Fighter fans? They ask why no one plays the game and we give them an answer and then they seethe and throw fits because they don’t like the reason.

[Anonymous No.10037839]

>>10037815

[Anonymous No.10037867]

>>10037706
VF thunder was stolen by Tekken 1 at least in Europe, no one was amazed at that shitfest of a game when we got Tekken.

[Anonymous No.10037875]

>>10037867
Tekken 1 in the US was not really that popular, about the same level at VF. But both were novilties really and "real" fighting games were MK/SF/SamSho/etc.
3d fighters didn't seem to be taken seriously at all till T2.

[Anonymous No.10037948]

>>10037875
VF looked too primitive, no one was really impressed by it by the time it arrived here, in 1994 Tekken was a million times more impressive.

[Anonymous No.10037960]

Even in 1993 it looked terrible when we had lush 2D fighting games instead.

[Anonymous No.10037995]

>>10037839
n/a

[Anonymous No.10038008]

>>10037689
Based.
VF is the toast sandwich of fighters.

[Anonymous No.10038014]

>>10037960
Ridge Racer was released in the same month, at double the framerate and fully textured. Namco >>>>>>> Sega.

[Anonymous No.10038016]

Here in the West it came out on consoles the same year as Tekken. If you're in 1995 and want a fighting game, do you get Virtua Fighter or Tekken? You get Tekken. Furthermore, I don't know any songs from Virtua Fighter

[Anonymous No.10038024]

>>10037960
>NotRyu
>NotKen
>every other character is equally soulless
Blocky 3D fighters naturally had less personality than the detailed 2D hand drawn characters that other games had. Namco realized this quickly and made the Tekken cast a balanced mix of action movie stars and crazy wild motherfuckers

[Anonymous No.10038029]

>>10038016
>I don't know any songs from Virtua Fighter
desu VF2 has a banger soundtrack https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1688494799206786.webm

[Anonymous No.10038060]

>>10038024
The moves in Tekken were really memorable, VF was like kick, punch, moon jump.

[Anonymous No.10038076]

>>10036420
>The general consensus seems be that he is a stupid character. If he never returned I don't think many people would notice, lol.
Not that Anon, but I remember Blanka being the cool wacky fighter alongside Dhalsim that people played for fun and laughs.
Your lame "general consensus" probably comes from tourneyfaggots trashcan, so throw it back there and never look back.

[Anonymous No.10038115]

Horribly generic characters with no personality

[Anonymous No.10038161]

>>10035886
Virtua Fighter was a high-end arcade machine. Every game in the series ran on top-of-the-line hardware and was insanely expensive.
Meanwhile Tekken was built from the ground up to run on arcade-converted PlayStation systems.
This mean the price difference between the machines was enormous. Why buy a Virtua Fighter when you can buy multiple Tekken cabinets for the same price?
In Japan where arcades were an organized industry run by the local megacorps the high acquisition price wasn't a problem.
But in the West, and especially in Europe, the average arcade machine was either at an independently run arcade hall or was the only machine at a bar, laundromat or a similar non-arcade focused business.

[Anonymous No.10038178]

>>10038115
/thread

[Anonymous No.10038190]

>>10038016
No one here seems to be acknowledging that the Playstation outsold Saturn like 100 to 1

VF had no chance no matter what the quality was

[Anonymous No.10038313]

VF never had a chance at taking off because it was on a console that nobody bought in the US. And by the time it launched, the game was 3 years old and looked like ass. Same for VF3 on Dreamcast.

VF2 on Saturn was great though.

>>10035921
That's not that good considering that it had what, ten times the install base?

>>10036351
>Dural = adaptive fighting style. Adapts to whatever character the player is using. The fighting style will change.

No, she has a static move set, it just includes moves from the entire cast.

>>10036389
>Umm, in the 1st VF1 they are. Are we talking sequels or just the 1st VF?
Only the basic moves like neutral standing/crouching single punch/kick, the middle kick, the "stand up and kick" or the air attacks look the same, and that one knee attack. Once you go beyond any of those basic attacks, everyone is wildly different.
VF1 just had a too small pool of moves, so you only had as many character-specific specials as you had shared attacks.

