[media=youtube]st6dHmDSkhY[/media]
If only people played the game half as much as they talk about it.
There’s alot of love for VF, just not at Sega it seems.
Sad when I’m probably the only guy with a copy of the game where I live and no one has any experience because even the local arcades (in one of the last few places outside Japan where arcades still do matter somewhat) are full of Iron Fisting 6.
The best game no one plays.
I’ve heard that so many times, lol.
It doesn’t matter if you want the arcade version. You have to lease that shit from SEGA. Can’t just go and buy it…
sigh.
What happen to Sega urge to promote the VF series? They had the urge when they put VF5 on 360 with online play.
As it is now, VF is closing to death everywhere and it is dying in Japan from what I heard.
Well at least Sega did something right with Bayonetta.
Yeah, I was trying to imply that in my last post.
They need to bring VF back to evo. I thought they did VF4 before, didn’t they?
Real Talk.
Yeah. (sniffs)
Lets’ have another 100 page long thread about how crunk and how awesome VF is and how we like how deep it is. And how Sega is faggotty and won’t release VF5R and only leases out their fucking cabinets. And how we should rally together to ask them nicely again despite all the times they ignored us, told us we were annoying/disruptive and don’t support their own loyal player base, even in Japan. Or maybe about how its so misunderstood and the playerbase is so small and yet people continue to play other games despite talking it up. People can play Snore Fighter Bore for hours on end, but won’t come near VF despite the praise everyone gives it.
Hope this thread gets locked soon.
I play VF still my favorite fighter. Sad my 360 broke, so I play it locally on my PS3 with a few buds. I want VF5R.
Yeah!
…Oh. I see what you did there.
Microsoft paid for VF5 online’s development. This was done for three reasons, one being that MS wanted to take another SONY exclusive property and then one up SONY with it, two it would make other FGs that were SONY exclusive (like Tekken) more likely to get a 360 release (which worked), and three being that VF is still enormously popular in Japan and the 360 is not popular in Japan so it was an attempt to get more 360s off of the shelve in Japan.
VF’s death in Japan is complete bullshit and totally overstated. Fuudo himself said that the VF scene is running just as strong as it ever has, and he would know because he travels to different arcades all over Japan as a paid player by Sega. VF is dead no more than any other long running franchise in Japan.
You know what is rapidly becoming dead in Japan…arcades. Sega lost 100 arcades last year and Namco closed 1/3 of its arcades.
VF4:EVO was at EVO2003 and 2004. VF5 was at EVO2007. Sega sued EVO after EVO2003 to prevent a VF DVD from coming out. Another reason that Sega sucks.
Hi guys. Everytime someone asks VF5R to be ported to consoles, Sega creates a new Sonic character.
Stop before you doom us all.
That Sega All Star racing game is rumored to have Akira and Jacky as characters.
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Ah, no VF thread is complete without you.
I take it back, keep this thread open.
Yes.
The Virtua Fighter series actually gets a lot of respect among the fighting game community but, when you get right down to it, very few players in the States and Canada play actively or are interested in playing competitively. In fact, there are barely any of them. I believe there’s a tiny but dedicated following in New York, and there are players speckled across the west coast. I think VF5 on Xbox Live still has some people on it too. As others have already mentioned, all of those people are on VFDC.
For what it’s worth, VF is the only fighting game in WCG’s lineup right now. I’m too not sure about places like Korea or Europe, I’m pretty sure it struggles everywhere outside than Japan. For the record, the game still does very well in Japanese arcades; it doesn’t command the same level of dominance that it did in the past (#1 game for long stretches of time) but the scene is apparently still quite healthy.
People are fond of tossing around theories as to why VF does not possess a degree of popularity significant and consistent enough for a devoted North American scene to fully establish itself. These theories are all very, very debatable but the truth probably does contain some combination of them. Here are a few of the most commonly cited reasons, all of which are popular choices to argue about:
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The game isn’t “flashy” enough to draw interest from the masses of general video game fans. It doesn’t seem exciting and shiny and x-treeeme enough. There are no gimmicks here, either: no plot story book tale, no cut-scenes animated sequences FMV intros endings, and no major unlockables. Aesthetically, it sounds a little weird, has essentially no art direction or visual inspiration, and its graphics have usually had the unfortunate timing of starting off as or quickly becoming second-best. This, according to the theory, either seriously minimizes or altogether eliminates any possible influx of new players.
