Virtua Fighter 3tb (Dreamcast, Arcade) Beta Footage

Hey everybody,

I lurk on Sonic Retro, and recently a member named Orengefox got a hold of and uploaded a Japanese Dreamcast preview disc from October 1998 (one month before the original release in November 1998). The highlight of the video is definitely the VF3tb beta footage. The game is certainly unfinished in the footage -- Wolf's hat is untextured, the camera is wonky, and animations and collision are noticeably screwed up. In all my years of "researching" VF, I have never seen any of this footage, so this is really exciting to see! Brings back memories of reading a ton of rumors about the canceled Saturn VF3... I'll stop talking now and share the link:

VF3tb Beta Footage

There's some other really cool stuff in there, including a very different-looking Sega Rally 2 with a stage that I don't recall appearing in the final. Other launch-window games like Sonic Adventure and the unreleased Geist Force make an appearance as well. For more nostalgia, here is a link to an old discussion of VF4 on Dreamcast rumors then turns into VF3 Saturn discussion.

Lastly, thanks to Jmtshaw for the original upload to YouTube, Sonicblur for the improved one linked above, and of course to Orengefox for finding this in the first place.

 

This is awesome and I wish I saw it sooner!

 

Not quite related, but I wasn't sure if I should make a new topic for it:

On the topic of prerelease VF material, I stumbled upon this concept art, both CG and hand-drawn, while looking for some info on the "Virtua Fighter Maniax" books. The fantastic Tumblr blog "Video Games Densetsu" posted some art from one of the books a few months back. I have never seen any of this before, and it's some cool stuff!

Early 3D Models - Video Games Densetsu

Hand-drawn Concept Art - Video Games Densetsu

The VF1 prototype is probably the most interesting of them all -- makes me wonder if any concrete VF beta builds will ever leak like they have for other games.

 

Sorry to double post, but I found more VF3 prototype footage that I had never seen before, this time from the arcade version:

Link

This appears to be a promo tape from Sega. We get more of a look at things like Shun's original alternate costume, the original Sarah Subway stage, and the version of Aoi's stage with the taller rock walls and waterfalls. More interesting, however, are some brand new assets that I have definitely never seen prior, including Sarah wearing light blue jeans in place of black pants in her 1P costume, a version of Wolf's stage with a slightly different sky, a prototype of the cave with some pulsating lighting and complete rocks walls in place of the bars from the final, and a very different version of Lion's stage that looks like something from the Mario 64 beta. Different voices are present in places, as well, most noticeably with Kage. I can document all the changes that I can find later if anyone wants. This is some really cool stuff, so I had to make sure everyone here could see it. Enjoy!

 

I've never seen such high quality VF3 pre-release footage!

 

So, it seems that the VF3 arcade footage has been taken off of YouTube. I was unwise enough to assume the video would stay up, and never archived it, unfortunately. I don't remember all of the details from the footage, but I think there were interviews with either players or staff members, because in my original post I said it looked like a promo tape rather than just recorded VHS footage from the location test.

I'm not sure if that footage will ever resurface, sadly, and I've been looking for it elsewhere to no avail (the wayback machine never had it). The small 15 second clips of things like Lau's stage with the different camera pan and Lion's removed throw that have been around for years were definitely taken from this tape, though, so hopefully someone out there still has it. In my search, however, I did find this old site:

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/pro/his/vf3/vf3location.html

which has some photos as well as a little more information we didn't have before. It looks like there were several builds in the location tests, as these images show a little bit of the different Lion stage in the lost tape:



(at least I think that's the different stage. From what I remember, the level geometry was the same as the final but the textures were pretty different)

But, the later photos have Sarah in her final black pants instead of the teal ones we saw in the footage. Running this page through Google Translate, we can see that Akira's 2P costume had no headband at first.



Anyway, while these photos are not a suitable replacement for that VHS footage, at least we still have something. I used "ロケテスト" as "location test" in my searches. If anyone knows any other terms that would help find "beta/development/prototype" stuff, etc., let me know. I've saved all of these photos and I'm submitting the image URLs to the Wayback Machine in case the site suffers the same fate as that YouTube video.