[Anonymous No.10038321]

>>10038016
That's the 32x version which had half the detail.

>>10038024
>every other character is equally soulless
you had General Tao from Dragonball making a shit eating grin when you select him, plus a ninja, and the boss was the T1000 with tits.

[Anonymous No.10039017]

>>10038313
>No, she has a static move set, it just includes moves from the entire cast.

But doesn't the move set change with the character you use? Maybe I am thinking of VF2 or newer? I never really put much time into the first Virtua Fighter, and had FV2 on the Saturn and played it a lot. .

[Anonymous No.10040989]

>>10037767
>Virtua Fighter didn't even have endings
this endings were a good reward and everybody loves endings from soulblade and tekken 3, it was a major selling point in 5th gen.

games with FMVs

[Anonymous No.10041023]

>>10035886
It wasn't a miss. Both Virtua Fighter was dominating arcades for a while in America. It just didn't help get Saturns in people's homes the same way it did in Japan. Part of that is because of SOA's fuckery but another part is that Mortal Kombat 3 and Toshinden were both bigger in America than they were in Japan, so the PS1 ate up a lot of early console sales that otherwise would have gone to the Saturn.

[Anonymous No.10041039]

>>10041023
Yeah I remember VF 1 and 2 being popular at my local arcade as a kid. I even remember playing Virtua Fighter Kids there.

[Anonymous No.10041057]

>>10037875
Toshinden was very popular. It was arguably the PS1's flagship title at launch. In fact, the sheer number of fighting games that were occupying American gamers at the time probably dulled Virtua Fighter's effect in general. Japan literally had fewer games people cared about in the genre. I don't think they gave a shit about Battle Arena Toshinden. Mortal Kombat barely had a presence over there. It was really just Capcom and SNK's shit and then Virtua Fighter. Tekken eventually got big but that came out after.

[Anonymous No.10041094]

>>10041057
>I don't think they gave a shit about Battle Arena Toshinden
BAT sold more in Japan than it did in America. It wasn't as big as the stuff like Virtua Fighter, but the series was popular enough to get sequels and an anime.

[Anonymous No.10041117]

People want to call VF's characters boring or generic, but its characters have been copied by others about as often as SF's has so clearly they are appealing.

VF's lack of success abroad is 100% Sega's universal incompetence sabotaging it

[Anonymous No.10041863]

>>10041117
Who copied VF characters?

[Anonymous No.10041872]

>>10041863
DoA
Not Tekken though (Akira's original designs was Jin's)

[Anonymous No.10041910]

Apparently this was the first true polygonal 3D game and is in a museum for that.

[Anonymous No.10042031]

>>10039017
>But doesn't the move set change with the character you use? Maybe I am thinking of VF2 or newer?
No, again, she has a fixed move set, but it consists of the best moves from the entire cast. Her back story (as much as VF has one) is that she is an adaptoid and the tournament is held so the evil shady organization (who also brainwashed Sarah, Jacky is trying to save her) can use Dural to observe the best moves from each fighter and become the ultimate fighting machine.
Consequently her move list has the best specials of every character. Counters, throws, the body slam and scissors kick from Akira, throws from Jeffrey and Wolf, somersault kick and neckbreaker from Jacky, the rolling moves from Kage, etc etc etc.

I think you may be thinking of the Learning feature in the Saturn port of VF2 where the cpu would learn your play style and adjust what they do based on that. But as far as I can tell this features just wastes a ton of space in the internal memory and has no real use, because the AI in VF2 is already Mortal Kombat 2 levels of bullshit.

[Anonymous No.10042039]

>>10041057
Toshinden had one of the most popular anime designers doing the characters, it was VERY popular in Japan, popular enough that they made 4 games, a card battler, a puzzle game, and chibi fighter out of it.

