The Saturn turned 28 recently, making us, who were around for its release, feel that little bit older.
Of course you can’t have an anniversary without one of two party poopers on social media, and, well, is there any system more maligned by misinformation, revisionism and general FUD than the Saturn has been its entire existence?
The thing with a lot of comments is they don’t tally up with even the base evidence.
For example: The Saturn can’t do 3D.
What does that even mean? It has demonstrated, dozens, even hundreds of times, that it can render 3D games. Virtua Cop, Sega Rally, Last Bronx, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Nights into Dreams, there’s no shortage of high quality 3D software.
Sure, it did 3D differently, using quads instead of triangles and using sprites as texture maps. Although it could be argued it didn’t do it as well as the PS1 (though I’d suggest that comparison isn’t as cut and dry as many think), it certainly did it better than any other console in that generation bar the N64.
Many hold up early examples such as Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA as case in point of the systems shortcomings. To that, I say that whilst I agree they were rushed, they are each great in their own way.
Daytona has clear graphical issues, the result of porting a cutting edge arcade game to home hardware. For another example of this see Final Fight on the SNES. But unlike that Final Fight port, Daytona was content complete, including the incredible 39 rival cars on a single track, the experience was absolutely intact, and despite a low frame rate, it handled better than any port that would come after.
Now on to our main topic of this piece, Virtua Fighter.
There’s this view that Virtua Fighter was a disappointment, that the flickering polygons turned off a lot of would be buyers, but this just wasn’t true at the time. The game was a sales phenomenon in Japan and sold 1 to 1 with the hardware.
And for good reason. The Saturn port of Virtua Fighter was lauded at both its Japanese and Western launches. Both Edge and Next Generation, notoriously stingy scorers, awarded it high grades, with Edge’s 9 being extremely prestigious, seeing as a 10 wouldn’t be awarded for nearly another two years.
Other magazines were even more complimentary, I recall the Mean Machines Sega review awarding 96%, Sega Power scored it at 97% and if we step away from the Sega mags, C&VG bestowed a 94% score whilst GamesMaster were demonstrably impressed with the 96% score.
Critically and commercially then, it was a success, particularly in Japan. So where do the complaints come from?
Playing it now, the glitching polygons are something of an eyesore, but they’re only really prominent in the replay and attract modes. Even then, when played on a CRT they’re nowhere near as obvious and there were certainly very few complaints about them in its day. In their review of the PAL version, CVG even suggested they’d been “fixed”, which says to me that the pop in that was mostly acknowledged during the Western launch and was slight enough that some didn’t even notice it.
Some of the critique comes from comparison to games that were developed later. Battle Arena Toshinden is one such game, that dazzled many with it’s texture mapped visuals, yet came up woefully short in gameplay terms. It too has its share of glitching polygons, but without a pristine arcade machine to compare it to it enjoys standing on its own.
Then there’s Virtua Fighter Remix which many misconstrue to be an “apology” of sorts for the port of the original Virtua Fighter. In truth, it was cited by Sega themselves to be a tech demo, while also likely seeing a release to respond to titles like Tekken that had launched in March 1995 in Japan.
The timeline for it to be considered as an “apology” doesn’t add up. At the point of Remix’s reveal at E3 1995, the Saturn had not even launched in the West, though the infamous surprise US launch would come at that event. As such, the more critical reviews of the original Saturn port hadn’t manifested. When E3 attendee’s spied Remix, it was just a week or so from its finished state, so its production would have started long before. Given the lavish praise of the Japanese launch title, and the short timeframe between then and E3, coupled with the game being developed in between, the whole apology narrative simply seems chronologically impossible.
Remix was lauded upon release, to the point the series was still considered the one to beat among 3D fighters, yet despite claims to that the game saw improvements in gameplay, it’s since been evidenced by Pandamonium that this simply isn’t the case.
So the gameplay in the original was great, good enough that it was still lauded in the technically identical Remix update. If gameplay is king, again, we have to ask, what is the issue with the original Virtua Fighter port on Saturn?
Its detractors will point to the visuals, which admittedly aren’t perfect. They’ll point to rival PlayStation software at the time, as evidence that Virtua Fighter should have been better, visually.
The thing is, those visuals were fine for 1994 when it was received impeccably well. Perhaps it suffered next to a fully texture mapped Ridge Racer at launch, but Ridge Racer ran at half of the arcade games’ frame rate at a lower resolution. Saturn Virtua Fighter at least runs at the same frame rate as the arcade game, flickering polygons and lower resolution aside, it was pretty much the arcade experience in the home.
Tekken and Toshinden came later, created specifically for PS1 hardware, not having to be ported down from a monstrously powerful arcade board, and even then critics generally agreed they didn’t have the quality in the gameplay department to challenge Virtua Fighter.
And then there’s the 32X port. There seems to be some view that it is superior to the Saturn version. Whilst it doesn’t have the same visual pop in as the Saturn version, the visual detail is dramatically reduced. Not only is it far less comparable to the arcade original visually, the sound is fairly poor and, most importantly, there is slowdown which affects move timings.
I’m not sure why the 32X port is said to be better, it just feels like unnecessary shade to throw on the Saturn version. Despite being a late 32X game that should have taken more advantage of the hardware (see Saturn VF2) this port of Virtua Fighter was still heavily compromised compared to the Saturn port.
Some of this is surely down to the complexity of the original, as despite its flat-shaded looks, it remains a complex piece of software, even the Astro City Mini failed to replicate it perfectly, so surely Saturn hardware over a quarter of a century older managing to do it as well as it did is a triumph?
In 1994, on release, as a launch title, the Saturn port of Virtua Fighter was almost universally heralded as being fantastic. By its 1995 Western launch, that was still mostly the case despite second wave Saturn and PlayStation software in Japan challenging it. By the PS1’s launch the view has changed somewhat, but it and Remix were still considered the high watermark until Virtua Fighter 2 appeared.
Like far too much in the retrogaming scene, especially with regards to Sega, Virtua Fighter is subject to too much revisionism that tarnishes its legacy.
It cannot be argued that Virtua Fighter had one of the biggest impacts in the industry. Without it gaming would not exist as we know it, it literally influence consoles like the PS1.
The Saturn port in 1994 was a revelation, and while it was rushed and had some visual blemishes, it did exactly what a launch game should. It sold the console and created excitement with its visuals.
The rate of progress meant its flawed flat shaded visuals aged quickly by late 1995, but it was never a bad port, it wasn’t a disappointment on release and Virtua Fighter Remix wasn’t released as an “apology”.
Virtua Fighter is still fantastic to play on Saturn. For a game that has never had an arcade perfect port in the home, the Saturn is probably the best official way to play it, given that even the recent Astro City Mini struggles with the title. It has always been a great game that remains superb to play on Saturn. To say it was a disappointment or a mess does it a great disservice.
In 1994 and some of 1995, there really was nothing to could truly rival it, those of us who poured over every drip of information they could find about the game knew it, and the fact that even today no official release can claim an absolute victory over the Saturn port, that Saturn version deserves infinitely more respect.
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