Virtua Fighter always felt like the really bland knockoff version to the bigger fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken. When you think of big fighting game titles, odds are that Virtua Fighter won’t be one of them right? No disrespect there but that’s just how it is. It’s pretty fun to play one of the originals in the series through Genesis but it does reinforce that thought to me. The game’s not super colorful and Street Fighter was already more polished.

There isn’t any kind of story here so just pick a random character and go through Arcade mode to get the full experience. Basically you are fighting 9-10 opponents who all have their own ways of fighting. You have to take them all down and show them why you are the strongest fighter on the planet. If you don’t win….who will? I went with a fairly generic guy to play as because he seemed to be rather cocky and fortunately that was the case. It was fun to see him smirking the whole time and he had some fun win quotes.

Still the actual moveset was basically what you would expect from some average joe. A few kicks and punches but nothing out of the ordinary. I’m not saying he needed energy blasts or something but some kind of unique combos would have gone a long way to really having him break out compared to the other characters you know? That would have just made the most sense. Maybe his hair turns into electricity or he has an ultra aggressive fighting style.

As it is every match is fairly quick because the characters hit like a tank. There attacks deal so much damage that 2-3 full combos can have you down for the count. I was pretty surprised when I saw that the default timer for a match was 30 seconds but then after that it all made sense. You would never really need to go for the 60 seconds because one player would be down by then. As it is, I was barely able to cheese a small handful of matches in the last seconds when I was winning.

The A.I.’s difficulty level is really high here. Keep in mind that I was playing the default settings and I was getting absolutely clobbered at times. The enemy always seemed to know what the right move was and would not hesitate in launching it. It was a little suspicious at times but at the same time I know I am a super casual at this game so I shouldn’t expect to be getting big wins anyway. I can accept this for now and in the end I was eventually able to pull it off with some well timed rewinds. You just have to keep on trying over and over until eventually you get the big win that you were gunning for.

The graphics aren’t particularly impressive here. The game is surprisingly blocky so at times it feels more like a PS1 title. Additionally the soundtrack is basically nonexistent and having only 8 characters feels rather small. Some of this is a bit harsh on an old Genesis game to fix of course so it won’t lose many stars from that. At the end of the day what I’m really looking for here is how fun was the game and I would say that it delivers on that. I had a good time going through the levels and the final boss that’s an android of sorts was pretty interesting. I feel like there is probably some good lore that the series still needs to explore and that could really help it stand out at some point.

Overall, Virtua Fighter 2 is a fun game. In a world with Street Fighter and other fighting game titles there isn’t really much room for it but I do think the attempt was made. The game is certainly not a cash-in or anything like that. It actually does have smooth gameplay and the series lasted long enough to be on the PS3 but I just think it has yet to find a true gimmick that would put it over the edge. Naturally I would have liked to have had a story here too but maybe next time. So check this one out, there’s no real downside but I don’t think you will stick around for very long.

Overall 6/10