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Playing through the US version (haven't had this version since I bought it at retail a year or so after release back in the day, was bitterly disappointed by the graphics, and returned it to the store ; D) of Virtua Fighter 3tb for Dreamcast as Akira Yuki, on NORMAL difficulty, in the emulator Flycast in Windows!
Forgot I played through on EASY last time! NORMAL didn't seem particularly harder, actually. Eh hm well hopefully HARD and HARDER DO get harder--in case I ever get any better. ; )
Actually reading the manual that came with the used copy I got off eBay, I noticed Akira DOES have a K+G move (and this US version lets you set--but doesn't save :p--combination input buttons, ie multiple buttons activating on a single button press, whereas the earlier Japanese version DOESN'T have that feature): down-forward K+G with him does a weird-looking simultaneous punch and kick animation. ; D I got a little paranoid that it might be spammable and exploit this game's AI's general inability to defend properly against sweep kicks, but no, it doesn't--in fact, oddly enough I found I couldn't really repeat the move: if you hold DF and press the buttons again, when he attacks again he does what's actually his down-Kick move! Weird!
Sega games had such screwy standards for save files sometimes--I particularly ran into this with PS3 games of theirs but even here on their own console (and developed by Genki rather than Sega AM2), the only thing apparently saved--manually--are stats on the outcomes of Vs matches; it DOESN'T save, for instance, your button mappings, or the ENDING video you unlock when you beat the game--in fact--and it warns you to save beforehand ; D--when you play that video, at the end of it, it soft-resets the game, apparently clearing even your Vs matchup data! (And that's another difference vs the JP version, because in that earlier version, they maybe weren't sure about doing the soft reset, and just let the video loop until the player like did their own reset or turned off the Dreamcast or something. ; D)
So to work around that I'm trying to keep a save state, set to auto-load in the emulator when I run the game, that has my controls set and the ENDING video available. : P
In Flycast, you've got to have the "Full Framebuffer Emulation" video option on when viewing the videos, otherwise they flicker horribly. I turn it off after viewing them because the option's info text says it's "very slow"--and it disables the emulator's Widescreen function while it's active.
Forgot how long the HISTORY video is! And how it's got sorta individual intro videos for a lot of the characters.
The dates were messed up in my head, 'cause the DC came out in '98 in Japan--so while 3tb came out in the US a year after Japan had it, it was 10/18/99, still pretty near US system launch (9/9/99). I didn't get a Dreamcast until well after launch, so it probably WAS 2000, and I guess I had only just then realized there WAS a VF game for DC, when I hustled excitedly into the ol' Fred Meyer in Eastlake in Seattle...er oh well "South Lake Union" is the proper name of that specific area I guess. What's there now? Aside from Amazon... Google maps says... Oh neat just rows of massive generic glass box buildings : P, maybe a Bartell Drugs in one near where the FM was. |
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The AI in 3tb IS more fun to play against than the other VF AIs (except maybe 1, I dunno, don't have that one). ^ _^ Maybe the physics and weird stages helps but 3tb feels like more of a back and forth thing rather than just a question of whether the AI decided to block or not. ; D
Programmer Kota Matsumoto has the only CPU/AI credits I can find for the entire VF series, and they're for VF2--which has kind of terrible AI unless you're feeling quite masochistic--and VF3/3tb https://www.mobygames.com/person/69404/kota-matsumoto/credits/ . He's also credited as a general programmer in 5, and Program Leader for 5FS--which may explain why FS's AI is a bit more playable than 4-through-5-vanilla? No credit for him on 4 or 4E. |
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I must've fought T.Arashi as Akira somewhat recently but dang I don't remember him going off on me like this! Maybe I hadn't fought him as the "boss" ie on the last stage before Dural (which is called "Final Stage" on her splash screen but then "Bonus Stage" during the match). Had to poke furiously to keep him from running me over! And his wake-up swing is huge! |
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Babbling about the announcement of Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. 'ppp'
The Steam VF5REVO page is https://store.steampowered.com/app/3112260/Virtua_Fighter_5_REVO/
The VF5REVO song--by Daytonaaaaa guy Takenobu Mitsuyoshi--is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR68FP17Uwk (the visual part of the video is re-used from VF5US ; D)
Update: Ah, I've been told by nou from virtuafighter.com https://virtuafighter.com/threads/virtua-fighter-5-r-e-v-o-announced-for-steam.22184/page-3#post-417016 that this song is a new English-language version of a song from Final Showdown (and Ultimate Showdown), where it is sung in Japanese, and appears at the end of the game "if you beat it without losing a match in under 10 minutes." You can hear that FS version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDwYcqGPMcA |
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While babbling about the teaser trailer and character model pan-arounds of the finally revealed "New Virtua Fighter Project" (which some people are calling VF6 / Virtua Fighter 6 for short but doesn't actually have a name yet and maybe seems more likely to be a complete series reboot, especially since it's being made by a different Sega studio, Ryu Ga Gotoku, not AM2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFU5lx-RfNA
