New Virtua Fighter 5 Screens

For me, it's always been SFII first and Virtua Fighter second. It's nice to see the best playing fighting game of all time remains the best looking.

However, what I really miss are the days of Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting, Martial Champions, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat, Fatal Fury, World Heroes and the rest. It was funny how developers would push such incremental changes from one game to the next, yet they were all wildly successful. If only my poor Genesis had been able to accurately reproduce any of them.

The original and... best? Well Tekken certainly gives it a run for it's money, moreso soul calibre if you are talking weapons.

But then Sega know gameplay :)

And the screens do look very nice.

Can any of them compare with the sheer addictive qualities of the decade+ old SF2 though???

I'm not going to spew how beautiful these screens look. They look...ok. Instead I will do the unpopular and actually be critical.
It looks to me like "next gen" lighting and textures on last gen character models and environments. Give me better detail than glossy skin and clothing that reacts with "real physics" for christ sakes!
Developers need to pull it together and come up with character models that are beyond what has been done before.

Does it look good? Damn right; it looks great. The game doesn't need graphics to save it though - VF has always had a top notch fighting engine that doesn't need an extra "glossing over" to make it good (compared to other fighting games with bad fighting engines and retarded reversal systems).

Will VF5 succeed where it's predecessors have failed? Hell no. (Painstakingly - hell no.)

First of all, arcades are all but nonexistant in this day and age. It's been a long time since I could go spend 3 hrs and $5 on Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (which was arguably the last fighting game that did well at arcades). Arcades in the US are dead. Secondly, VF is not a fighting game that 99% of US fighting game players will actually play and become skilled at. Why? Well, why should they when they could just as easily go play a Namco fighting game and mash buttons and pull off a few combos and string together some wins...tsk tsk on anyone trying a fighting game that actually requires *cough* SKILL to be good at. VF5 will do huge in Japan...just like VF4/VF4 Evolution and VF3 and VF2 and Last Bronx, Fighters Megamix, Fighting Vipers, and VF1 before it.

If this game will do well in the US, it would have to be a budget title for casual gamers to be interested in it, and it would have to have online play. Both of these are possible...well, not really, since (a few weeks ago, as reported on here) there won't be any online fighting in the console ports of the game. And even if those two points WERE ironed out and included in the (cheap) purchase price - you'd still have to deal with problem #1 from above, which is the fact that most fighting game players are too lazy to learn how to play with VF characters.

Don't get me wrong...you CAN mash in a VF game; just don't get surprised when a skilled Akira player hands you your own @$$.

Fighting games I own
1.Mortal Kombat series (rank: 2)
2.Street Fighter series (rank: 4)
3.Eternal Champions series (rank: 5)
4.Virtua Fighter series (rank: 3)
5.Toi Shi Den series (rank: 7)
6.Killer Instinct series (rank: 6)
7.Tekken series (rank: 1)
8.Ultra Vortek (rank: 8)

"Don't get me wrong...you CAN mash in a VF game; just don't get surprised when a skilled Akira player hands you your own @$$."
I learnt that lesson in virtua fighter 4....

zero2dash
Although your comments are not off topic....it still feels like you somehow highjacked this thread with some wild tangent that has nothing to do with anything...its well said, but it feels like you're trying to hard to sound like some unappreciated scholar of VF...which is lame.
Here are some screens---Look good? Y/N? Anticipation?

"dude":

This thread wasn't hijacked. The last paragraph above is "Where does Virtua Fighter rank on your list of all-time great fighting games?" I think zero2dash is within his rights to explain why VF is so good.

By the way, he is absolutely right. I spent hours in front of VF4 ranking mode, and was routinely frustrated. I had my SFII mindset on, just playing smart and avoiding patterns. You can't do that in VF -- the computer and skilled players are simply too good.

No question that VF was a milestone on release. It brought fighting to 3D and didn't lose the fun factor that fighting had in 2D. It lead the way for future series which now, in my opinion, blow away the VF series such as Soul Calibur, DOA and Tekken. I still love that Capcom is making fighting games in 2D even though they tried the 3D route, but I believe that theres room for 2D and 3D fighters and the biggest 2 games that lead the way respectivly were Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior and Virtua Fighter.

These screen shots look amazing. It looks like the screen shots blow Tekken 5 away. Bundle that with VF's superb gameplay and you have a winner. I've been a huge fan of the VF series since VF 2. I mainly like to use Lion and Lau. VF is way too complex for most people to pick up and play, but it seems like second nature to me since I've played the crap out of all of them since 2. I payed 1, but not as much as the others. VF is also one of the most balanced fighting games I have ever played. I'm interested to see what home console it is going to come out for. That will determine the next gen system I get first.

MY top 10 fighting game series.

1. Samurai Showdown
2. Virtua Fighter
3. King of Fighters
4. Soul Calibur
5. Guilty Gear
6. Street Fighter
7. Fatal Fury series, Real Bout and Garou
8. Tekken
9. Capcom's vs. series
10. Dead or Alive

VF is the most technically brilliant fighter there is. Period. It's not as fluid as, say, DOA, but it is more realistic.

DOA and VF, along with the 2D fighting games of yore, are my favorites, bar none.

I was crushed that Microsoft didn't do everything in its power to bring VF to the Xbox. I own every AM2 developed fighter for the Saturn and Dreamcast (except VF Kids.)

On a side note, I've never been able to get into Tekken. It just doesn't make sense to me to have a button for each limb. Using each arm and leg is an intuitive process in real life, it shouldn't be different in a game. That's why VF has always appealed to me more than Tekken.

