In the past, Sega debuted its arcade boards in style, with such titles as Virtua Racing, Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter 3 marking the starting points for their respective boards. But with the recent Naomi boards and now the Triforce, the first title will probably be forgotten rather quickly. Once again, Sega is making the move to new arcade hardware, and once again Amusement Vision is quick out of the gates with a new entry in that love-it-or-hate-it soccer series Virtua Striker.
The newest entry in the series, Virtua Striker 2002, debuted in playable form at Sega's Summer Private Show held in Tokyo this past weekend (don't confuse this with last month's Summer Private Show which marked the debut of Virtua Fighter Evolution). Sega actually showed first footage of the game (without actually revealing its identity) back at the AOU 2002 expo where the Nintendo-Sega-Namco tag-team developed GameCube-based Triforce arcade board was announced, but this event marked the first confirmation what we saw it is indeed an actual Triforce game.
Basically, Virtua Striker 2002 seems to be the GameCube version of Virtua Striker 3 running in the arcades with some additional features. The number of teams and stadiums has jumped up to, respectively, 64 and 13 (up from 32 and 7). This includes, as proudly proclaimed in Sega's press material, the entire 11 starting members from team Japan's battle against Belgium during the World Cup. On top of these changes, Amusement Vision has also added a new stamina feature where your player gets tired and his movement availability is adversely affected.
Sega's press materials also point to some new graphical frills, although we couldn't notice much of a difference over the previous Naomi 2 version. Despite this, the game is the best looking soccer game anywhere, either in the home or arcades. But how does it play? Amusement Vision has stucks to the simple control formula that seems to rile gamers used to Winning Eleven or FIFA. Once again, you're given only limited control over your team's formation and are automatically told whom you're controlling; the game feels like it's part you and 75% computer play. Why hasn't anything changed despite poor reviews for all previous home versions of the game? Well, Virtua Striker 3 is still in the top ten of the Japanese arcades, months after its release, so perhaps arcade gamers really want something simple and quick.
In fact, we tried the game out and had a blast in a match that lasted around ten minutes and ended up being judged on PKs. Japanese gamers will likely eat this one up when it's released in arcades this Fall, as they have all previous entries.
As for a possible home version, we'll stick to Winning Eleven. And regarding that Xbox arcade board. Can we get a debut title that doesn't involve cleats?
-- Anoop Gantayat, Contributor