Fighting Vipers

Fighting Vipers features a similar style of gameplay to Sega AM2's more renowned Virtua Fighter series, specifically Virtua Fighter 2, using simply guard, punch and kick attack buttons with a focus on combo moves. The Saturn version uses its three extra buttons for three smaller combos. Each of the 9 characters featured in the game wears armor that can be broken off by opponents, leaving them more vulnerable to taking damage. A human shaped meter in the top corners of the screen monitors damage to the armor. Walls surround each arena, caging the combatants in, allowing for attacks in conjunction with them (bouncing off etc.). If a knockout attack is strong enough, characters can knock their opponent over, on top, or straight through the walls. The Saturn port of Fighting Vipers added Playback Mode and Training Mode, both of which are now used widely in the fighting genre. Players could save their matches and play them again in Playback Mode, while Training Mode talked the player through the moves of each character one-by-one. ==Characters==

; Main Characters • Bahn: : Despite only being a 17-year-old high school student, Bahn is a powerful and imposing fighter in a long coat and hat. Hailing from Nishino Town, Japan and declared himself as Genghis Bahn III, he has come overseas to find and fight his father, whom he has never met and abandoned him and his mother when he was a boy. : Voiced by Sega designer Kazunori Oh in the first two main games, and Hiroki Takahashi in Project X Zone. • Candy (Honey in the Japanese version): : A petite 16-year-old fashion student with a pleasant nature, Candy designed her own trademark plastic fairy costume herself, and has entered the tournament to promote her original fashion line. • Grace: : A 19-year-old African-American born in Armstone City whose armor is themed after the protective gear for inline skating, including the skates themselves. Grace is making her living as a fashion model. Though she once dreamed of becoming a professional figure skater, her lover and coach betrayed her, leaving her disillusioned. • Raxel: : The narcissistic lead singer and guitarist for a hair metal band called 'Death Crunch' with Kiss-styled armor and a red Gibson Flying-V electric guitar, Raxel is the son of an Armstone City councilman, a drop out who left home after a fight with his father. Raxel has entered the tournament to heighten his own profile and become more famous. • Tokio: : A 16-year-old Japanese American pretty boy with a sense of justice rebelling against a strict kabuki actor's household. Tokio is a former leader of a street gang called 'Black Thunder' but left after feeling responsible for another gang member's death. He entered the tournament for a challenge and for thrills. • Sanman: : A mysterious fat man about whom nothing is known, other than his birthday (3 March) and an obsession with the number 3, hence his name (san is Japanese for "three"). • Picky: : A young stereotypical skateboarder who attended Armstone campus, Picky's armor is styled after protective gear for skateboarders. He carries his skateboard on his back, and hits opponents with it. He is a 14-year-old middle schooler. • Mahler: : A mysterious 20-years-old masked wrestler, who wears a poisonous snake armor and holds a grudge against the Mayor of Armstone City (who has organised the tournament). He was not officially registered as a participant of the first Viper tournament. He is an unlockable character. • B.M.: : The main antagonist of the series, he is the mayor of Armstone City and in fact the organizer of the tournaments. B.M. is a powered-up version of Mahler. ; Sega Saturn exclusive guest characters • Kumachan: a 10-year-old smiling bear character wearing an orange hat, who is included as an unlockable character in the Sega Saturn port. It is based on the giant floating balloon mascot seen in the Old Armstone Town stage. It uses Sanman's fighting style, and its 2nd player counterpart is called Pandachan. Even though it can fight, its 3D model never moves. • Pepsiman: the Japanese mascot of Pepsi who only appears in the Japanese Sega Saturn version of the game as an unlockable character. He was removed from the US and PAL releases. ==Development==

Fighting Vipers was developed using the same game engine which was first used for Virtua Fighter 2, and uses a nearly identical arcade board, though with slightly faster processing speed. Unlike Virtua Fighter 2, there are no ring-outs; producer Yu Suzuki stated, "We received comments about the ring-outs in VF and so for FV the fighting can continue mercilessly." The character Mahler was created by reducing the power specifications of the boss, B.M., so that he would be appropriately balanced for player vs. player matches. The programming team consisted of 15 people, most of whom had worked on the Saturn version of Virtua Fighter 2, and some of whom had worked on the arcade version of Fighting Vipers. Work on the conversion began in the first quarter of 1996 and took eight months. After converting the Virtua Fighter 2 engine, the team focused first on recreating the barriers, as they anticipated this would be the most difficult part to accomplish on the Saturn hardware. Because armor and walls can be broken in the game, there was no easy way of reducing the number of polygons in those elements. In part to compensate for the lower polygon counts on the characters, a new form of dynamic lighting incorporating Gouraud shading was added to the Saturn version. In order to make this effect possible, and have the game run at a speed comparable to the arcade version, the team decided at the beginning of development that they would not use the Saturn's high-resolution mode. Regional differences The original Japanese version had a large amount of advertising for Pepsi, due to product placement agreements with Sega at the time. This licensing was removed in the US and PAL versions because the promotional campaign involving Pepsi was never taken outside of Japan. In the Japanese version, the character Candy is named Honey. ==Reception==

In Japan, Game Machine listed Fighting Vipers on their December 15, 1995 issue as being the most popular arcade game at the time. It went on to be one of the top five highest-grossing arcade printed circuit board (PCB) software of 1996 in Japan. It was considerably less popular in North American arcades. In reviews for the Saturn version, the barrier mechanics - allowing players to beat opponents against or through walls and use them to launch attacks - were met with universal approval. GamePro said it "is one of our favorites because it's fast, sexy, and easy." And while most critics felt that Fighting Vipers clearly falls short of Virtua Fighter 2, and a Next Generation reviewer concluded, "VF2 is one of the best games of all time, but Fighting Vipers nearly eclipses it." In Japan, Famitsu scored it 37 out of 40. == Legacy ==

Sequels and re-releases A sequel, Fighting Vipers 2 was released, introducing new characters. It was ported to the Dreamcast but only in Japan and Europe. All of the Fighting Vipers characters were used in Sega AM2's Fighters Megamix for the Sega Saturn. Fighting Vipers was also re-released for the PlayStation 2 as part of the Sega Ages line. A PAL version was planned, but never released. Fighting Vipers was re-released in late 2012 on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live as one of five games included in the Sega Model 2 Collection. The re-release features online play, but does not contain any of the extra content found in the Saturn version. Fighting Vipers is also included as a playable arcade game in Judgment and Lost Judgment. Bahn appears as a solo unit in Project X Zone, a Nintendo 3DS RPG crossover of Capcom, Sega and Namco Bandai Games. Sonic the Fighters A programmer working on Fighting Vipers put Sonic the Hedgehog and Tails in the game for amusement, which led to Sega AM2 commissioning a Sonic fighting game, Sonic the Fighters. Hidden within the data of the arcade version of Sonic the Fighters is an additional character named Honey, a yellow cat wearing Candy's red plastic fairy costume. She is only playable by hacking the game's data. Honey's model was removed from the Sonic the Fighters port on Sonic Gems Collection. However, in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 port, she is a playable character, and was later introduced to the cast of Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog comics during an arc based on Sonic the Fighters. The arc depicts Honey as a fashion designer similar to her human counterpart, and also features a boar character based on Jane. ==References==