US version differences...

Impressions posts are usually spam, and mine's no different.
The game is identical pretty much to japanese version, a few things I noticed...

-no kanji available when creating a ring name, and your ring name can only be 10 characters max. This kind of sucks.
-old ring names are gone and replaced with made-up american-sounding ones. This is where the 10 character limit really seems to hurt.
-the translation of the glossary and trial training are decent. I'd rate it 8/10. A few differences exist in the way things are named, and some of them are a little odd. Major counter are counterhits, minor counters are recovery counterhits. TR's are siderolls, QR/TRs in general are 'exact recovery' if they decrease damage. A few tiny mistakes are in there, for example d+P was left as 2P in one glossary entry.
-Whoever made the ring names definitely lurks on this board or RGVA. First I see "owwie" aoi, which is to be expected. Then I see Pounce King (kage), and pounce is pretty distinctly RGVA/VFDC, everywhere else in the game it's "down attack".
Then I see SPoD boy and Mantis Boy /versus/images/icons/smile.gif
Most of the names are fairly geeky, a few are entertaining. Xtra Spicy (vanessa). A jeff called Jumbo Size. A jerky called Iron Head.
-All the replays are translated. Chibita came out okay, but who's "Wolfie"? Kyasao became Kyasa-O.
-All the items and alterable color parts are translated, eg it tells you that you can change pants, shinguards, gloves, etc.
-I don't remember noticing this on the japanese version - the game modes have a built in explanation that appears to the right whenever you highlight any of them.
-The manual's pretty good, explaining the basics of throws/escaping, reversal, crouch dashing, etc.


All in all a nice job.

edit! I forgot to mention that the 'advice' section is pretty neat. I never could tell what I was seeing before, but it turns out this has lots and lots of statistics.... stats on how many times you interrupt attacks/get interrupted... how many times you use attacks from 0-10 pts of damage, 10-20, 20-30 etc etc. It also measures your success at throwing the opponent, using guaranteed minor-counter throws, how good you are at breaking throws (I'm "slippery" yaay!), and how often you get hit by high vs. low vs. mid attacks.

I liked the info on how often specific moves are dodged, how well you reverse, where most of your victories come from (ring out/time over/KO). I notice that my jeffry gets 65% of his damage from throws and 35% from strikes, while my lau is about 10% more strikes (although I use ST combos a lot so maybe that's inaccurate). The interesting part to all of this is that the game has 'averages' for all of these stats... averages to compare your own stats to. I don't know if these are based on VF.net or what. The average for throw escapes is like... 14% and I escape 18%. The average for low attacks blocked is is much higher than the number of low attacks I manage to guard. Fascinating stuff.

 

yes indeed. very nice info to have in the advice section. my question is: say you have a player file only for vs play..........do they track those vs matches as well? i would think they would, that way when you get spanked at a session your ai buddy would tell you something like: "block motherfucker block!!!!" hehe.

 

the only option this incredible game misses is an online option. :-(
even if I had to pay 3 dollars a minute to get a connection to Japan to play on VF net I would do it
on the other hand then I have to work like 20 hours a day to make enough money for it
but it will be the best money ever spent

 

I bought the game before going into work last night, and played all this morning... Anyway, I was reading the manual last night and found this gem on page 16, point 3 (Free Training Mode) It's describing what you'll see in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

3. Motion Information
Information such as Outbreak, Endurance or Cure regarding moves is displayed.

Huh!?

It sux that the japanese characters and other punctuation aren't available for character names. I'd really like to have access to a dash, period, or underscore, but I believe the 10 character limit was the same in the Japanese version.

 

I don't know if the lag you'd suffer connecting to tokyo would make it worth it /versus/images/icons/tongue.gif
also vf.net's just recordkeeping, not actual online gaming.

 

One question in all this. Can the data stored be used in both the NTSC/J and NTSC/UC versions?

 

I have not had any success loading my Import save into a US or using them both at the same time.

 

You can convert the data so that they will work in either version. However you will need an EMS Memory Card adaptor before you can convert them.

 

Anyone knows of a US based web site, other than www.ncsx.com (They will restock soon, as they say), that sells the adapter + link cable? It's cheaper to order than from Hong Kong you know... /versus/images/icons/smile.gif