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FIGHTERS MEGAMIX
Sega Saturn
3D Fighter/ 2 Players
Available Now
¥5800
Copyright © Sega Enterprises
— by Mark L. Johnson
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Sega announced FIGHTERS MEGAMIX just a short time before
releasing the game in Japan for the New Year's holiday, much
to the surprise of the game community. Here was an unknown
"Sega does KING OF FIGHTERS" fighting game that pitted Sega's
VIRTUA FIGHTER crew against the FIGHTING VIPERS with a ton of
secrets thrown in, and it soon became a top seller.
 After loading up
the game and viewing a decent FMV intro (using newer
compression techniques which are much smoother at larger sizes
than the old Cinepak method) which flashes through all the VF
and FV characters and shows Akira and Bahn duking it out, a
standard English menu lists the variety of options
available.
1P Mode is the
primary mode, where the player is presented with a large grid
of 22 fighters to begin with (and ten more spots filled with
question marks). Then after selecting a fighter, the Course
Select screen appears with each course containing 7 fighters
to battle. Initial options include "Novice Team", "Virtua
Fighters", "Fighting Vipers", and "Girls", but as these
courses are beat more will become available. By finishing a
course, more fighters will become available as well.
The Survival Mode
now common in newer fighting games is here, with the option
of fighting for a limit of 3, 7, or 15 minutes. VS Mode
offers 1P vs 2P or 1P vs CPU. Team Battle is the same as
VIRTUA FIGHTER 2 and such, with
you and your opponent (either another person or the computer)
and up to eight fighters.
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All modes allow
the player to change difficulty ratings, time limits, key
mappings, and even choose enclosed (caged) fights, none (a la
TEKKEN with no ring outs), or
random.
Training Mode
is by far the best I have seen in a fighter to date. Not
only are all the moves for each main fighter listed while a
damage bar keeps tabs on how much damage a combo makes, but
the training also leads the player through each move or combo
and indicates when the player successfully performs the
current suggestion. However, some of the moves may be
confusing to non-Kanji readers, since details such as "From
Behind" or "While Running" are noted in Kanji.
Dealing with gameplay,
all the fighters now sport new moves. With the addition of
the VIRTUA FIGHTER 3 Dodge button, the
dynamics from the original VF and FV games have changed.
Also, the player can choose which physics model to follow
(ie VIRTUA FIGHTER or
FIGHTING VIPERS). The VF model is more
'realistic' while FV's adds the super "armor cracking" hits
and flip recovery techniques to all characters. The
FIGHTING VIPERS still have their armor,
which can be broken off, but the VIRTUA FIGHTER
characters make up for it with speed and more techniques.
Move-wise, all
characters have been spruced up. The VF characters have a
majority of the moves created for VIRTUA FIGHTER 3,
and the FV characters have a few new moves to balance things
out.
Graphically the
fighters move at a swift 60 fps, and each character now uses
light sourcing and gourad shading techniques. This comes at
a cost of resolution which, although higher than the
FIGHTING VIPERS game for the Saturn,
is still noticably lower than the beautiful VIRTUA FIGHTER 2.
Each character has a different background, using flat planes
in the far distance (for a better effect than the original
VF2 version). There is minor slowdown at some points with
certain characters and caged stages, though.
Since the large
number of fighters each have their own theme, the songs
are limited to about 1 minute 30 seconds, which means after
each bout the music resets to the beginning. This can be
minorly annoying at times, but the variety and quality of
remixed music is very good. The sound effects are standard
but slightly grainy.
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So finally how
does it play? Incredibly. The addition of VF3 moves adds a
lot of depth to the characters, and the programmers pulled off
balancing the characters between these different series
surprisingly well (although some of the weirder secret
characters lack depth beyond the initial wow value). The
sheer number and variety of combos, dodges, counters, and
throws to each character is such that mastering a character
is not simply a one hour affair of memorizing long strings of
button presses. The computer's "normal" difficulty level is a
little easy, but on "hard" I was challenged without a feeling
of cheapness.
And secretwise,
selected picks from VF KIDS,
SONIC THE FIGHTERS,
VIRTUA COP, and even a Mexican jumping
bean will keep the player coming back. Some tricks and
options will appear only after playing a certain number of
times, successfully performing enough practice moves with the
different characters, and even just keeping the Saturn on
long enough. And each fighter course has pieces to an art
gallery of CG renditions of the players.
Simply put, this
is the best home fighting game to date. It may lack the
graphical detail of SOUL EDGE, for
instance, but in game feel FIGHTERS MEGAMIX
easily surpases it. I do miss the Ranking Mode and Expert
Mode (with learning) from VIRTUA FIGHTER 2
and I will not throw out my copy of VF 2 yet, but the amount
of players and features will keep me playing and the computer
player will give no mercy in higher difficulty levels (there's
nothing like having computer Akira pull off a SPOD on you).
Of news to North
American players, Sega has already announced plans to bring
FIGHTERS MEGAMIX over here this summer.
For the impatient, the Japanese edition has more Japanese than
previous fighters (in the options and training mode) but it is
not much of a hinderance to English-only players. But if you
are a VIRTUA FIGHTER fan looking to
practice up for VF3, a
FIGHTING VIPERS player who wants a
version done better, or just a gamer needing a good romp with
more characters than you can shake a quarter at,
FIGHTERS MEGAMIX will not
disappoint.
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