Probably won't be out for a while so there's lots of time to worry about whether this actual new VF game will be an amazing reinvention of the fighting game genre like the original VF, or just a sorta Tekken-ified VF, or what. = P Also remembered that RGG Studio haven't done a super-great job with the ports of the arcade games they've put in the virtual arcades in the Yakuza / Like a Dragon games. Ehh... Well anyhoo, eventually we'll see what they come up with. |
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| | | | Shoot I was so excited about talking about NVFP that I somehow managed to be running the game in 4:3 instead of widescreen, what the heck. I don't know how that was even possible, I didn't toggle the widescreen option off! HM. |
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That cheesy fight "concept" video Sega just released for New Virtua Fighter Project is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtLRfES1YQU -- and well I guess that's meant to be two Akiras fighting each other. : P |
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| | | | Turns out the choreography for that New Virtua Fighter Project "concept" fight was taken directly from the 1988 Jacky Chan movie "Dragons Forever": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzcc343bakU |
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| | | CPU winner Jacky throws himself out of his own stage ; D :
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Aoi:
8:02 - Aoi elbows Sarah onto the tracks
5:35 - Kage & Aoi both bite it
18:31 - Dural bonus stage
20:24 - credits
21:27 - score entry, ranking
23:14 - ending video
25:30 - wrap!
The corrupt "Ready" text at the start of the matches seems to have been caused by the particular save state I was having Flycast load automatically when starting the game. 'p'
I keep forgetting that the game doesn't actually save you having cleared the arcade mode--that's part of why I was starting from the save state, I guess. ; ) Oh well wait the main reason was 'cause the game also doesn't save your button mappings. ; D (Note to self: if you gotta clear out the save stage again in the future, just change the first two button mappings, defaulting to Guard and Evade, to P+G and K+G.)
Aoi's fun! Kinda crushed--well okay Sarah was close--until Jacky, and probably still did better against him than I did as Akira last time. ; ) Mayyybe there's a bit of an advantage in that the CPU doesn't block sweep kicks very well (Akira doesn't have a sweep kick ; D) but I'm not playing on super-hard difficulty anyway so big whoop--anyway I guess I can play other characters, not just Akira...so this may go back up to being my clear fave VF. ^ _^ |
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Jeffry
Haven't yet got my head around Jeffry's fighting in this game; I'm terrible with throws so that isn't helping! I like his 2P outfit I used here though (hold START while selecting character), with colorful do-rag, crazy shark jaw t-shirt, and big boots. : D
I guess things were going OKAY until Sarah. ; D |
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This Pai is just fun; no struggling with the move set like I have tended to with her in 5FS.
Last (only other??) time maybe that I beat Dural in 3tb was with Pai (plus a 1cc, so I guess I was better in 2021 ; D) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PmQgNAZ5NM |
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Lau Chan
Dunno if I realized before Sarah doesn't really have her own scene in the "ENDING" movie--she's just kind of the maiden in distress in Jacky's. = p
Gonna have to stop trying to make new save states to preserve my scores 'cause save states also save the button config ('cause the game itself doesn't ; D) and it's easy to get 'em screwed up...well I keep managing to do that, anyway. ; DD So I'll just leave my current correct state alone.
Didn't get along with him in 5FS but Lau's pretty fun in 3tb! Can't seem to get a big juggle off his trademark df_P_K uppercut scream slap unless it's a light opponent like Aoi and he doesn't have much else in the way of P_K moves I don't think, but hey. Oh yeah and he's got those moves I found right at the end: uf_K forward tumble kick almost beat Dural for me and he's got a Bryant-style backflip kick with ub_K. |
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Was loads of fun crushin' with awesome WOLF moves uh up until I got ripped repeatedly by Jacky in the last regular round and then killededed hard by Dural. Yeesh! Hits that point where they're too evasive to throw and then uh dang. Although up-forward-guard-kick scissor dropkick worked kinda pretty good on Jacky, finally. |
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Taka-Arashi
0:00 - start
0:47 - fight 'em
30:57 - oh bfP
32:45 - BONUS STAGE
37:18 - ENDING
bfP - rush-in knock-down; had to find this to beat Jacky's speed, range, damage |
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Yeah so Wikipedia says Toshihiro Nagoshi, credited here both for "Character Modeling Direction" under "Character Designers," and elsewhere in the credits just as "Supervisor" (= o), would go on to create the Super Monkey Ball and Yakuza (now "Like a Dragon") franchises for Sega. And he is still alive and supposedly working on his own game at his own studio.
Doing throws in this game isn't as bizarre as in 2 but it ain't great. ; D |
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