Shame that the game got worse with each sequel. If they just fixed the input lag, it would've already been ten times as good.

[Anonymous No.10042114]

>>10035886
looks ugly should have launched with remix instead

[Anonymous No.10042605]

[Anonymous No.10042629]

Boring game only Korean boys like.

[Anonymous No.10043808]

Probably just a case of better marketing.

>>10038014
VF has better physics and animation.

[Anonymous No.10043841]

Okay I decided to play the 32x version. There isn't a lot of autistic documentation about inputs and frametime and hitboxes for this game, so how the hell am I meant to pull off special moves? It's very inconsistent whether it'll execute

[Anonymous No.10044374]

>>10036405
>Does anyone really remember any characters from Street Fighter?
Yes, Street Fighter characters are ridiculously popular, even outside of the World Warriors.
Cammy is one of the most iconic female video game characters ever.
Sakura set the stage for dozens if not hundreds of schoolgirl action heroines who would follow after her.
Dan is the single most well known joke character in any video game.

There are plenty of SF characters that aren't very popular (shout out to all the Effiechads out there), but even they almost always have hardcore dedicated fans. I met a dude at work whose favorite character was Sodom of all people.

[Anonymous No.10044381]

>>10037753
Holy shit Mai, if you're mad at your boyfriend just kick his ass. You don't have to destroy his fucking soul first.

[Anonymous No.10044409]

>>10037689
>Marvel because the movies are popular
When the Vs marvel games came out the only characters people recognized were some x-men from the 90s cartoon, and spiderman because he is an icon.
The first spider man film came out 2 years after MvC2, and the iron man/avenger films were many years away. Blade had a movie and most people didn't even know it was based on a comic. Marvel went bankrupt in 1998 for a reason.

[Anonymous No.10044419]

>>10042039
And a successful and lewd anime OVAs.

[Anonymous No.10045196]

>>10044409
>and spiderman because he is an icon.

The 90's Spider-Man cartoon on Fox was also pretty popular as well. It would do cross over episodes with X-men cartoon.

[Anonymous No.10045227]

>>10044419
>And a successful and lewd anime OVAs.

My god, there were so many OVA's based on various fighting games, back in the day. I guess the trend Started with the Street Fighter anime movie. Which did go to cinemas. Virtua Fighter had an anime series. Which is why it was pretty tame, and dealt with PG situations at the most. Sarah running around and calling people perverts. I would say that Battle Arena is aimed at a pg-13 market. Lewd, but not 'r-rated' lewd. I think something like Fatal Fury may be closer to r-rated? But I forget. It was a fad in the mid to late 90's to see anime/ OVA's based on various random fighting games.

[Anonymous No.10045231]

>>10044419
>And a successful and lewd anime OVAs.

There were so many OVA's based on various fighting games, back in the day. I guess the trend Started with the Street Fighter anime movie. Which did go to cinemas. Virtua Fighter had an anime series. Which is why it was pretty tame, and dealt with PG situations at the most. Sarah running around and calling people perverts. I would say that Battle Arena is aimed at a pg-13 market. Lewd, but not 'r-rated' lewd. I think something like Fatal Fury may be closer to r-rated? But I forget. It was a fad in the mid to late 90's to see anime/ OVA's based on various random fighting games.

[Anonymous No.10045971]

>>10045231
There was a censored and uncensored version of toshinden anime. The uncut version had exposed nipples and stuff but not overly explicit. It also had more fetish character designs overall compared to other fighting games of the era (besides mai from fatal fury). Like sofia is a 6 foot tall russian dominatrix in leather/latex.

[Anonymous No.10046927]

Probably the biggest reason is that America just doesn't have that large of a martial arts culture. Japan has clubs for damn near every type of martial art in schools. It was also a whole lot bigger in their media at the time, so these games having stand-ins and references for real life fighters hit more with the japanese audiences. Tekken focused less on recreating this specific theme for a more aesthetically creative direction, and the international audiences relate to it more.

[Anonymous No.10048716]

>>10035886
Because it’s gay