Virtua Fighter 3 was followed by an updated version called Virtua Fighter 3tb ( Team Battle), that featured battles between teams of various fighters, one after another is defeated. While both Virtua Fighter 3 and the Sega Saturn were popular in Japan at the time, the Saturn failed to grab market share outside of Japan and Sega's support shifted to a new console (the Dreamcast). A Sega Saturn port was announced, but the Saturn's hardware could not handle the game and the graphics were forced to be reduced. Virtua Fighter 3 proved to be a success in the Japanese arcades. The game was released for location testing at an exhibition hall in Kamata, Tokyo, Japan, on July 26, 1996, before getting a wide release in September 1996. The demo was later unveiled in North America at the ACME (American Coin Machine Exposition) show, held during the 7th to 9 March 1996. However, Dural, the robotic final boss, garnered the most attention, due to being made of a metallic surface that reflected the surrounding environment. The evasion feature would later be used in other 3D fighting games as the 'sidestep' feature.Īt the Japanese AOU show on February 21, 1996, Sega displayed semi-playable interactive demos of Lau Chan, Dural, and new character Aoi Umenokoji, who was unveiled for the first time at the show. Virtua Fighter veterans were at first resistant to this change, but were soon won-over with the extra strategy and freneticism it added to bouts. This 'evasion' technique enabled players to dodge incoming attacks, creating opportunities to counter-attack almost immediately. away from you), by pressing the button with the joystick held up the same would happen, but by pressing the button with the joystick held down, your character would move out of the screen (i.e. By pressing the button with the joystick in neutral, your character would move into the screen (i.e.
However, the biggest addition came in the form of a fourth button, the Dodge, (the series had previously used only three - Kick, Punch and Guard), which was used to evade enemy attacks. This iteration was the first in the series to introduce undulation in the stages, such as a staircase in the Great Wall stage, a stage set on top of a sloping roof and interestingly a raft constructed of individually moving elements on a bobbing water surface.
Characters' eyes now appeared to track the opponent's position, their muscles could flex and relax, the fighting arenas featured stairs and slopes, and Dural, the robotic final boss, was made of a metallic surface that reflected the environment around it. Developed by Yu Suzuki's Sega AM2, it was a revolutionary game from a technical standpoint, with its detailed graphics earning widespread praise from critics and gamers alike. It was the launch title for the arcade board Model 3 from Sega.
Other rumors suggest that the Saturn version might have had to accommodate a 3DFX-powered, Videologic PowerVR-powered, 3DO M2-powered or Lockheed Martin Real3D-powered upgrade card, in order to enable an 'enhanced' port of the game to run that would not have been possible on stock Saturn hardware. It can be assumed that had the game been released, it would have had significantly reduced graphics to accommodate the Saturn's weaker hardware.
However, lagging sales and the coming launch of the more powerful Dreamcast effectively halted such a plan. Sega had made several announcements that a port of the title would appear on the Sega Saturn. Released in 1996, video game magazines at the time described it as having the best video game graphics up until then, comparing its real-time graphics to pre-rendered CGI of that era. It was the first arcade game to run on the Sega Model 3 system board. Taka Arashi would not make another appearance in the Virtua Fighter series until Virtua Fighter 5 R the series' current producer, Hiroshi Kataoka explained that the removal of Taka in subsequent installments was due to the technical implications of having a substantially larger character. Two new Japanese characters were added to the roster of fighters: Aoi Umenokoji, a beautiful Japanese woman and a childhood friend of Akira Yuki who used a nimble form of Aiki-jujutsu as her fighting style of choice, and Taka-Arashi, a Sumo wrestler from Japan. Virtua Fighter 3 ( バーチャファイター3, Bācha Faitā Surī ?) is the third fighting game in the Virtua Fighter series of video games. Credits | Soundtrack | Codes | Walkthrough