Despite the gradual decline in interest though, many believed that due to the originality of the first, another Virtua Fighter would eventually be made. And in 1995, after what seemed to be much longer than a mere two year wait, Yu Suzuki and his crack staff at Sega AM2 cranked out yet another installment. This time though, the blocky characters were gone, the animation was better and the moves were numerous. Virtua Fighter 2 marked a return to glory for the mostly forgotten series in both America and Japan, and when Sega of America announced their newest hardware, the Sega Saturn, was on its way, an arcade perfect port was said to be officially in the works -- and that's just what we got.

  It was at this time that the series took a sharp turn though, as Yu Suzuki had two enormous aces up his sleave. One was a mysterious title known as "Project Berkeley", now known as Shenmue, while the other was to be the first title for Sega's premiere arcade board, the Model 3. No one really thought anything of either title, that is, until they actually saw VF3 upon its public debut in 1996. Yu Suzuki revealed the new title to the general public in the form of a real-time polygonal demonstration, which showcased the new arcade board's processing power. It turned out that the Model 3 could render, in real-time, a total of one million polygons, a fact that even most jaded gamers couldn't scoff at in 1996.

  Upon its arcade and home debut, the third VF title featured a major departure from the two previous titles, in the form of an added fourth button. Contrary to its predecessors' three button layout, Virtua Fighter 3 made use of full three- dimensional backgrounds with multiple levels on almost every stage. And since fighting would change depending on your incline, environment, etc., the game required the use of a new "dodge" button, something that Virtua Fighter purists weren't very keen on. Of course, the Sega Dreamcast revision of Virtua Fighter 3, entitled VF3tb (Virtua Fighter 3 team battle) made its debut near the console launch, quickly finding its way into the hands of anxious new Dreamcast owners.

  However, the series didn't stop there, as Yu Suzuki had yet another announcement, which arrived at the Amusement Operator's Union on February 23rd, 2001. As eagerly expected by many, AM2 officially announced Virtua Fighter 4, which ran on Sega's improved Dreamcast hardware, known as the Naomi 2. And now that the new title is out in the open for all the world to see, I'll now fill you in a bit on exactly why Virtua Fighter 4, whether in arcades or on the PS2, is going to be extra special, specifically for those of us who are diehard fans of the first two Virtua Fighter installments. Now I know it's kind of strange seeing an article written about a Virtua Fighter game being released on a Sony console, let alone a brand-new one. Believe me when I say "I'm still getting over my initial shock."

  Of course, many of you now know what happened; Sega announced that they would be withdrawing from gaming hardware markets worldwide and focusing primarily on third-party publishing. As a result, support for Sony's PlayStation2, which currently holds the largest chunk of developer interest, was announced. This announcement heralded the end of Sega as a console hardware maker, and the beginning of the company that is now considered to be the second largest third-party publisher in the world. One of the first titles announced for the PS2 last year was noneother than Yu Suzuki's Virtua Fighter 4. And, as if that fact wasn't enough to chew on already, it would be a PlayStation 2 exclusive as well.

  Virtua Fighter 4 returns the series to its roots, by reinstating the three button layout of the first two. However, like the third title in the series, Virtua Fighter 4 retains the three-dimensional aspects of that installment as well. How this ultimately affects the gameplay has to be seen to be believed, but I'm pretty sure that fans of Yu Suzuki's past work in the fighting genre know that he had to have something good up his sleeve for the improved fighting system in Virtua Fighter 4. Overall character control and move combinations are spot-on, with little lag or even slow-down between moves, which is especially nice when you consider the level of detail being thrown around in the stages I've seen thus far. These include an enormous aquarium filled with various schools of exotic fish, a snow-covered fortress courtyard, a helicopter-patrolled rooftop with a glass surface and a burning hot desert which comes complete with the expected heat wave effects. Most of them even manage to keep the two-dimensional aspects of the first two Virtua Fighter titles, while retaining the graphical refinement of the third.

  Many of the characters from the previous games, including Akira Yuki, Aoi Umenokouji, Kage-Maru, Lau Chan, Pai Chan, Wolf Hawkfield, Jacky Bryant, Sarah Bryant, Lion Rafale, Shun Di and everybody's favorite back-breaker, Jeffry McWild, are all back to dish out even more pain in Virtua Fighter 4, along with two new fighters: Lee Fei, a young Chinese monk who practices a Shaolin kung fu style known as Rakan Ken, and Vanessa Lewis, a somewhat masculine policewoman from Brazil with an extremely simple, yet powerful fighting style. According to series creator Yu Suzuki, Lee Fei will add a more graceful style to the Virtua Fighter roster, while Vanessa will add a much more powerful one. I'm also pleased to inform you that, love her or hate her, the metallic female final boss known as "Dural" also returns from the three previous games, in an even more stunning form than ever before. The only notable absence in Virtua Fighter 4's roster is sumo wrestler Taka-Arashi, who made his series debut in Virtua Fighter 3, but obviously wasn't considered worthy of a return in this installment.

  Those of you who have played Yu Suzuki's unique Dreamcast title known as Shenmue will undoubtedly notice similar graphical touches in Virtua Fighter 4. According to Yu Suzuki, he learned quite a few useful techniques during the lengthy development of Shenmue, including how to put extremely realistic facial expressions, engaging dialog and a flair for clothing and eye movement to good use, something that he attempted to successfully implement into the finished Virtua Fighter 3, but never quite could. Yet even though the Naomi 2 hardware is substantially more powerful, Yu Suzuki and the developers at Sega AM2 still managed to create a much more faithful port of Virtua Fighter 4 for PlayStation 2's convoluted architecture than they ever could with the Saturn port of Virtua Fighter 2, long considered to be AM2's greatest arcade-to-console conversion.

  The sheer amount of detail in the PS2 Virtua Fighter 4, even when compared with its "overwhelmingly superior" Naomi 2 counterpart, is simply astounding, with even something as seemingly insignificant as Pai's eyelashes being totally and authentically rendered in real-time. Snow, rain and clothing are not just real-looking, but also change your overall fighting strategies, as snow can slow your character down, rain can dampen your fighter's clothes, gathers in puddles and splashes when you run through it or land in it. Your character's feet even kick up snowflakes and leave visible trenches where you walk through sleet, unique environmental modifications which stay that way until the very end of each fight.

  Yu Suzuki's Virtua Fighter 4 is also a VERY LONG game. The Kumite Mode proves to be a near-match for Soul Calibur's Mission Battles and a worthwhile addition to any arcade-to-console port, giving players the ability to not only earn new items and outfits to snaz up their favorite fighters, but also gives players the unique chance to face off against hundreds of pre-recorded artificial intelligence routines based on some of the most skilled players' actual fighting routines used in both the Japanese and North American arcade runs of Virtua Fighter 4; other fighting game developers the world over should study up and implement similar play modes in their own titles, as the days when "arcade perfect" ports were good enough are simply no more. There were still some graphical issues with the PlayStation 2 hardware that Yu Suzuki and his programmers at AM2 had a few problems with, such as the somewhat limited texture RAM on the PS2 when compared with the Naomi 2 board's standard 128 megabytes, but in the end, Sega's Virtua Fighter 4 is yet another title that will convince even the most jaded fighting fans to buy a PlayStation 2 and is undoubtedly the nicest port out of Sega AM2 I've had a chance to play thus far.
RATING: