The History of Virtua Fighter 2 on Saturn

The game the Saturn was sold on, in the country where it sold.

Virtua Fighter 2 was Sega AM2's 1994 arcade sequel, built by Yu Suzuki's team on the purpose made Model 2 hardware. It was a major arcade hit, selling more than 40,000 arcade units worldwide and becoming, with its predecessor, one of Sega's best selling arcade games of all time. The question hanging over it through 1995 was whether a home console could hold it.

The Saturn port, released in North America on November 30, 1995 and in Japan the next day, answered with a technical rebuild that reviewers called the ultimate arcade translation, and with sales that made it the best selling Saturn game in Japan, where it remains so. This page is the Saturn game's history: the port, the numbers, and the reception.

THE TWO COVERS

A portrait in America, a fight in Japan

Virtua Fighter 2 American Saturn box art, Akira Yuki

America · 1995

The American box is Akira alone on white, the series mascot presented like a logo.

Virtua Fighter 2 Japanese Saturn box art, Akira and Lau

Japan · 1995

The Japanese box stages a fight: Akira braced against Lau's kick, the full roster in portraits along the bottom.

HOW IT WAS MADE

The arcade original, briefly

Texture mapping

Suzuki wanted textured characters, which the Model 1 board could not do. The Model 2 system was developed for this game, around a texture mapping processor adapted from a Lockheed Martin military flight simulation chip that had cost 2 million dollars to purchase.

Motion and speed

The game used advanced motion capture, ran at 60 frames per second where the original ran at 30, and expanded the move lists to 500 new moves and 1,200 motion patterns, against 700 in the first game.

Two new fighters

Shun Di, a drunken fist master from China, and Lion Rafale, a French praying mantis stylist, joined the nine returning characters. Four new characters were designed; only these two made the final game. Both could sidestep attacks with axis strikes, underlining the 3D space.

Suzuki's favorite

In a 1995 interview Suzuki called Virtua Fighter 2 his favorite of all the games he had made, pleased with how the polygonal graphics added a sense of reality to the characters' motions, and with the new counterattacks.

THE SATURN PORT

A year of compression, a new graphics library

Three teams, one reshuffle

At the start of 1995 AM2's Saturn division split into three sub departments, one each for Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop and Daytona USA. Slow progress on Daytona pulled many Virtua Fighter 2 staff across to it; the port began in earnest after Daytona shipped in April.

The Sega Graphics Library

In March 1995 AM2 Research completed the Sega Graphics Library, a Saturn operating system that made a near arcade perfect port feasible. At the Tokyo Toy Show in June, AM2 showed Lion, Shun, Pai and Lau running on Saturn hardware at 60 frames per second, the arcade speed.

Fitting it in

Months went into compression techniques to fit the game's move data into the console's memory. The Saturn version uses fewer polygons than the arcade, hides the difference with texture mapping at 16 colors per polygon where the Model 2 mapped one, and replaces the arcade's polygon backgrounds with parallax scrolling playfields.

Finished in November

Hit detection was working by the end of September and the playable conversion was shown at the JAMMA show. Two months of adjustments, play testing and Saturn specific options followed, including Team Battle Mode and the option to switch to the revised 2.1 arcade mechanics.

How the port held its frame rate is covered on its own page in this wing. The short version: nothing about it was a straight conversion, and the team said so at the time. Programmer Keiji Okayasu, mid development: with so much data, we can only move slowly, and we could not have made 2 if we had not made the first conversion.

HOW IT WAS RECEIVED

Named scores for the Saturn version

Famitsu 39/40

Scores of 9, 10, 10 and 10 out of 10 for the Saturn version, one point from a perfect Famitsu score.

Next Generation 5/5

A perfect score, calling it the ultimate arcade translation and the best fighting game ever, citing ten distinct and realistic fighting styles, remarkable AI, and a general attention to detail that set a new mark for quality game design.

Sega Saturn Magazine 98%

Praising the smooth frame rate, the realistically varied reactions to blows, the huge variety of moves, and the added features such as Team Battle Mode.

GamePro, perfect across the board

Perfect scores in graphics, sound, control and FunFactor, calling it the game to own if you have a Saturn. GameFan scored it 294 out of 300.

The dissent, kept

Electronic Gaming Monthly's four reviewers felt the port was not as arcade perfect as it could have been, while still praising its wealth of options. Game Informer praised the depth but criticized the inferior background detail.

The arcade game had already taken Gamest's awards for Game of the Year, Best Fighting Game, Best Graphics and Most Popular Game. The Saturn version added GamePro's Best Saturn Game of 1995, and has stayed on best of all time lists from Famitsu, IGN and Electronic Gaming Monthly since. GamesRadar ranked it the third best Saturn game; IGN ranked it second, saying it stands head and shoulders above all 32 bit fighters. All of them.

WHAT IT LEFT BEHIND

The Saturn's defining game

The sales story is told in full on its own page in this wing. In outline: 1.5 million Japanese preorders, 700,000 copies in two days, 1.7 million copies in Japan, more than 2.2 million across Japan and the United States, and the top selling Saturn game worldwide. In markets where the Saturn struggled, this game was the counter argument; in Japan, it was close to the reason for the console.

The game itself kept traveling: a 2D Genesis remake in 1996, a Windows port in 1997, a PlayStation 2 conversion in 2004, and the arcade original on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2012. But its historical weight sits on the Saturn disc: the port that proved a home console could carry the era's defining arcade fighter, and the best selling game its console ever had in Japan.

THE QUESTIONS

Asked of this game

The Million Seller

Why did Virtua Fighter 2 sell the Saturn in Japan?

The Port

How did Sega fit Virtua Fighter 2 onto the Saturn at 60 frames per second?

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