Anyway, whoever said online play is a must is absolutely correct, especially so for Virtua Fighter. If you actually play VF enough to be good at it, chances are you stomp your friends every time. Online can bring you opponents who really understand the game.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot Super Smash Bros. That game is a fighting technician's dream.

question.. why do no xbox360 games look like this, technically there is no real reason... the answer is art direction, Art direction is what will drive next gen.. not polygons....

I have played since the very start.

To me, ever since Virtua Fighter 2, it has been number one in fighting games.

this is arcade only?

For me, the Street fighter series is first, and the Virtua Fighter series comes second. I liked the VF series simply because of Akira.

"dude"
I said the screenshots looked really good...and then continued to comment that VF doesn't need graphics to make it a great fighting game because it (at it's fundamental gameplay 'core') is already a great fighting game. Other fighting games DO rely more on flash than what's beneath the surface.

Hey, I enjoy DoA as much as the next guy. I just hate the counter system; it's gay. If it was like arcade DoA and you had to hit f,b+counter (which means you can't just block the whole time and then counter...you have to hit forward, which *leaves you open*, -before- you can counter), then the counter system in home console DoAs wouldn't be gay.

Same with Tekken and Soul Edge/Calibur. I love Tekken Tag; that's my favorite Tekken game (and really the only one I'll play because I don't like T4 and I honestly haven't played T5) but the game is a mishmash of greatness and trash at the same time. Tekken CAN be a deep game; true. No average "5 minutes of game play" Joe can learn all of King/Armor Kings throws and rolling death cradle combos. BUT Tekken is a game (mostly) played by newbs with no talent and no skill (and a trash talking mouth to go along with it) and...playing Tekken against most other players (at least in arcades in an 'outside of my friends' circle) is a pretty annoying occurence. I have seen high level Tekken skill players; I used to hang out with Shaun here in St. Louis - one of the best Tekken Tag players in the country (he's won so many tournaments across the US that I've lost count).

Same thing with Soul Calibur. There's some skilled Ivy players out there that you can't even get close to because they're whipping you with the long distance sword attacks the whole time. But a scrub can just as easily do a ring out and end your tournament run; trust me, I've seen it happen. A friend of mine who had no prior Soul Edge experience picked Rock and did nothing but ring outs during a tournament and he actually finished in 2nd place. That's a seriously disappointment.

But anyway...VF needs to reach a larger audience in order to be successful. (Especially in areas where there's not a lot of VF machines or players...basically anywhere that isn't Cali or NY.) Online play is a must. Do VF fans get it? No.

As for ranking fighting games...
SF series is #1. You can dissect it into "side series" like Third Strike, Zero 2 Dash/Zero 3 (known in the US as Alpha 2 Gold and Alpha 3 repectively), and SSF2X (Super Turbo), but as a whole...SF is the innovator and what brought fighting games into the forefront. (It borrowed from other early-era fighting games at the time such as Yie Ar Kung Fu and Karate Champ, and while Fighting Street wasn't much of anything since motion moves were almost impossible to pull off...it still eventually ended up being SF2: The World Warriors which was the start of the franchise.)

SNK franchises take #2. SNK makes some of the best fighting games...which, sadly, most people have never played. KOF is still one of the BEST and MOST BALANCED fighting game franchises on the planet. Add into this more titles like Fatal Fury/Real Bout, Samurai Showdown, Gekka No Kenshi (Last Blade), and eventually Garou...and SNK equals Capcom in terms of quality. SNK's only minus point comes in popularity...people went nuts for Capcom fighters and usually passed up the SNK machines to get to a SF machine.

Mortal Kombat is #3 because it gave new blood (no pun intended) into the genre and got MORE people into fighting games...with...

#4 Killer Instinct started the "combo" craze in fighting games. Granted, you had basic combos (2-in-1s in SF2 and MK 1/2) but KI took it farther.

Then you're approaching 3d fighters which started out with...

#5 Virtua Fighter - the first 3d fighter released. Tekken (#6) came out shortly afterwards, followed by some alternate spinoffs for both companies (Sega with Fighting Vipers, Namco with...

#7 Soul Edge started the 3d fighting/weapons based fighting genre (later joined by Last Bronx, an excellent fighting game that most people don't know about because Sega didn't do much to bring it out here in the US).

Then we get into redundant/more of the same stuff. I'm not saying we're "without quality", but not too many other fighting games add onto what's covered above. Tobal 2 is an excellent fighting game; it's a shame it's an import only Ps1 game otherwise more US players could've seen how great it was (I paid $70 for my copy back in the day). Guilty Gear (also mentioned in a previous post; I pity myself for not mentioning that earlier) is a great franchise...if not for Dust Cancels in GGX/GGX2, it probably wouldn't be too broken (ie unbalanced).

I'm sure I'm missing a few others. ^_^

Fighting game fan for life...
2d is where it'll always be. =)

Oh yeah...
Smash Brothers brought simultaneous 4player...definitely worth a mention.
(Later on borrowed by Groove On Fight, another good 2d fighter most people have probably never played...cause most people didn't own a Saturn let alone have a switch installed in theirs so they could play imports.) ^_^

the Vs. series changed a lot of things...MvC2 was the most popular but also the most broken; Cable completely ruined the game (in addition to the -many- infinites in the game that dominators like Magneto have)...X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Street Fighter still remain my fave 'Vs.' games...in addition to...

Capcom vs. SNK 2 - a lot of people passed over CvS1 due to a lack of characters and a weak Super system...CvS2 remedied this with a huge character selection and 6 fighting systems to play with (C-A-P-S-N-K) and also introduced the mainstream (ie non Kawaks/Kaillera) player into online play in a fighting game. Even with the lag....(Zangief roll-into-FAB=0wns)