Any critical essays on Virtua Fighter out there?

I know VF is awesome, YOU know VF is awesome, but exactly WHY is VF awesome?

I know it has something to do with the "easy to play, difficult to master" style, and the martial art styles being so varied and also rooted in realism, and the "rock/paper/scissors" gameplay, but has anyone out there written or read an essay about why, in particular, Virtua Fighter (in their opinion) is the "deepest" fighting game out there? I have only read reviews that talk about the game as a whole, but I would really be interested to read something that talked about the game mechanics and compared it to others. Actually, I wouldn't necessarily want an essay that just said "VF is the best, here's why" - I'd be interested to see something that compared game mechanics and their virtues throughout other fighting games. For example, how does holding back to block, versus having a button to block change gameplay style and the strategic mentality. Or 2D vs 3D. You get the idea!

Anyone seen anything out there?


This girl is writing a critical essay on fighting video games

 

I won't refer to any essay, but I will let you know on VFDC this discussion has been had several times and the sheer number of insights, responses, arguments back-n-forth, and the length of some of the responses, the quality of many of the responses give far more contrast, comparison, editorial, opinion, conclusion, facts, expose and theme than you could ever get from a single essay. In fact, there has been enough material on the discussion on VFDC of the 'deepness' of virtua fighter to account for the major portion of a research paper or dissertation on the entire genre of 3D or even 2D fighting games.

 

I'm fairly new to VFDC and a search for "Why is virtua fighter awesome" yields a million results

Any recommendations on threads for me to look at in particular? Thanks!

 

here's a small example:

http://virtuafighter.com/threads/how-hard-is-vf-compared-to-other-fgs.15660/

http://virtuafighter.com/threads/why-is-everybody-playing-2d-fighting-games.18144/

http://virtuafighter.com/threads/namco-still-up-for-tekken-vs-vf.13770/

 

Fantastic, this was just what I was looking for!

 

I added one or two links, one of the moderators, maybe AKAI can help you find some of the older discussions that went on for days and days and days LOL

 

LOL @ this thread.

 

I can't wait to bump all these threads.

 

pretty much

 

I've been watching you watching me watching you for quite some time now. Besides there is nothing like the joy that can be found in getting bumped

 

Hmm, well sadly the series has become so off the radar in the West over the years, people don't really bother to 'attack' it. They just forget it exists, and obviously don't play it. If you linger around a few real time chat chans related to fighting games, you might see a few guys slamming VF, or taking a cheap pop, especially in the Capcom world ("boring", "no personality", "have to be a Mekon to play it" etc.). But generally, to see the gruesome old forum style Tekken vs VF clashes, you'd have to deep search back many years in the Google cache to find that sort of content now.

Regarding critical as in larger written pieces promoting and eulogising the game, here's your man 7 years ago with his take on the passion, and here, some JP staff explaining the tricky transition into the online arena for the disc based version of VF5.

If you look in the Art thread here, there's a few in-depth old school reviews focusing on previous versions as well, if you like a longer read on the history of the game. Old VF3 console review here too, these guys are pretty wordy.

 

Thanx pai-chun for this your post and just seeing some of the art thread just reminds me more than ever why VF is just the FN best. For some reason I've missed the comic strip! Its totally awesome.

How can we make this stuff a permanent part of VFDC easily accessible to anyone at any time?

The comics should have their own permanent link
The famous advertisements should have their own permanent link
The Mike interview was awesome I'd never read it before. Classic VF interviews would be another link worth alot to a lot of VF fans

Right now our Forums,events, ranks, wiki are excellent, but I think many fans of VF, its folklore, its history would greatly appreciate these kind of links:


VF Comics,
VF in the Press
Classic VF Interviews
An official History of VF and its Characters
VF Anime links
The stages of VF (featuring all the artwork and stages [I really miss PAI's VF4 stage! LOL])
VF Artwork
Classic/Famous VF Tournament vids

I know this prolly would mean a lot of extra work for some of the folks who maintain VFDC, but this kind of stuff would go along way for maintaining and I believe growing our community.

Moderators, AKAI? What do you think?

When I first joined VFDC I think they had a lot more of this stuff easily accessible, now its kind of buried.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-14-virtua-fighter-4-evolution-retrospective


NOT good with posting links...Sorry gentlemen. I found this about a year ago and thought it was pretty spot on.