Games of the Abstract: Fighters Megamix (1996)

 

Developer: Sega AM2

Publisher: Sega

One to Two Players

Sega Saturn / Windows

 

This begins with Virtual Fighter 3, a project that originally was meant to come to the Sega Saturn¹. In truth, you would have to wait, after its 1996 arcade release, for the 1998 version for the Sega Dreamcast, Sega's last console. Virtual Fighter's history with the Sega Saturn instead gave us a lot more than just the first 1993 game or Virtual Fighter 2 (1994). The Saturn conversion of the first game, which I have childhood memories playing, with fond memories of its blocky charm and jumps which caused the fighters to float in the air, ended up having a version called Virtual Fighter Remix, an improved version which was even given for free in the United States by mail. Virtual Fighter 2 was held with a better regard as a conversion, and is still held as one of the key titles to acquire for the console for retro gamers. There was also Virtual Fighter Kids (1996), but that is worth bringing up with Fighters Megamix itself.

Megamix is a crossover title, and among the beat-em-ups the Saturn got, specifically the three dimensional ones, this involves the cast of Virtual Fighter 1 to 2 against Fighting Vipers (1995). In contrast to Virtual Fighter being the technical fighting franchise of more realistic characters with different martial arts styles, Fighting Vipers is if someone watched Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979) and envisioned characters, from rock guitarists to teen male skateboarders, fighting each other in caged or walled rings with breakable body armour. This would not be the last time Sega flirting with this grungier concept, as the Saturn also got a conversion of Last Bronx (1996), but sadly, that was included among this roster, even if you had to factor in characters armed with weapons.

Fighters Megamix, to go for a lame rhyming reference, is a pick-a-mix game, precursor to the likes of the Super Smash Bros. series for Nintendo, in that this is a Virtual Fighters/Fighting Vipers crossover, but is famous in the modern day for its quirky cast of unlockable characters, a prototype for a Sega All-Stars brawler we sadly never got, as they decided racing could reference their past instead. There is not a lot to Fighters Megamix unless you get into the fighting mechanics, which is complex and interesting, but would expose me as being an absolute amateur with fighting games or explaining them, with no story to this game or sadly any ending texts for the cast. There is a campaign but it does not have a narrative as mentioned, instead a series of challenge brackets where, after six fighters, the finale one is always a secret to unlock. There is two player, Team Battle, a Survival Mode of trying to beat as many as you can with no replenishing health, and a training mode.

The lack of story, or even an ending for the characters is a disappointment, but the game has a lot of personality to compensate. The two different types of fighting game mechanics being options is part of this. Virtual Fighter is very technical and grounded, beyond that professional wrestling moves are completely practical in a fight, Fighting Vipers is scrappier, bringing in the walled fighting rings, which you can jump off and even dive on opponents, and armour, that certain moves (including ones the Virtual Fighters cast are provided) can damage the torso and lower half to the point it can be broken off eventually, leaving those characters more vulnerable. Made in mind to Virtual Fighter 3, moves given to characters here would exist for them in that game, showing how this has connective tissue for the pair.

Here is the most controversial statement I can make - as an outsider of fighting games, I find most traditional characters from them of the stoic male martial artists, Akira here to Ryu from Street Fighter, incredibly disinteresting to consider playing. Virtual Fighter in truth is too grounded in its cast for my tastes, these characters not meant to be exaggerated with the exceptional of Dural, usually the end boss who is a feminine figure made of liquid metal. They are shown through their martial arts style, and whilst this means some do have personalities, be it Lion Rafale, who in Virtual Fighter 2, as the French high scholar with a praying mantis style, was annoying for viewing anyone in their twenties as old, or Shun Di, an old man drunken kung fu fighter, my interest naturally gravitated to the Fighting Vipers cast, who all look like they could have been in an Italian post apocalypse film.

It is ironic the character I choose, the one who stood out the most, was Candy, known as Honey in Japan, the one character clearly meant sell on sex appeal as a cat-girl in a leather dress with a curvy figure, with end game images removed from the American Saturn release. She is meant to be sixteen in Fighting Vipers, which is creepy, but it says a lot of how much effort is put into these characters that she becomes even accidentally more interesting than this. She is still a fighter with a distinct look, who fights with cat paw swipes, and yet can vary between tickling people, diving off of walls onto them, and what can only be called "Thumps" in pro wrestling terminology, that being a flying backside strike so good it could knock a person through a brick wall and break all their armour off.

This all comes with the issue of how to view female characters designed by male designers, especially with those meant to be attractive and sexy, but this comes with a personal bias of mine that male characters in most fighting games are not interest to me, in that they tend to be incredibly bland to see, whilst female characters tend to have a lot of incredible work on them in costume design and physical personality, only contrasted by the monstrous and stranger entities you find in fighting games which are just as poured over in the best and weirdest examples. Fighters Megamix's legacy is based as much on its hidden characters, who are an eccentric bunch and also include nods to Sega's history, whilst even among the Fighter Vipers cast beyond Candy, they are still very grounded in their own context. This is mind to the fact that the cast, just from the female fighters, include Grace, another character I used, a fashion model who fights in rollerblades, or Jane, who is blatantly if you took the character of Jenette Vasquez from James Cameron's Aliens (1986), the female marine of the main team, and did not change a thing from the character played by Jenette Goldstein visually beyond avoiding a lawsuit.

