Virtua Fighter, the quintessential of 3D fighters. Those days, 2D figthers with their fireballs and shoryukens ruled the fighting genre. There were a gazillion 2D fighters ( Fighers History, Karnovs Revenge, Power Instinct) and most of them suck except for the Street Fighter series and King of Fighters series. Hence, 3D fighters broke into the domain in 1993 and the game that was leading the charge is Virtua Fighter, followed closely by Tekken.

It was kinda weird staring at fugly graphics with kindergarten quality background, and the most apparent thing is no fireball! At first, I was skeptical on a fighting game without fireball back then, but after a couple of games, it turned out to be quite all right. Hence, gamers received the shift from 2D to 3D with open arms.

VF 2 on the other hand, released in 1994, received acclaimed reviews. VF 2 is an eye candy and is technically deep during it's time. Seeing the changes from a blocky character model in VF1 to a smoother one in VF2, causes some rave about texture mapping. That's the power of Model Board 2 bitch! Ahh, those days when number of polygons were everything.

Sega messed up with VF3 and brought the series back on track in VF4 and VF 5. However, in my opinion, VF 2 is Sega's pinnacle VF Series. Although the jumps were floaty , the characters have a personality of a wood and the chicks were not hot, I fell in love with VF 2 back then, and am still in love with it today. The underwater fight with Dural is one of the most memorable battles ever. And that is why VF 2 is number 5 on the Top Fighting Games.