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The game has built an intimidating forcefield of a reputation around itself for having an impossibly high, difficult, challenging, complicated, time-consuming, brutal, and unforgiving learning curve. Its hardcore players celebrate this, and the media stresses this whenever they give it attention. (My opinion, it’s true that the game can be a little tough to get into at first, but it’s been completely blown out of proportion by people who looove to exaggerate.) While this may serve to bolster a mystique surrounding the series, it’s decidedly counter-productive to getting people to try it out.
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Arcades are virtually (ha ha) dead here, and VF has a long and infamous history for somehow disappointing its supporters with its home console releases. Among VF fans, Sega has become notorious for it. This strongly encourages the dissolution of the existing player base.
the ugly details
[details=Spoiler]VF3 was never ported. Rather, a Saturn port was completed but its release was cancelled just before the commencement of production.
VF3tb was ported to the struggling Dreamcast about a year after its arcade release.
VF4 was ported to PS2 quickly after its last arcade sub-revision but shortly before VF4e was announced for arcades.
VF4e was ported to PS2 quickly after its last arcade sub-revision but shortly before VF4ft was announced for arcades.
VF4ft was never ported. Fans remained both sad and hopeful all the way up until the announcement of VF5.
VF5 was ported to PS3, marketed as an exclusive release for the console. Despite the requests of fans, online play was not included, with the producers publicly stating that they would never add online play to VF because it would dilute the proper experience. Shortly after the PS3 port’s release, arcades received a new sub-revision update; this was never added to the port. Shortly after that, VF5 was also released on 360: the new sub-revision, and with online play. The quality of the netcode was apparently good but not great. (Shortly after this, arcades received another sub-revision that was never brought to the PS3 or the 360 but no balancing changes were made so it’s kind of negligible.) Shortly after that, VF5r was announced for arcades.
VF5r has been in arcades for almost two years now and has not yet been ported. The only people outside of VFDC who still care are probably all in this thread. Almost not joking.
For the record, even when the series might’ve had a fighting (HA HA) chance of being an arcade hit, back when we still had arcades everywhere, 90% of VF1 machines proudly bore one of the most unfortunate control panels you could think to give a technical versus fighting game. Some wooden stand-up cabinets had their buttons spaced widely apart from one another, and most of them had their layouts sloped in opposite directions for each player: right side was okay, left side was terrible. Good setups were almost non-existent. Good setups for VF2 were uncommon but still rare; despite this, VF2 enjoyed fair popularity.
VF3 came when most arcades were already on life support and VF4’s first edition came at a time when arcades were all but dead. VF4’s later editions were not released here (arcades were officially pooched by this point) but could be imported, at import prices of course. VF5’s arcade version simply cannot be imported because they must be connected to a Japanese Sega network at all times in order to function properly.[/details]
To elaborate on the ways in and reasons for which VF is respected by players of other fighting games, the series is recognized for its remarkably well-designed gameplay and its innovative approach to the genre. It is noted for the level of depth inherent in its system mechanics. It also consistently stands as an example of excellent game balance.
Haha I never knew about that one
Edit: deadfrog summed it well.
VF5’s netcode is better than SFIV, T6, SCIV, and is up to or near BlazBlue, MvC2 HD, or HDR quality in my opinion. I’ve got at least 250 matches in all of those games both individually online and offline. It’s amazing how good VF’s netcode is considering that it was a total rush job by Sega. I wouldn’t say that VF5’s netcode isn’t great at all. It most certainly is and still holds up well today. SFIV and T6 came out two years after VF5 and don’t have as good online play. Yeah it’s not GGPO but nothing else is either.
yeah VF does have good netcode. I have the worst ISP living in the midwest and can play Japanese players and it will feel like a 4 bar sf4 connection.
That seriously irritates me that SEGA doesnt give a shit about American ports and arcades though. I was all into VF for like a month until I heard about sega sueing EVO for releasing a fucking dvd.
also I stopped playing VF because I was thinking, whats the point of even playing VF if there is a very small US scene, and there’s probably never gonna be another console release let alone American VF game? While tekken, which Im a LOT more familliar with, has a huge scene everywhere while namco at least knows how to promote their game.