Naw, I'm just old and was around during the bbs days when NDA wasn't really a concern, haha.
I've heard rumors that EA tried to make an exclusivity deal with their sports games, but I'm not sure how much I believe that. It would've been the only instance of that during that period, as PS1 and Saturn both had sports titles from other publishers, but who knows.
Well considering EA did pull that (horrible) NFL exclusivity deal later on, it might not be too far-fetched
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I can only imagine what loose lips were saying online back in those days, it must've been like the wild west with BBSes of the time, probably a good deal of company and trade secrets just being discussed casually. I think most of us today would just be fine with open NPD numbers again!
For all you guys talking fighters above, ya the 90s were the time fighting games were the rage.
Too bad Sega's were either shit, or nobody cared about them.
You'll have to frame this some way, because from my experience and reviews at the time, most of Sega's fighters were very well-received and at least in Asia people did seem to care a lot about them, especially Virtua Fighter.
The most popular fighters at the time were:
- SF
- MK
- Tekken
- VF
- KI
- All those Capcom fighters ranging from Dark Stalkers to super heroes
- More of a niche, but gamers who spent time with all the Neo Geo fighters in arcades
I mean this is generally true but it depends on what region. SF's popularity was waning in the back half of the '90s, that's part of the reason games like Virtua Fighter and Tekken were able to attract segments of its audience. The SFIII games for example just outright bombed in arcades, and while the Alpha games were pretty popular the VS. games were even moreso.
Virtua Fighter didn't have a lot of traction in the West, but it did in Asia, especially in Japan where it was the most popular fighting game IP from '93 through the VF4 era. It was particularly popular in arcades, especially the earlier games. Tekken wasn't as popular in Japan but it eventually became the 3D fighter in the West by Tekken 2 and especially Tekken 3 getting their PS1 ports. Killer Instinct's popularity was on the decline by the mid-'90s but I think gory fighters as a whole were just waning, even Mortal Kombat was waning in popularity by the 3rd installment and it just continued from there. KI died out faster though due to middling home ports (KI Gold, which wasn't really a port of KI2 anyway) and Nintendo easing off arcades in general.
A lot of SNK's fighters in that period were relatively niche compared to all the games just mentioned, but had pretty good communities in parts of Asia. King of Fighters became their breakout fighter IP for a lot of people in the West, though, and it became one of (if not hte) strongest fighting game brands in Latin America and Korea, where I think it still is to this day.
Sega's fighting games were mainly Eternal Champions (shit game, I had it on Genesis), VF (the most boring fighting game ever), and a slew of arcade based fighters like Fighting Vipers, Last Bronx, Golden Axe the Duel, Megamix on Saturn.... and probably some more I missed.
Yeah EC on Genesis was kinda ass, but the Mega CD version added a lot more to the game and polished the gameplay a great deal, too. I think the vast majority with a soft spot for the IP have that due to the Mega/Sega CD version, not the Genesis/MegaDrive one.
Virtua Fighter...I would not say was boring, particularly once VF2 and VF3 came along. The 1st game's a bit basic tho TBF, it was the 1st fully 3D fighting game as well, so that's understandable. I personally don't think the games had enough overt flashiness to them and character designs were mostly bland (and on top of that, characters didn't have a great deal of characterization and the plots were barebones), but apparently with Asian regions, particularly Japan, that didn't seem to matter.
For those places I think the technical excellence of the games and them staying pretty true to real-life martial arts was the big appeal over games like Tekken or Toshinden, which is why they gravitated towards it. I do think the VF series finally got a major injection of personality with VF4, though. That and it being on the PS2 are reasons why it finally got the series to break through with the West, and it didn't have to skimp on complexity to do so.
A lot of those other fighters you mention outside of Megamix got ST-V arcade ports.
There is no way any of those Sega made fighting games compares to any of the above I listed.
I'd put King of Fighters games better than all Sega made fighters combined.
Highly subjective opinion and you're entitled to it, but I can easily list many subjective and objective reasons why it's maybe bad opinion
. Heck the first KOF didn't even let you form your own teams! Not to mention, unlike stuff like VF2, it's a bit hard to go back to some of the early KOF titles outside of nostalgic appeal.
I'd also say some of Sega's fighters of that era easily outpaced a lot of the other games you mentioned. For example, Tekken of that era just could not touch Virtua Fighter's level of depth, and what extreme depth Tekken games did get came from some rather unnatural, obfuscated mechanics and combos. I actually quite love the depth of Tekken 3 for example, but it just can't compare with the depth of Virtua Fighter 3 (that said, I think it's the "cooler" game of the two and that's due to roster, character design, and godly OSTs).
Street Fighter, like I was saying before, was generally waning in the late '90s. I do like (not love) the Alpha games, but Alpha/Zero 3 did kill some of the balance the 2nd game had. The EX games were fun and cool (and again, great OSTs), but they weren't touching something like VF when it came to technical depth or engine polish. SFIII is something I have a strong love/hate relationship with. Don't care that much for NG, but IMO there's no clear winner between 2I and 3S. They both have pluses and minuses. 2I easily has the better backgrounds and a more consistent OST, and better balance with the air parry system (which reinforces neutral play on the ground). 3S has Chun (obviously a plus
)and some of my favorites like Remy plus a great fighting engine, but the balance is pretty terrible, the backgrounds are worst, the OST overall isn't as strong as 2Is (some songs do stand out for me tho), and characters like Hugo don't look like they have finished sprite art. Plus, the way it does air parries in particular rewards aggressive play too much which when combined with the ground parry and red parry, kills a good deal of the neutral.
That said those are 2D fighters and it's not like you can directly compare a 3D fighter up with them. So if someone has a preference for 2D-style fighters then I'd expect them to prefer a lot of those over Sega's lineup which was pretty much 3D fighters outside of EC and GA: The Duel. I can see people preferring certain 3D fighters over certain games like VF, too, but there are some areas where stuff like VF just shits over those other games, and I imagine a lot of the preference otherwise coming from stylistic presentation and choices, something VF admittedly was somewhat weak in until VF3/VF4.
