Great Deceiver
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2012
- Messages
- 5,903
You are a monocled poster with correct opinions.
I agree that the art direction took a nosedive with 5 (although the reworked animation system in Final Showdown was pure incline), and I especially dislike many of the aesthetic choices they made with Ultimate Showdown (Akira's face for example, he looks like a standard Yakuza thug from the RGG games). Peak VF for me was VF4FT, which never saw a home release - I used to own the Naomi 2 GD version, but the DIMM board died down and I never bothered to fix it. We had a local VF 'scene' for awhile but then the guy I used to play with moved away and it died out.
I don't know who to blame specifically for this shift, but at the time of VF5's arcade release Tekken was already gaining a lot of ground in Japan and AM2 probably felt pressured in some way to go with more 'hip' designs. There's a lot of truly terrible cosmetics in arcade FS, but a lot of great stuff too. I especially liked the special winposes with certain items. The fact that Ultimate Showdown doesn't even have all of FS cosmetics is just a fucking joke honestly.
Anyway, My Harada collaboration comment was mainly based on the Tekken cosmetic pack (which was really a very ill-considered move on their part - it released on VF's anniversary, and in addition everything in it looked like absolute shit), and the fact that Aoki has been a guest in Harada's Bar (his YT talk show). Harada himself has said multiple times that he doesn't feel very motivated anymore after VF disappeared, and that he would love a new instalment for him to flex his muscles against. Deep down I suspect he has always known his game was vastly inferior and has always aspired to something greater, other than making loads of money. I have lots of respect for the guy, even if I hate Tekken.
In any case I'd like to be optimistic and I think there's a fair chance of something being announced soon. You're absolutely right that VF isn't the only franchise that suffers because of Sega's lack of acumen and business sense, they're sitting on top of multiple original IP goldmines but prefer to act as a third-rate publisher of shit modern games instead. Imagine a new release of Virtual On - could be huge! Dual sticks in home consoles have been the norm for so long, I remember the Dreamcast port of VOOT which was unplayable due to a completely retarded control scheme.
It's not a current thing either, they've pretty much always been completely inept from a business point of view, all the way back from the SoA/SoJ 32x debacle.
I agree that the art direction took a nosedive with 5 (although the reworked animation system in Final Showdown was pure incline), and I especially dislike many of the aesthetic choices they made with Ultimate Showdown (Akira's face for example, he looks like a standard Yakuza thug from the RGG games). Peak VF for me was VF4FT, which never saw a home release - I used to own the Naomi 2 GD version, but the DIMM board died down and I never bothered to fix it. We had a local VF 'scene' for awhile but then the guy I used to play with moved away and it died out.
I don't know who to blame specifically for this shift, but at the time of VF5's arcade release Tekken was already gaining a lot of ground in Japan and AM2 probably felt pressured in some way to go with more 'hip' designs. There's a lot of truly terrible cosmetics in arcade FS, but a lot of great stuff too. I especially liked the special winposes with certain items. The fact that Ultimate Showdown doesn't even have all of FS cosmetics is just a fucking joke honestly.
Anyway, My Harada collaboration comment was mainly based on the Tekken cosmetic pack (which was really a very ill-considered move on their part - it released on VF's anniversary, and in addition everything in it looked like absolute shit), and the fact that Aoki has been a guest in Harada's Bar (his YT talk show). Harada himself has said multiple times that he doesn't feel very motivated anymore after VF disappeared, and that he would love a new instalment for him to flex his muscles against. Deep down I suspect he has always known his game was vastly inferior and has always aspired to something greater, other than making loads of money. I have lots of respect for the guy, even if I hate Tekken.
In any case I'd like to be optimistic and I think there's a fair chance of something being announced soon. You're absolutely right that VF isn't the only franchise that suffers because of Sega's lack of acumen and business sense, they're sitting on top of multiple original IP goldmines but prefer to act as a third-rate publisher of shit modern games instead. Imagine a new release of Virtual On - could be huge! Dual sticks in home consoles have been the norm for so long, I remember the Dreamcast port of VOOT which was unplayable due to a completely retarded control scheme.
It's not a current thing either, they've pretty much always been completely inept from a business point of view, all the way back from the SoA/SoJ 32x debacle.
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