Review by: DENNY471

The secret is out! A scant two months before Christmas, rumors began circulating about a secret project AM2 was working on for the Saturn. In early November, rumor became fact when Sega announced a polygon fighting game featuring the characters from Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers. From the onset, media and faithless fans began doubting the validity of this pair-up, claiming that the two games were too different, and that the Saturn could never handle a game of this magnitude. By the end of November, pics were already being released on the internet, and jaws were dropped. Finally, on December 21, 1996 the greatest game to ever grace the Saturn was released. That game is none other than the miraculous Fighters MegaMix!

>From the minute you turn on the power, you are greeted by a CG intro once thought impossible on the Saturn. Full screen, fluid and sharp, you will cry when you view the epic battle between Bahn and Akira while the other characters are being introduced.

As for the game itself, the graphics are sharper than Fighting Vipers, which wasn't bad to begin with, but not quite as sharp as the high-res VF2. The characters are Gourad shaded as opposed to texture mapped. This works better for some than others. As a result of the Gourad shading, the Fighting Viper characters look a little better than the Virtua Fighters. In VF2, the characters were texture-mapped, but when Gouraded, the Virtua characters look a little blockier, especially their faces. Still, the overall graphic presentation is excellent. Fighters MegaMix also contains never-before-seen-on-Saturn lighting effects. I don't mean the kind of light sourcing you see in games like Tekken or Soul Edge, where punches and kicks produce flashes of light or electricity which is reflected on the body. In this game, the light sourcing is caused by the position of the sun or other outside light sources which realistically change to darken or lighten certain parts of the body when the fighters are moving around. Good examples of this are Kage, Jane and Dural's stages, although many other stages contain some sort of light-sourcing. Combine the slick Gourad shading and the incredible light sourcing with the game's constant 60 frame-per-second movement and you've got an event, not just a game, that fells even the mighty Virtua Fighter 2 conversion for Saturn, heretofore relished as the best fighting game of all time!

I am happy to report that Sega has not overlooked the audio portion of this game as they did with Saturn VF2. While not exactly the same sound effects used in VF1 and the arcade VF2, these sound effects are reminiscent of Tekken, sort of artificial sounding but effective nonetheless. MegaMix really shines in the music area. There are well over 40 tracks in this game and they are all of the highest quality, in full surround. Best of all, many of the tracks are those of Virtua Fighter 3!! There are certain games where the in-game music sounds bland, but when you listen to the CD track by itself, the stereo surround sound is fully restored. This is not the case with Fighters MegaMix. The music quality is excellent, in-game and out. The voice of the announcer is especially clear, as are the voices of the characters. In fact, I noticed that when you lose against an opponent and continue, the announcer's voice contains an extra echo during the rematch which reverberates through all your speakers (I have 6). Why that is, I don't know, I just know I like it. Besides the normal assortment of punches and kicks, the sound effects for metal, wood, wall smashing, thunder, guns (yes, someone actually uses a gun! It's not as bad as you think..) smacks, swipes and most of Akira's movements are incredible. Just listening to a battle between Akira and Dural will have you smiling. Awesome music, fantastic samples, and clear speech prove that the Saturn really does have great sound capability, despite past efforts on the system.

There are 22 readily available characters, 10 hidden characters from other Sega games and at least two original characters. That makes for a total of 34 characters!! Granted, some are foolish characters, including Kumachan, the inflated bear with literally NO animation, Deku, the Mexican jumping bean, Hornet, the stock car from Daytona, Niku the, uhh, fighting meat, and Logo, AM2's palm tree trademark. Hornet's background is the racetrack from Daytona and the theme music is a remixed "Rolling Start" score, which is presented rather well. Still, you're fighting a car! Admittedly, Hornet's moves are quite devastating on the harder difficulty setting, combining Bahn and Akira's moves.

The other hidden characters are pleasant surprises. From Virtua Fighter Kids come Kids Akira and Kids Sarah. Both contain VF3 moves. They can, however, be quite ineffective against the regular characters since they have virtually no reach. Still, they look cool, complete with facial expressions, and are well animated. Also, from the cool but not well-known Sonic the Fighters comes Bean the woodpecker and Bark, a (yellow) polar bear with boxing gloves. These guys are a sight to behold; large light-sourced and flat shaded polygon characters with no breakup ala Tobal No.1's last couple bosses. I used to have doubts that the Saturn could do a decent Sonic the Fighters translation but after seeing these guys, I have total confidence, as will you when you see the outstanding graphic achievements this game displays. Against each other, the Virtua Kids, Sonic Fighters and Hornet make for great alternative action.

