Virtua Fighter is a Fighting Game developed and published by Sega. First released in 1993, this would become the first installment in the long-running Virtua Fighter video game franchise.
At the turn of The '90s, Sega was deep in arcade releases, having developed and published a number of 2D sprite-based titles. However, one developer was extremely interested in the development of working in 3D; Yu Suzuki, Sega's golden developer in the arcades and the head of the Sega AM2 division. After the release of their debut 3D arcade game, Virtua Racing, the gaming landscape was changing rapidly and Sega AM2 was one of the leading forces in embracing the new dimension.
With the popularity of Fighting Games being spearheaded by Capcom's Street Fighter II, Suzuki wanted to create a martial arts game where, instead of including fanatical elements like Kamehame Hadokens and electric beasts, it would focus on realistic environments, characters, and animations while fighting one-on-one. Thus, Virtua Fighter was created; a fighting game using on a simple, yet extremely technical, three button layout, with Punch, Kick, and Guard commands. The realism would extend to how the characters moved, such as clothes and hair having their own physics. It'd also introduce 3D arenas, instead of being constrained to a 2D plane like in other fighting games, and is one of the first fighting games to introduce a Ring Out mechanic.
Following its arcade debut, Virtua Fighter would be brought to the home consoles, starting with a Sega Saturn port in 1994 (1995 outside of Japan) and even the Sega 32X in 1995. The game's first improved version, Virtua Fighter Remix, also released in the arcades in 1995, with the updated version being sent out to all Sega Saturn owners for free. Remix contained higher quality polygonal models, texture mapping, and some gameplay changes. A Video Game Remake for the series' 10th Anniversary was released in 2003, coinciding with the release of Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution; titled Virtua Fighter 10th Anniversary, it launched on the PlayStation 2 in Japan, while the North American version included it with copies of Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution.
A sequel, Virtua Fighter 2, would release a year later in 1994 after a very short turnaround time.
Virtua Fighter provides examples of:
- Combos: As one of the earliest 3-D fighting games, the roster of characters were given a number of powerful moves that strung together for heavy damage. These gave the characters the ability to hold their own against characters like Jeffrey or Wolf who both had a single-hit wrestling move that took half a character's health.
- Creative Closing Credits: After winning or losing against Dural, it then cuts to a montage of how the final round of each match went in the arcade run (including your losing round against Dural).
- Fixed-Floor Fighting: All stages in the game are flat surfaces, with no verticality. If a player is going to fall out of bounds, they will, as there's no Edge Gravity either.
- Home Stage: All eight fighters have their own unique stages:
- Beach (Jacky)
- Canyon (Jeffry)
- City (Sarah)
- Wetland (Kage)
- Lake (Pai)
- Sunset (Wolf)
- Desert (Lau)
- Dawn (shared between Akira and Dural)
- Jiggle Physics: One of the game's dedications to realism is to provide cloth and hair physics; Akira's headband and Pai's ponytails would sway when moving, and players could even knock off Pai's hat off.
- No Plot? No Problem!: The plot of the first game, at face value, is that Akira Yuki specializes in the art of "Hakkyoku-ken"; he enters the World Fighting Tournament to test his skills and become the greatest fighter in the world. That's why he ends up fighting eight other combatants in this tournament, including a Canadian professional wrestler, a Hong Kong action movie star, an Australian fisherman, and even a Ninja, before capping things off with a fight against a silver-plated android. A lot of the backstory elements like the existence of Judgment 6, J6 brainwashing Sarah, and how J6 created Dural would be introduced in later games, and were retroactively incorporated in the manuals of the re-releases.
- Punch-Kick Layout: Virtua Fighter has a very simple button layout: not only a button for punching and kicking, but also a button to block, the very first instance of a dedicated block button in fighting games. Attacks were mapped to certain control stick and button presses, making for a very accessible scheme for newcomers; beginners can easily grasp it, but the competitive fighting game crowd can learn the nuances and depths of this simple layout.
- Ring Out: One of the most significant examples in gaming, with this game being the Trope Codifier of Ring Out victories. In its pursuit of realistic fighting, there's no Edge Gravity at the ring's edge, and it's entirely possible to step over the edge without any influence from the opponent.
- Tech-Demo Game: One of the reasons behind this game's creation was to show off what 3D graphics could do, surpassing the blocky, stiff animated supporting humans shown in Virtua Racing, and designing humans with limited polygons and having realistic character animations when translating the fighting game genre into 3D. This can be seen in the final product, as characters pull off moves that were studied by real martial artists, there was a dynamic moving camera as the characters moved through the 3D space, and the backgrounds were simplified bitmaps to allow more polygons for the fighters and giving them more detail. The game's lighting throughout the various stages were also a technical showcase, positioning the light source in different areas to give them and the fighters a more dynamic look and atmosphere. Sarah's stage in particular, a skyscraper at night set with neon floor, provides high contrast shadows from below the fighters themselves.
- Unbuilt Trope: Some of the original cast were already breaking the mold when the game was released. The resident Jeet Kun Do fighter, Jacky, is not a Bruce Lee Clone, but a blonde American. The main character, Akira, a Japanese man in a Karate gi, does not practice karate or even another Japanese martial art, but a specific style of Chinese kung fu, Baji. On top of that, despite being the main character, he is by far the most difficult to play effectively, and is the Pre-Final Boss in the arcade mode.
- A Winner Is You: Regardless if the player won or lost against Dural in the Bonus Stage, the game cuts to a Creative Closing Credits of the developers and how the player fought in each stage. It then cuts to your character doing their victory animation with the text "Game Over" below it, and then boots right back to the start.