| | | Came out in Europe and Japan, but not the States. My old DC games list says I owned this back in the day and I remember playing something like it, but something kept me from going back to it back then.
Checking Fighting Vipers 2 for Dreamcast's modes, in Flycast widescreen on PC!
I checked & the low-res background textures ARE the same resolution as the ones in the emulated Sega Model 3 version in "Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name"--but that slight extra Model 3 highlight and shading on the character models has been lost, leaving the action looking a little flat and taking away from the overall look more than I would have thought.
On the plus side, in Flycast it runs @ full screen height--not vertically bordered like in Gaiden--& in epic 16:9 widescreen. & doesn't have a dumb fake scanline overlay. & as w/ everything in Flycast the controls are super-low-latency, whereas they felt a tag laggy in Gaiden; it runs at the same speed but FEELS way faster in Flycast. It DOES drop a frame now & then in Flycast; not a problem Flycast has typically, so seems likely to be a problem with DC FV2 rather than an emulation issue.
I was feeling a bit flat about the game after this session, & really missing that Model 3 specular highlight...but I should probably play through it with a regular character rather than the slightly overpowered, surprisingly move-limited boss character w/ whom I was terrible at comboing (downloaded a save file from GameFAQs to unlock the locked characters : P).
Got punched through a T. Rex skeleton!
No move lists (not even in the physical manual!). : P
Training has weird settings language where it starts at "CPU RANK G"; from there you can lower it to say "CPU RANK F" where the CPU starts fighting you. : P There's a "DEAD" toggle (you can KO CPU--no player health bar though so they can't hurt you). You have to press A on the green "SET UP" text in the lower middle of the training menu to confirm changes. : PPP
"Random" mode is just Arcade mode w/ random opponents rather than I guess the fixed gauntlet you'd face w/ each character. Survival is a fairly typical Survival mode although you don't regain ANY health OR armor between 1-round matches.
If you use the "f,b,f,b plus PKG" armor blow-off move you're said to get a bit faster (the FAQ says this too) but it DOESN'T seem to let you then do the "f plus PKG" Super K.O. instant win move--which is only, it says, available when you've lost your armor--so I guess that's when the opponent knocks your armor off for you.
VS mode has vs CPU--& even TEAM vs w/ up to 8 characters per team in 1-on-1 matches; I ran a 8-CPU-vs-8-CPU session which was kind of fun if fairly predictable, although Jane got 2 KOs & the boss DID tilt the outcome in his team's favor, but not by as much as I would have thought. You have to re-pick characters after each VS so you can't do uninterrupted endless random VS CPU which is all I really need a fighting game to do--alas.
Internet mode is a web browser thing & the built-in start page w/ thumbnail links to dead sites www.sega-rd2.com/fv2 and www.dricas.ne.jp momentarily had my addled brain thinking I was actually browsing the web & these old sites were gonna still be online. ; D
Tried raising the difficulty--which you can't do in Gaiden--but it was weird: mashing as Bahn I got right through the first 3 opponents fast--although I suppose w/ a dropped round or 2, but still didn't see MUCH harder than NORMAL--then hit a brick wall in Picky. But I always have at least some trouble with Picky even on NORMAL.
It's all just simple mashing fun I shouldn't over-analyze, I suppose; if I want complicated I should be playing VF. (Although oddly each FV2 character--I think--can do crouch throws & a "b plus PKG" counter-block that then lets you follow w/ P or K OR sidestep--which you can't do normally (u or d plus PKG).) |
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Bahn playthrough (Easy).
I said at the end of the video that although I was feeling FV1 more than 2, I still need to give 2 more time, try more of the characters, etc. But thinking about it more, I can't shake the feeling that it gives me of being weightless and generic; it just stands out a lot less to me than 1. And the graphics really get flattened out--in a bad way--by the absence of the Model 3 hardware specular highlights on the character models that you can see in the emulated version in Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. (Oh and the other thing that isn't great in that version, besides the laggy input feeling and bordered display, is that there are fake scanlines over the game, and you can't turn them off.)
So I think I'm gonna give this one a rest for a bit.
It is WAY easier to do Bahn's flying uppercut move here than in FV1--although, I couldn't seem to do the double-flying-uppercut I thought he had (the CPU definitely hit me with it in FV1 for PS2, and I saw it in the move list in the FV1 PS3 port). |
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