Video - Virtua Fighter 2 (Saturn)

Today is the 15th anniversary of the Sony Playstation's launch in the US.  Today is also the Sega Dreamcast's 11th anniversary.  Happy birthday, free cake and ice cream for everyone!  Now here's Virtua Fighter 2 on the Saturn.

Why Sega couldn't properly follow up VF2 with another dozen high-resolution Saturn games is a bit of a mystery.  Fighting Vipers never quite did it for me, Fighters Megamix was an interesting experiment, but not quite serious, and Anarchy in the Nippon (the best of the lot) never even left Japan.  AM2 did produce Virtua Cop 2, which was outstanding, but that was it for the famed studio.  Yu Suzuki was consumed with his Shenmue vanity project for years, and the studio struggled with not one, but two translations of Virtua Fighter 3.  Ultimately, time ran out as Sega scrambled to the Dreamcast, which proved to be too little, too late.

The more I think about it, the more comfortable I am with the thought that Virtua Fighter 2 was the peak of the series.  Yes, it's terribly unbalanced, and there is a definite pecking order with the characters.  But this game has style, it has heart.  It has panache.  And it remains the most popular VF outside of Japan.