One character, Janet from Virtua Cop 2 contains ALL of Aoi's moves. When you see these new moves in action, you will be in complete awe. She has a full complement of counters, and an ultra-cheesy, but fitting move.. the ability to fire her Virtua pistol! Of course, the bullets are unblockable, but they can be evaded. Here's a tip: fire the pistol (B,F,P+K) 3 times rapidly and you will hear the voice from VC shouting "Reload!" The biggest surprise in this game is the ousted VF1 character, Siba, or Shiva as he was originally named. Siba (I'll call him Shiva from this point on) is an Arabian character complete with scimitar! With it, he is a major cheese character, but once you break the sword.... And get this, his background is VF3 Wolf's stage, the desert with the shimmering sun in the background. Granted, it doesn't look as good as the VF3 background, which whips up sand in the desert breeze while the characters leave sand trails with their movements, but it is still quite beautiful. And again, that light sourcing...! My God! The music for Shiva's stage is also that of the VF3 opening scene. Thank you, Sega!

The VF2 characters contain the evade moves, grabs, and some attacks and defense moves from VF3. Wolf's VF2 stage is fully restored, with the fence back in place (it was missing in the Saturn version). Best of all, it is now breakable, like the FV stages! Jeffrey is blessed with the VF3 music track for his stage and even certain BG's from VF1 make an appearance, including Sarah's rooftop stage, this time with the word MegaMix in blazing neon lights providing four walls to a stage that was already visually pleasing, but now looks even better!

The Fighting Vipers characters have not been left out when it comes to upgrades. From what I can tell, the Vipers have been granted a couple VF3 grabs. Also, B.M. and Mahler are more distinguishable now, with Mahler wearing some kind of Captain Morgan outfit, kinda like Cervantes in Soul Edge. They're equally goofy looking, but devastating nonetheless with MANY multiple hit juggle combos. Here's the smile grabber.. remember Tokio's stage ( the airport) when shock of shocks.. no airplane taking off!! The horror! Well, now it's back, and damn, it is impressive! Gone, however, is the chopper in Mahler's background. Some won't miss it, but I did. Lastly, a hidden character and evil version of Bahn called URA Bahn is selectable once you beat him. Beware, URA Bahn is much quicker, more aggressive than Hero Bahn, and far stronger!

Fighters MegaMix also gives you the option of playing in either Virtua Fighter Mode, or Fighting Vipers Mode. Virtua Fighter Mode is cool, but I suggest you play in Fighting Vipers Mode, in which the V-Fighters are given armor-breaking moves, more juggles and breathtaking triple replays. Unfortunately, the Fighting Vipers have an unfair advantage in strength, speed and combos in either mode. More times than not, when pitting a Virtua Fighter against a Viper, the Viper will win.

Now for the bad news...the stages with walls (the Vipers stages) just can't seem to stay together. Many times, the sides of the walls disappear and reappear with frustrating frequency. Also, while I am thankful for the practice mode, I didn't like the fact that the set of options available to you in the Fighting Vipers Practice mode was absent from Fighters MegaMix. Missing is the option to view the move before you actually execute it, making it a little easier for import owners to interpret the move, which is written in Japanese.

Once again, the 3-D backgrounds have been replaced with flat parallax and scrolling backgrounds, which move beautifully, but still demonstrate the blatant limitations of the Saturn's polygon capabilities. This is especially apparent on the Virtua Fighters backgrounds, which are now thankfully devoid of ring-outs, but the fighters are placed further away from the background scenery making the actual playfield and the background look somewhat detached. This is only true for a few backgrounds like Lau, Pai and Jacky's stages. Furthermore, from what I can tell, you no longer have the ability to save and replay matches as in Fighting Vipers. I would love to have been able to replay a particular round in which I cream some poor bastard in a corner before smashing them through it. Lastly, and the one flaw that is unforgivable is...slowdown! It happened during a couple of intense battles when lo and behold, the action slowed for a half second, making whatever move I was doing at the time look like it was being filmed that way for effect, but make no mistake, that was slowdown! Again, it only happened for a half second, but if I noticed it, so will you. When you take into consideration all this game has accomplished despite it's less than spectacular 3-D engine, you begin to look past it. I just wonder if game critics will. And oh yeah, this game is Mega Easy, so when trying to get all the characters, leave it on the default setting, but once you get everyone, I suggest switching to the Hard or Very Hard setting for maximum enjoyment. The options are in Japanese, but in the character select screen, hit Start. When the blue option screen comes up, it's the first row, click left or right till you see the Japanese characters resembling a box and two hooks, or two boxes and two hooks. (Hard & Very Hard). That about sums up the bad points of the game, most of which have nothing to do with gameplay, but would have made a great game greater. Still, take these gripes with a grain of salt…this title is the sharpest, cleanest and fastest all out technological success that the Saturn has ever put out, bar none. I haven't and will not even get into the extra hidden stuff to get once you get all the hidden characters…there's still more to do!! Replay value, it gets no better.

Bottom line: From a graphical and musical standpoint, from a gameplay standpoint, from a technological achievement standpoint and as any other category you care to fill in, this game is nothing short of miraculous. Now if only Sega will teach some 3rd parties how to access the Saturn's hidden powers... Even die hard PSX and N64 media zombies will have to do a double take when they see this…it's that damned good.

Overview Rating: 97%