Hobbies And Interests
Virtua Fighter
The early 1990s were dominated by the "Street Fighter" and "Mortal Kombat" fighting game franchises. "Street Fighter" used sprites for its characters, whereas "Mortal Kombat" increased the realism of its fighters by utilizing digitized graphics based on actual fighters. Sega released its groundbreaking fighter, "Virtua Fighter," in 1993 on its Model 1 arcade board, which was designed for polygonal rendering. The game used polygonal character models to add a level of realism previously unattained. While the models appear rudimentary by today's standards, "Virtua Fighter's" character models added a layer of design depth that two-dimensional sprites could not match. The success of this game in the arcades spurred many rivals, including "Tekken," and inspired Sega to shift its focus almost exclusively to three-dimensional models in its arcade offerings.
16-Bit Attempts
While Sega's "Virtua Fighter" and "Virtua Racer" and Namco's "Tekken" and "Ridge Racer" were making arcade owners across the world happy, the "next generation" video game systems were not yet out. In 1994, the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo were installed in tens of millions of home, and developers wanted to push these systems to their boundaries. These 16-bit systems were developed with two-dimensional sprite-based games in mind and were not capable of the complex processes needed to render polygonal models in real-time. Nintendo and Sega each developed a special chip, the Super FX and Virtua Processor, respectively. These chips were installed in the game cartridge itself and increased the cost of the games they powered. Nintendo's "Starfox" and "Dirt Trax" featured polygonal graphics, but the polygon counts were low, as was the case in Sega's port of "Virtua Racing" to the Genesis.
Pre-Rendered Alternative
Nintendo found a way to add a three-dimensional look to its games despite the limited processing power of it's Super Nintendo console. The pre-rendered graphics of "Donkey Kong Country" and "Killer Instinct" featured more depth than traditional sprite-based games, yet did not require an extra graphics chip in the game console. This was because the models were not being rendered in real-time but were pre-rendered. The downside to this approach is that it did not allow the characters to truly move in three dimensions, but merely added a graphical upgrade to two-dimensional gaming. Sega also implemented this technology in "Vectorman" for the Genesis console.
32-Bit Era
In 1995, the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation hit the marketplace in the United States. These consoles were developed with three-dimensional gaming in mind, and each one was able to process a few hundred thousand polygons per second. Dedicated to 3-D gaming and with more processing power than the consoles of the 16-bit generation, these consoles ushered in a new era of home console gaming. The "Virtua Fighter," "Tekken" and "Ridge Racer" franchises had all been brought to the home console market and were nearly perfect conversions from their arcade counterparts. Gamers were now able to experience the depth of the third dimension and polygonal characters from the comfort of their living room.