The game's legacy, as mentioned repeatedly, is in the bonus characters, offering a potential beyond racing games that, if Sega ever returned to fighting games, offers an enticing look at their past. This was where Siba finally could be played for example, a Middle Eastern character who welded a scimitar that found his way in early Virtual Fighter prototypes², but was not included in the proper version. Virtual Fighter Kids, as also mentioned, was a quirky take on the game with big headed exaggerated versions of the cast, meant to be "kids", which has two members included here. Janet, a female cop from Sega's Virtual Cop light gun franchise, the first two released on the Saturn, is unlockable, and her movement would be that of Aoi Umenokoji, a character brought into Virtual Fighter 3. She is also a distinct character as a brawling female police officer, in body armour, one I also choose too to use and is one of the more rewarding unlockable figures to actually use.

There are some truly strange figures too. Even without being unlocked you can play Kumachan, a bear who does not even have animation, being a giant mascot statue on one stage which fights like a giant invisible hand of a child is playing fighting. Sadly, we never got Pepsiman, the star of the 1999 Playstation game and Japanese Pepsi mascot who was a bonus character in the Saturn release of Fighting Vipers, but we got Rent-a-Hero here, a character from Sega's 1991 Mega Drive game of the same name. This never got a Western release, a curious inclusion as, a regular Joe in working class superhero body armour, with a potential issue of his battery power being lost as he goes along. Sonic the Fighters (1996), an arcade only Sonic the Hedgehog tie-in, though announced for the Sega Saturn³, only became available from the 2000s onwards in console compilations or downloaded versions, and has two characters appear here. They are not Sonic, Tails or any of the key characters, instead a giant polar bear called Bark, and Bean, a green bomb throwing bird humanoid who references Sega's 1988 arcade game Dynamite Düx and its lead. Why Sonic is not here can be explained in just having Janet from Virtual Cop here, as she has the most comically inappropriate and powerful move that, beyond Bean with cartoon bombs, she can just pull her police standard firearm and shot her opponents. Considering how much Sega protects Sonic as a mascot, which alone would make having him here a no-no.

The game's most infamous character, which is not the last unlockable character, but is the last secret character of the campaign and arguably the final boss, is an actual racing car, as if revenge for the bonus level for Street Fighter 2, where you have to destroy an automobile. Someone had a sense of humour and decided to reference Daytona USA, Sega's legendary 1994 game which got a divisive Sega Saturn port which I have a nostalgic love for and can still appreciate even in mind that it was a compromised release. The iconic Hornet car from that game here will get up on its hind wheels, and scrape tire treads into peoples' faces. The round, where you face them and unlock them in the victory, was spectacular for me even if it is just a silly moment, because of the decades knowing of this secret. Even in mind that the character is properly not practical to use, this was a moment I had waited decades to get to, and also because of the details that are rarely mentioned in retrospective videos on YouTube but make it a funny improvised final boss. Set in a ring within the Three Seven Speedway, the iconic racecourse of the original Daytona game, you also have the original arcade version of Takenobu Mitsuyoshi's The King of Speed, the original song for this track which, for the Saturn conversion, had a reinterpretation with actual instrumentation.All this added to the humour, alongside the fact that, when its armour is broken or does it itself, the car's fighting style changes entirely when a bare chassis. As a conclusion, I can now sat I have pulled a Frankensteiner wrestling move, as a female rollerbladed model, on a racing car, and it makes sense in context but is insane to hear out of it on this sentence.

Fondly remembered, Fighters Megamix got, in 1998, an adaptation for the Game.com released by Tiger Electronics, a curious little disaster of a handheld in history for another day, but sadly has been stuck on the Saturn to the modern day. It is held as one of the gems, one which did get a Western release, and was not a rare title costing an eye watering amount to acquire. However sadly due to the software of the Saturn not being preserved greatly, or that even preserving games on the machine is challenging due to the system's idiosyncratic hardware, this is a title which is absent from re-release. Honestly, third dimensional fighting games have probably invested and refined the genre beyond this virtues of this, in fighting mechanics and appearance, and Super Smash Brothers for Nintendo into the modern day took the idea of idiosyncratic and obscurer references, even as playable brawlers, and ran with it. Fighters Megamix in context to when it was made however, and how fun it is still to play, does deserve a wider interest.

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1) Suzuki: 'Yes on VF3', archived from the Next-Generation.com from December 20th 1996

2) The article on Virtua Fighter [Arcade / Saturn – Beta] for Unseen 64, written by "Monokoma" on October 17th 2008.

3) "Sega Saturn News: Sonic Revival", from Sega Saturn Magazine (UK) (4): 6. February 1996. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 24, 2018.