Virtua Fighter 32X was released in October of 1995, shortly
before the release of the awesome Virtua Fighter 2 on Saturn. Its release was
promoted by a starter kit with a Tee-shirt and video of VF 32X in action, and
a series of print ads stating "Patience is a Virtua".
VF 32X runs at what appears to be 15-20+ frames per second, fairly steadily,
but plays noticeably more slowly than Virtua Fighter 1 on Saturn. The
32X is limited to the Genesis resolution of 320x224. So supposing that some software
work around wasn't used to run at a higher resolution, and judging from the degree
of aliasing, Virtua Fighter 32X runs at the lowest resolution of any other version or sequel. VF 32X
is also missing the realistic shadows of the arcade, Saturn, and Saturn Remix versions, though it
does have light sourced characters. The rings in Virtua Fighter 32X are flat shaded and basically just
cubes with squares on them, rather than the texture mapped rings of VF on Saturn, or the higher detail
flat shaded rings of the arcade version.
Also, in order to handle the close up shots of the characters in their winning
poses, VF 32X takes the opponent out and uses higher polygon count character
models for the close ups. You can see a good shot of Akira's higher polygon
count model in the third shot on Jeffry's stage, and a good close up of the
smaller count model in the second shot in Akira's stage. The second and third
shots on Jacky's stage also show both the low polygon count and high polygon
count models respectively.
The music and sound effects are done quite well, considering that it's a cartridge,
though they are all of noticeably lower sample rate than the CD-ROM Saturn game.
Right down to the AM2 jingle, every sound is in there as well as compressed
digital cartridge sound could be. The music sounds like a blend of 32X and Genesis
chip music, and actually comes off as some of the better chip music for either
system.
Virtua Fighter 32X has, unique to this version, a large variety of costume colors
for each character, and four unique camera angles, including 3rd person over
the shoulder and birds eye view. VF 32X also has none of the polygon flicker,
or pop-up that the Saturn version has, and no load times.