If I didn’t know that your timeframe is WAY off, I’d be laughing at VF. People have been trying to master melee fox basically since the game came out and they’re still years and years off.
I don’t believe anyone has master VF and I doubt anyone really will.
Resurrection!
/Gill
Definitely the first Bushido Blade. Pity the sequel didn’t live up to it.
My personal opinion would have to be Guilty Gear.
Guilty Gear is complex in so many ways, especially Accent Core. Sure the combos are “easy” to perform, but everything else about the game from the fast paced battles, to the crazy mixups, the balance system that both makes sense and NO sense at the same time (I don’t mean that literally), to just the very small details. You have to keep your eye out for small things, big things, predict if your opponent is going to false roman or roman cancel. My friend has a saying for this game.
“In Guilty Gear, everyone is broken.” What he means is, everyone is just so ridiculously good. (Except perhaps Johnny and Bridget, but they can still win pretty well in right hands.) There’s so much to remember in this game, from the guts, to each players moves and effects, to fuzzy guards, to play styles and combos, good strategies, punishing fast enough, superblocking in the air, superblocking near death (stops death by guard damage), it’s just crazy.
people forget/sleep on Bushido blade. If Squeenix stopped chucking out sub par FF gamesall the time and actually work on their games that get attention, this would grab people for sure.
So squeenix has 2 decent games that are pretty underrated/unknown. Tobal 2 and Bushido Blade.
don’t forget einhander
Conversations like the main one going on this in thread are meaningless. Usually the people who participate in these game vs. discussion don’t have: A) an equal amount of knowledge in both or all of the games that are being discussed, in order to make fair and factual comparisons, B) the maturity or skill to debate properly, or C) the ability to avoid their own personal biases, to analyze and compare the mechanisms and oddities that make two or more different games have more or less depth.
Sometimes people actually put the time to make logical arguments, but it’s almost never done empirically. The result is you’re left with “She said; he said” arguments.
here is some strategy from einhander I invented:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? x x ? ? ? ? x ? ? x x x x x x ? ?
conveneintly this also gets you a COOL rating on parappa
I’m really good at videogames
In Order:
VF
Street Fighter 3rd Strike
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Tobal 2 was created by dreamfactory, not square. Square was merely the publisher of this game seeing how dreamfactory @ the time was just a small group of people making video games. I want to remind you guys that after tobal 2, the main team left. Once those guys were gone, the whole company basically fell through by creating bad game after bad game.
Man, tobal 2 has some VERY tight combos. Gren’s bnb triple just frame has retarded timing on it. Its like a double 1 frame link for a combo. Mind you this game came out in 1997. The whole game is just god like. Epon\chuji do have some pretty easy high damage combo’s but these characters are the entry characters for the game. Pretty much what ryu\ken are to SF. The other characters in this game seem all extremely technical. When you can pop in a game thats 13 years old and its actually better than some games today, you know you have a great game. This game may be old but don’t sleep on its mechanics. tobal 2 does some things right that developers haven’t gotten right in a long time. The game was LIGHT YEARS ahead of its time.
Sadly, this obscure title goes unrecognized by the masses. Its easily one of the best fighting games I’ve ever played.
dreamfactory seems like the raizing of fighting games
People love turbo mode, mainly turbo 2.
VF4
Tekken 6
GGX2 #R
By the way, yhese are the only VF, Tekken and GG I played up till now.
But Virtua Fighteris the undisputed #1. First you’re enthousiastic and think “well I got some stuff toe learn”, then you start crying and then you’ll have to try some more. Loved it! 
It was my first step in 3D fighting games as a preferred 2D player.
It was quite a step lol.
lol!
Turbo 1 is the standard.
…
god i love raizing. great refrence dood.
I always thought it was Street Fighter II Championship Edition. Either that or a Tekken game. Oh well.
ST- Cause it’s really hard to maintain good execution in that game as well as maneuver without any new-age gimmicks.
@ Tech Romancer: Everyone in his own pace, okay.
Well, of the list personally I exclude Tekken because you can be a good player and some noob come and beat you because of the button-mashing nature of the game…I used to play Tekken and I was good but just is the most frustrating fighting game ever…just like Soul Calibur…but back on the tread VF are the only technical 3D series (DOA maybe but nah)but if you want some 2D 3rd Strike and Garou: Mark of Wolves…button-mashers don’t understand that a fighting games are a science.