Virtua Fighter was kind of a big deal in the mid '90s. Not only was it a technical marvel in arcades, but it was a launch title for the Sega Saturn and provided a taste of where the genre would be heading in the next few years. Meanwhile in 1995, Sega also branched the franchise out into a 35 episode anime series. This in and of itself isn't too unusual considering that Street Fighter II had its own series (and movie) around the same time, but it's still wild to think about.

I'm not the biggest anime fan out there, but I do enjoy watching a series every once in a while and I somewhat jokingly started watching Virtua Fighter a few years ago. I mainly put it on for a quick laugh (and I got it), but something happened....I kinda liked it. Don't get me wrong, it's a really goofy / lighthearted series and clearly aimed at a younger audience (at least the English dub certainly seemed that way), but I ended up watching the whole thing and genuine enjoyed it for what it was.

This all brings me to Virtua Fighter Animation, released for the Game Gear in 1996. As you've probably guessed, the game is based directly on the anime. The game offers a Story Mode that follows the main plot points of the anime, though in a much more condensed fashion. Whereas the anime is 12 hours or so long, you can complete Virtua Fighter Animation in about an hour. A good chunk of that hour is cutscenes / dialog as this is a much more story-heavy affair than a typical fighting game, but I suppose that makes sense, given its source material.

As you can imagine, the core fighting gameplay had to be scaled back a bit from the original arcade game in order to work on the Game Gear, which was released six years prior in 1990 (in Japan). To no one's surprise, this is a 2D game and a rather simplistic one in order to accommodate the small screen and two button setup. The fighters still have special moves though, so there's some fun to be had in learning the combos, if you're into that sort of thing. Speaking of fighters, when you first start out, you'll only be able to select Akira, but you'll unlock more as the story progresses.

Like most fighting games I play, I primarily relied on button mashing and finding a cheap move or two in order to make my way through the story. It was generally a fun game to play and easily the best fighting game I've ever played on the Game Gear...of course it's the only fighting game I've ever played on the Game Gear.

I enjoyed following along with the story though and it was neat to see the anime characterizations translated into game form. If you haven't seen the anime or if you didn't like it, then I can't imagine you're going to get much out of the story in this one, but it's much more fleshed out than most retro fighting games.

So yeah, this was a pretty neat game. It felt like a decent fighting game for its time and worth firing up your Game Gear if you want to play some Virtua Fighter on the go. I'd give this a strong recommendation to any Virtua Fighter fan that's watched the anime, but it's also easy to recommend to retro fighting fans looking for something a little different.

Played On: Game Gear (Mega Sg)
Completion Date: 2/8/23
Time: 1 hour 2 minutes
Rating: 7/10