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| AM2/Genki |
Sega |
Out Now! |
Fighting |
£19.99 |
1-2 |
15+ |
VGA Box, Arcade Stick.
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The Best fighting game ever?
| The world renowned AM2 and Sega bring you Virtua Fighter 3tb. All the thrills & excitement of the arcade sensation have been faithfully recreated on Dreamcast, with the addition of an all new team battle mode. Test your fighting skills against the computer or challenge a friend using one of the twelve characters each with hundreds of different moves and their own unique style of fighting. Virtua Fighter 3tb, the fighter's choice. |  |
In my opinion, Virtua Fighter 3tb is the BEST fighting game on any console ever!
Yes, yes. I know a lot of you will probably disagree and go on that Soul Calibur, Power Stone or Dead Or Alive 2 are all much better but seeing as I'm a hardcore gamer VF3tb is my fighting game of choice. I have been a fan of the original 3D fighting game ever since I saw it back in '94, I mean, it was revolutionary, a new step in fighting games and you can't really argue with that now can you?
It may not be as smooth or as bouncy as Dead Or Alive 2 but, it still looks good!
Those of you who know the in and outs of Model 3 and the difference between it and Naomi will know why Dead Or Alive 2 looks better because it was made on the more powerful Naomi board and that VF3tb was done on Model 3 so that's why DOA2 looks better. Anyways Model 3 was still a very powerful board but was hard to port to Dreamcast so it looks as if AM2 and Genki have done a pretty good job of it and made it arcade perfect. The game looks nice and it was a launch title so if this is first generation then we can imagine how good 2nd generation looks, in fact we don't need to imagine, we know just look at
Shenmue! Virtua Fighter 3tb zips along a fair 50 frames per second (there's no 60Hz option) and looks great. The characters are all believable and gone are the days of the boring flat arenas and say hello to the amazing VF3tb arenas! These arenas range from fights on wobbly rafts and subway stations to fights on The Great Wall of China and rooftops! Also the ring outs are still about for this game these range from drops of about 2 feet to 20+ feet, so you could imagine how painful it would be to get knocked off that rooftop!
*Smack, Bang, Wallop*, "Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!", *Crash!* "Out of the Ring!"
As you'd expect from a fighting game there are the standard punch and kick sounds as well as the crashing sounds when the fighter gets knocked over. Now, if you've never played Virtua Fighter before you'll probably think that the sfx are quite poor, this is true until you get used to them and then they'll sound quite realistic once this happens. I was used to them already because I have been playing Virtua Fighter 2 for years. The music is good ranging from oriental style music to rock depending on where you fight.
A superbly playable, if slightly technical fighting game.
One thing that some may not like about Virtua Fighter is the technical fighting system. VF3tb remains technical but you can now invent your own combos instead of having to memorise the ones printed in the manual. You can invent your own punch, kick, dodge, elbow, kick combos. You can also combine special moves that you do know like Jacky's "Beat Knuckle" and "Spinning Knuckle" and make Jacky do a quick "Beat Knuckle" followed by a quick "Spinning Knuckle" to hit them while your opponent is in mid-air. If you've never played VF before it might take you a while to get used to some of the more technical moves of Akira, Pai and Lau but if you want characters with easier to pull-off moves choose Jacky, Sarah, Lion, Shun or Kage and you'll get used to their moves easily. The training mode should help you learn the game's moves.
Added Extras...
So now onto the more important things of the game, the features and game modes! Well VF's lastability is actually good (my, that sounds lame) with 6 game modes. These are: Team Battle, Normal mode, VS Team Battle, VS Normal mode, Training and History. The first 5 should more or less be self-explanatory so, what's this history mode then? Well it shows you the development of Virtua Fighters 1, 2 and 3. When you complete the game an extra movie becomes available which is the ending movie for VF3tb and it's rather good too. There is a lot of play time in VF3tb and you'll realise this if you're willing to put in the effort.
The Game Overall!
A superb fighting game that is the BEST on any console ever! Perhaps not for everyone though because of it's technical moves.
The Mark!
Graphics 96%
Sound 91%
Playability 95%
Lastability 94%
Overall 94%
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Screenshots and pictures courtesy of AM2, Dreamcast Europe, Gameplay.com and SimplyGames.com.
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