Why Did Virtua Fighter 2 Sell the Saturn in Japan?
The numbers first, since they are the argument. Sega reported 1.5 million preorders for the Saturn version of Virtua Fighter 2 in Japan, which was nearly as many as the number of Saturns that had been sold in Japan at that point. On release in December 1995 it sold 700,000 copies within two days. It finished as the third best selling home video game of 1995 in Japan, behind only Dragon Quest VI and Chrono Trigger, two of the biggest role playing games ever made.
It remains the highest selling Sega Saturn game in Japan, with 1.7 million copies sold, and it was the top selling Saturn game worldwide.
THE TWO COVERS
A portrait in America, a fight in Japan
WHY IT MOVED HARDWARE
The documented patternTHE REST OF THE RECORD
America, and the totalThe pattern repeated in milder form in the United States, where the game was bundled with Saturn consoles alongside Daytona USA and Virtua Cop and sold more than 500,000 bundled copies by December 1996, bringing the Japan and United States total past 2.2 million units. Worldwide, the Saturn version passed two million, and franchise accounting puts the game at the top of the Saturn's all time sales list.
What Japan got was the strongest version of the phenomenon: an arcade phenomenon at its peak, a port the press called flawless in the ways that mattered, and a console whose library, in its home market, was led by the game its players most wanted. That is what selling a console looks like in the sales record, and Virtua Fighter 2's record has never been passed on the Saturn.