According to XBLA enthusiast Sacra, a triumvirate of crusty Sega fighting games are due to arrive on Xbox Live Arcade sometime in the near future.
The wrinkly brawlers in question are Virtua Fighter 2, Fighting Vipers and Sonic The Fighters and have been outed by European ratings boards listings which were submitted a couple of weeks ago.
Read more on this after the jump.
First up is Virtua Fighter 2; originally making its debut in Japanese arcades back in the mists of 1994, it was considered the first 3D fighter to demand a high degree of mastery from the player and in doing so; prompted a thriving tournament scene to spring up in its wake. The title was subsequently released a year later for Sega’s 32-bit Sega Saturn home console. Soundly outclassed in the intervening years by Sega’s own sequels in the IP, the re-release of Virtua Fighter 2 is a particular a strange thing to occur and with that in mind, I hope they set an appropriately low (400 MSP) price point for it.
Next up is Fighting Vipers; a much less masterful experience than its po-faced Virtua Fighting cousin, the 1995 arcade release instead took the formula pioneered by Virtua Fighter and reapplied it on glam-rock esque fighters, weapons and flashy special moves in lieu of the sophisticated fighting experience its AM2 developed stablemate provided. It too found new life on the Sega Saturn, with the game being converted for release a year later.
Finally, we have Sonic The Fighters. Built off of the same tech that Virtua Fighter itself utilises, the game was mild travesty; devoid of any of the mastery or sophistication which was synonymous with the Virtua Fighter games, the game was a joyless and clumsy trainwreck. Its only real and meaningful purpose being the cautionary tale that it wove to remind us that one-on-one fighters with cute videogame mascots should never ever be attempted. The game was released later on the Playstation 2 and Gamecube and nobody gave two hoots about it back then either.
The release of these three old/obscure/crap (delete as appropriate) fighters is a puzzling piece of news indeed; what sort of market do Sega believe they’re going to reach versus the costs involved?
Really, Sega should have done one of two things; either release all three games in pack for a low price (I’m thinking 800 MSP for the lot) or just don’t bother releasing any of them and just release Fighters MegaMix; a crossover title which covers all three games and then some.
Baffling.
Anyway, despite the listing singling out Xbox Live Arcade as the sole destination for these oldies, it would make sense to think that Sega would eventually stick them on PC and PSN as well given their history.
Would there be anybody, anywhere who would be interested in grabbing any of these?
