Virtua Fighter
Virtua Fighter, introduced to the public in 1993 by Sega, has served as one of the most impressive and accurate fighting game simulations for over a decade. At one point it was so popular that it actually replaced fighting.
The popular arcade game got its start at the simulator division of Lockheed-Martin in 1985, when aircraft designers accidentally "tweaked" the ground crew AI, swapping the baggage handling system from "friendly" to "hostile." The system went berserk and began to attack the s plane with martial arts techniques. In order to debug the simulation, a programmer assumed manual control of a second simulated ground crew member named "Jeffry" and stepped out onto the runway. After executing a F,F+K "Big Ass Boot" and a D+G+P "Splash Mountain" maneuver, Jacky was down for the count and the test pilot could resume the simulation.
As fate would have it, the test pilot at that time was a young Yu Suzuki, who would later quit his job as a test pilot to design pottery simulation arcade games for Sega. Six years later in 1991, Suzuki remembered the experience and called up Lockheed to ask permission to expand the ground crew system into an actual fighting game based on the Tom Cruise film Cocktail. The film license fell through, so Suzuki settled on the original name Virtual Fighter, but a slip of his finger while typing the name resulted in the Virtua moniker. A contract was drawn up, and over 500 flight simulators' chipsets were ripped out and placed into Virtua Fighter arcade machines, which were subsequently priced at $250,000 each.
Virtua Fighter turned out to be a huge hit in the Korean and Portuguese markets, with mild success in the USA and Japan. As each game is based on a flight simulator chipset, Sega is forced to wait for updated flight sims before creating a sequel.
Virtua Fighter Characters:
-Akira Yukky- An old tramp who eats out of dustbins and holds the world record for having the least number of showers (currently on minus 5) and practices the art of drunk-fu.
-Pie Chomp- A severely obese woman from Taiwan who vanquishes opponents by absorbing them through her skin.
-Lau Chan- When the vastly superior Tekken had a character called Law, Virtua fighter shamelessly ripped Namco off by creating a chinese chef of their own. Throw in a dress and a dodgy haircut and no-one notices the difference. Has since become Laura Chang, who now dances for free in the nightclubs of Greenland.
-The Big Bad Wolf, aka "Gingerbollocks"- Professional wrestler who escaped a timeloop in which he had to repeat halloween over and over again, dressed as a wolf. He enters the tournament to win enough money to pay off UFOs from the planet Pook and stop them from gang probing him.
-Cage Rage- Trespass on his land and he'll chase you off it with a shotgun. Enjoys playing hide and seek with his scarecrows.
-Apollo Creed- He's not really dead but enters the tournament to exact revenge after losing his championship to George Dragon in an England vs Scotland pub darts competition.
-(BOSS CHARACTER) Durable- Reliable, Easy to carry and shatterproof. One bad motherfucker
Virtua Fighter 1 -- F-16 Fighting Falcon Sim ("Model 1")
Virtua Fighter 2 -- SR-71 Blackbird Sim ("Model 2")
Virtua Fighter 3 -- Boeing 777 Sim ("Model 3")
Virtua Fighter 4 -- Airbus A380 Sim ("Naomi 2")
Virtua Fighter 5 -- Spirit of '76 Sim ("Lindbergh")
Details on the upcoming Virtua Fighter 5 are still spotty, but the game seems to contain new characters who, like previous games, are based on American presidents (or American presidents' wives).