#virtuafighter4

A great deal of my love for SEGA is tied up not in their Genesis days, but rather their arcade games. It was games like Virtua Fighter 2 and SEGA Rally that decided my console purchase, not Sonic the Hedgehog. I can’t begin to count the hours my friends and I sank into Virtua Fighter 2 on the Saturn, but I can tell you we skipped a lot of afternoon classes in high school to do that. Though I bought a Dreamcast in part for Virtua Fighter 3, it failed to grab me and my friends the same way the previous game had. By the time Virtua Fighter 4 came out on PlayStation 2, my high school friends and I had gone our separate ways in pursuit of our eventual paths in life.

But what time taketh away, it often replenishes. University brought new friends. SEGA, perhaps in an effort to show they had a strong future, were knocking hits out of the park left and right. And in its fourth installment, Virtua Fighter was the absolute best it had ever been. More hours lost, more classes missed, more great times had. The upgraded Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution renewed our vigor, proving to be more than enough entertainment to hold us over for years. Then we all graduated, went our separate ways, and presumably moved on to other games.

When Virtua Fighter 5 came out, there would be no more missed classes, not for me. With an online mode, it was easier than ever for old friends to meet up for battles, but at the very least, I never did. The game was fine, of course, but some things are meant for certain times in one’s life, I think. Sometimes I still load up Virtua Fighter 4 and give the computer a few shots to the head. It’s a warm feeling, looking at those battle records on my old memory card. In a weird sort of way, I think these games are like yearbooks, and maybe more important in that regard than the actual books full of people I don’t know very well. As much as Virtua Fighter games served as a marker for SEGA’s moments in history, perhaps they also do the same for me.