The Dreamcast has a very small library by comparison to others. However, it has had no shortage of great fighting games. Dead or Alive 2, Power Stone, and Soul Calibur were the three fighting games in my original collection. I never got Virtua Fighter 3 until my second collection. Either way, this was one that I played through quite a few times. There are a great number of memorable characters in this fighter, as Ayane and Kasumi stand as their poster fighters, and this was just a beautiful fighter.
Is it perfect? No. Is it better than Soul Calibur? No, but it is still a good contender for the title. The fighting is very fluid, and the controls are actually quite responsive without being sluggish. Mechanics in techniques where you compare one like Leifang who is good at turning her defensive into offensive moves, against Jann Lee who is just brutally powerful and fast. Jann Lee is probably the favorite among all of them, because he strongly resembles and uses Jeet Kune Do just like Bruce Lee himself. He uses the triple strike, one inch punch and his lightning fast kicks.
Then there is Bass, who is modeled after Terry Hulk Hogan, who sadly passed a month before writing this article. He is Tina's father, and is often looking for her and fighting her would-be boyfriends. This becomes clear when he comes up against Zack. He is obviously a wrestler and does ridiculous damage, though he is also rather slow. Using Kasumi or Jann hurt him badly when it comes to dealing the hits way too fast.
One majorly cool aspect of this game that is also one of its minor weak points, is Tengu. He is the final boss of the Arcade Mode. He has an oni mask and has some pretty cool dialogue. The one point about him that I don't like is that he can be a little repetitive, but he is also an unlockable character, but you need to play the game a lot more than I did to get him. He is harder to fight than the normal fighters, but not overly so.
This game is just fun, and yes, the girls can be categorized as attractive and may jiggle a little more than physics should allow. This is fine, and managable. What is not so great is what they did with this series after this. The Beach Volley Ball game they came out with was a little insulting to their characters' integrity. Making new characters for such a game is one thing, but taking them from the fighting game and putting them in bikinis. I'm not going to flat out disgrace it or anything, but it is worth noting how the creator of the characters tried to justify these decisions. If you know, you Virtua Know.
Also, Happy 26th Birthday, Sega Dreamcast!
