9 Launch Games That Singlehandedly Made Their Consoles Worth Buying

6. Virtua Fighter - Sega Saturn

Halo Combat Evolved
Sega

Yu Suzuki was breaking expectations of what many thought possible in video games long before Shenmue came about.

Virtua Fighter was the first of its kind to utilize 3D polygon-based visuals. Prior to Akira and Kage-Muru joining the fighting game hall of fame, every contemporary had utilized 2D sprites. Ring-outs, three-dimensional movement, realistic animations and physics?

Those standard features didn't exist prior to Virtua Fighter's birth, and that's just the impact that it had on its genre. Had Sega decided against greenlighting its creation for the Saturn, Virtua Fighter would never have been the driving force behind modernization for other corners of the industry.

Were it not for Virtua Fighter, the original PlayStation would have been very different indeed. Tough to leave behind a better legacy than that.

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Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.