Ultimate Guide: Fighters Megamix
NOT CONTENT WITH MAKING TWO OF THE BEST 3D FIGHTERS OF THE MID-NINETIES, AM2 SMASHED THEM TOGETHER AND SPRINKLED IN OTHER GAMES TO CREATE A CROSSOVER CLASSIC FOR SATURN FANS EVERYWHERE. WE EXPLAIN WHY IT’S STILL WORTH JOINING THE FIGHT
Nick felt the Saturn needed some love so he put together this fantastic guide to AM2’S tremendous crossover
It seems that people can’t get enough of crossovers, and we totally understand why – at a fundamental level, they act as wish fulfilment. Whether it’s something minor like seeing how Link would fare against the Soulcalibur cast or a full-blown event allowing the X-men to scrap with the Street Fighter crew, a good crossover gives you the chance to explore every fantasy scenario you’ve dreamed up. Back in 1996, AM2 managed to deliver one of the best with Fighters Megamix, a dream game for Saturn owners that incorporated elements from across the legendary developer’s work.
To understand why this crossover happened, you need some context on the Japanese arcade scene of the mid-nineties, and how it related to the Saturn. The fighting-game boom was in full effect, and it’s hard to overstate how important conversions of AM2’S arcade fighting games were in Japan. At launch, Virtua Fighter sold with the console at a nearly 1:1 ratio, and ultimately sold over 711,000 copies, while the sequel sold over
1.7 million copies in Japan alone to became the Saturn’s best-selling game ever. The flashier, more outlandish Fighting Vipers rocketed out of the gates with over a quarter of a million copies sold in its first week, and sold over 460,000 copies overall. At the same time, SNK was doing big business with its own crossover fighting series The King Of Fighters, and in September of 1996 Capcom introduced X-men Vs Street Fighter.
The foundation for Fighters Megamix is a crossover pitting Virtua Fighter 2’s cast against the combatants of Fighting Vipers, for an initial roster of 22 characters – notably including Dural, Mahler, BM and Kumachan, all unlockable fighters in their own games. In terms of game style, elements from both games have been included.
The Vipers elements are incorporated mostly intact, with the walled arenas coming across as expected, and Fighting Vipers mode offers mechanics like air recovery, powerful launcher attacks and the power counter moves. Virtua Fighter elements have been changed quite a bit compared to Virtua Fighter 2, though. Most of the game’s arenas are reworked into infinitely scrolling stages, scrapping the ring out mechanic completely, and characters have quite a few of their Virtua Fighter 3 moves. The Escape button from Virtua Fighter 3 is also incorporated across both game modes, and body armour is always included if a character is wearing it.
While it wouldn’t be proper to say the game is fully based on Virtua Fighter 3, as the game lacks features such as uneven fighting stages, these new possibilities make Fighters Megamix just as compelling on their own. Saturn owners had never had the chance to execute wall combos with the Virtua Fighter cast, nor the ability to let the Vipers out of their cages, and the number of potential match-ups is far higher than before. However, AM2 refused to rely on the novelty of the crossover alone and went far further with extra features, starting with the unique themed courses for solo players. Four are initially available, each consisting of six fighters from the regular cast and a mystery boss. The initial ones are pretty simple like Virtua Fighter and Fighting Vipers courses, but unlocking the next set gives you more interesting themes such as Muscle and Dirty Fighters.
Beating those courses reveals the big thing that sets Fighters Megamix apart from AM2’S previous Saturn efforts – the unlockable content. The game features ten additional unlockable characters drawn from AM2’S previous works, including Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter Kids, Sonic
The Fighters, Rent-a-hero and even Daytona
USA. These fighters range from inspired to truly daft, and with 32 characters available in total, the roster compares well to any 3D fighting game of the era. The story doesn’t even stop there – there are additional skins that don’t count as characters in their own right, such as a piece of meat, a schoolgirl version of Honey and a flat-shaded version of the scrapped Virtua Fighter character Siba. Each character also has a unique stage with its own musical theme, ensuring plenty of variety across the game. All of these characters and stages could also be used in the game’s
other modes, Survival and Team Battle, and the Training mode both demonstrated moves and confirmed their correct execution.
Fighters Megamix doesn’t use the Saturn’s high-resolution mode, with AM2 instead opting for the graphical approach previously adopted in Fighting Vipers. Light sourcing and gouraud shading improve the look of the character models during battle and it’s possible to incorporate the extra polygons needed for walled stages, while maintaining the all-important 60 frames per second refresh rate. Fans still debate between this approach and the high resolution look of Virtua Fighter 2 and Dead Or Alive, but it’s undeniably amongst the best looking Saturn games, fighting or otherwise. The music is also fantastic, drawing on themes from across the various games featured, though there is a slight compromise – each stage’s theme has been shortened in order to fit them all on a standard CD, so the music restarts after each round.
What makes all of this so amazing is how quickly AM2 put it all together. When Fighters Megamix launched in Japan on 21 December 1996, it had been less than four months since the Saturn version of Fighting Vipers had launched. North American and European releases followed in May and June of 1997 respectively. Despite following hot on the heels of Fighting Vipers, the game was a big success for Sega too – the game sold some 260,000 copies in its first week in Japan, and by November of 1997 had shifted through 600,000 units in the country. That was enough to make it the best-selling original game on the console at the time, beating high-profile games such as NIGHTS Into Dreams and Sakura Taisen.
In addition to sales success, Fighters Megamix received widespread critical acclaim. Sega Power’s review awarded the game 95%, calling it “the most comprehensive, detailed and utterly playable beat-’em-up you’re likely to see until Virtua Fighter 3 appears”. Gamesmaster also scored it 95%, advising players “Get it instead of Virtua Fighter 2. Got Virtua Fighter 2? Well, get it in anyway”. Sega Saturn Magazine scored the game 95% too, declaring that “The combination of myriad gaming styles by including the Vipers and the Vfers in one game really is a unique proposition that simply MUST be experienced”. Computer & Video Games gave Fighters
Megamix 5/5, telling readers “If you like fighting games in any way you’ll realise that this is the best available by a long way”.
Despite being one of the greatest 3D fighters of its generation, Fighters Megamix was destined to become a fleeting moment in gaming history. AM2 never revisited the crossover concept, and indeed abandoned Fighting Vipers after the second game, and Fighters Megamix has never received a re-release on modern platforms. Still, that just gives the Saturn something special all to itself, so if you’ve never experienced the brilliance of pitting a stock car against a giant inflatable bear, our advice is to track down a copy of the game and find out for yourself why fans hold it in such high regard.