Virtua Fighter 4 Dreamcast....It would have been possible with enough I+D?

[OriginalName]

This would be an unbelievable amount of work, but I do want to say for the record that I've always been annoyed by Yu Suzuki claiming that AM2 did preliminary tests to see if Dreamcast could handle a Virtua Fighter 4 port and concluded that it couldn't be done (to their satisfaction). Surely Virtua Fighter 4 did not come to the Dreamcast primarily for political rather than technical reasons. Sega were dropping Dreamcast support in favor of becoming a third party developer, and needed to ingratiate themselves to the market leader Sony, so they chose not to eat into potential PlayStation 2 Virtua Fighter 4 sales by offering the game on a semi-competitive platform.

As much as I would have loved to have played Virtua Fighter 4 on Dreamcast, I can understand the politics behind the decision to make it exclusive to PlayStation 2. At the same time though, claiming that the Dreamcast wasn't up to snuff to host a port always felt dishonest to me. As everyone knows it would've had to have been significantly downgraded from the Naomi 2 original, but selling the platform and their own abilities as programmers and artists short like that always felt so unnecessary to me.

[Ian Micheal]

I agree it was just a lie for money .. money talks bullshit walks

[cloofoofoo]

I agree it was just a lie for money .. money talks bullshit walks

Definitely they were just hyping things up for more ps2 sales. With the new naomilib tools you can easily see that JUST the head plus chest of a dead or alive 2 character is around 5k polygons. I remember it was mentioned that ps2 vf4 models were half of what the Naomi 2 was , which like 7k polygons per model. Even if the backgrounds lost a little more detail than the ps2 version they could have actually made something very close for sure. I find it hard to believe an internal dev for Sega that has always been touted as the best would be outdone this badly by tecmo on their own machine using their own development libraries.

[OriginalName]

Maybe this is totally off-base, but part of me thinks that it all comes down to Shenmue. AM2 seemed to treat Shenmue as the Dreamcast's raison d'etre, the software that would right the ship and change video games forever. Once it failed to return on its investment, I think that they just wanted to move on.

Shenmue seems to have eclipsed their focus from 1998 to 2001. That it kept their attentions from Virtua Fighter 3tb goes without saying, but I think that Fighting Vipers 2 was definitely a victim of their nearly single-minded focus on Shenmue and its sequel as well. Fighting Vipers 2 likely would have come out much earlier (it was hard to find in arcades by 2001) and been a much stronger effort had AM2 had a variety of manageable arcade projects instead of one gargantuan, experimental mega-project with arcade projects orbiting around it.

Not that I don't love Shenmue, of course. And not that I don't realize that, at the end of the day, internal studios are at the will of the company's directors, but it wouldn't surprise me if AM2 had a bit of shame/resentment toward the platform in the fallout of the whole ordeal.

[OriginalName]

Still, it seems like there must be some not-so-distant alternate reality where Virtua Fighter 10th Anniversary is made to Naomi spec for a limited arcade release and gets a late Japan-exclusive Sega Direct release on Dreamcast a la Puyo Puyo Fever.

It's out there somewhere... somewhere in my pathetic, compromised dreams.

[DarkSynbios]

I believe if AM2 released VF4 on Dreamcast we will get a version with cleaned graphics and 60 fps but more less details on background. The mostly i care is if ever found a version of VF3 for Sega Saturn

[cloofoofoo]

Yeah, the textures on the floor look really low resolution. The same with the 3d models. That Naomi 2 was way ahead of PS2 technology.

Even the Akira model in the naomi 2 version shown above, literally blows away and looks more realistic, than the Akira model in the PS2 version of VF4. That naomi 2 was really super impressive back then. Even PS2 couldn't match it. Its sad that there wasn't a sega console, using that naomi 2 tech inside of it.

Besides the models being different the basic look of it is super differently accomplished. The Naomi 2 version is more like the Dreamcast where they use vertex highlights for the shiny spots in the model the ps2 version actually uses an environment map texture on top of the model to get that glossy look( almost plastic like). That's why I think even downgraded a Dreamcast version would probably look more similar to the Naomi 2 version because how similar they render things as supposed to the ps2 way of doing things.

[cloofoofoo]

Yeah, the textures on the floor look really low resolution. The same with the 3d models. That Naomi 2 was way ahead of PS2 technology.

Even the Akira model in the naomi 2 version shown above, literally blows away and looks more realistic, than the Akira model in the PS2 version of VF4. That naomi 2 was really super impressive back then. Even PS2 couldn't match it. Its sad that there wasn't a sega console, using that naomi 2 tech inside of it.

Besides the models being different the basic look of it is super differently accomplished. The Naomi 2 version is more like the Dreamcast where they use vertex highlights for the shiny spots in the model the ps2 version actually uses an environment map texture on top of the model to get that glossy look( almost plastic like). That's why I think even downgraded a Dreamcast version would probably look more similar to the Naomi 2 version because how similar they render things as supposed to the ps2 way of doing things.

[cloofoofoo]

Yeah, the textures on the floor look really low resolution. The same with the 3d models. That Naomi 2 was way ahead of PS2 technology.

Even the Akira model in the naomi 2 version shown above, literally blows away and looks more realistic, than the Akira model in the PS2 version of VF4. That naomi 2 was really super impressive back then. Even PS2 couldn't match it. Its sad that there wasn't a sega console, using that naomi 2 tech inside of it.

Besides the models being different the basic look of it is super differently accomplished. The Naomi 2 version is more like the Dreamcast where they use vertex highlights for the shiny spots in the model the ps2 version actually uses an environment map texture on top of the model to get that glossy look( almost plastic like). That's why I think even downgraded a Dreamcast version would probably look more similar to the Naomi 2 version because how similar they render things as supposed to the ps2 way of doing things.

[beanboy]

Good info cloofoofoo and interesting theory.