Fighting Vipers from Sega’s AM2 is a one-on-one fighting game that was released originally in the arcades, but made the natural transition to Sega’s Saturn console not too long afterwards.
The game takes place in the fictional land of Armstone City where a fighting tournament has been announced, and the final bout of which is to be held on top of a tower not too dissimilar to the Statue of Liberty.
The fighters taking part are Picky, a young Skateboarding fan out to impress the girl of his dreams, Grace, a roller-blading fashion designer, Bahn, a mysterious Japanese fighter out to find and prove himself to his father, Raxel, who is as close to Dave Mustaine of Megadeth fame as you will ever see in a game and even fights with a flying V guitar, Tokio, a former gang member turned drifter, Sanman, a biker who doesn’t talk much Jane, the hard as nails ex-navy woman, Candy, the teenage girl out for fame and Mahler, a huge wrestler who has a grudge against the mayor of Armstone, who is the final opponent for whoever gets furthest in the tournament. Mahler and BM are almost identical, which means that they both look like a steroid-fuelled version of Serpentor from GI Joe.
The thing that distinguishes these fighters from everyone else is that they are ‘Vipers’. Vipers wear specially designed lightweight body armour, which can be broken off during a fight. Should they lose their armour, the exposed area will become weaker and damage inflicted on it will increase.

Graphically, the game is passable for a 32-Bit title, but it certainly isn’t anything overly special. I would say that the game’s graphics fall right inbetween Virtua Fighter and Virtua Fighter 2 in that the characters look a lot better than the blocky monstrosities in VF1, but lack the fluid looks and animations of VF2.
The stages are all boxed in and are usually quite plain in appearance. However, some of them let you see some really cool backgrounds, and the walls can be smashed for match finishes.

The game controls exactly the same as the Virtua Fighter games, A is Block, B is Punch and C is Kick. Combinations of these in conjunction with the D-Pad will bring forth more advanced special moves or throws.
One control that appears and is exclusive to this is the mid-air recovery. By pressing Block,Punch and Kick in mid-air after you have been hit, your fighter will recover and land on their feet.
These all respond to a good degree and there are no complaints from me in the control department.

Soundwise the game isn’t bad, but isn’t all that great either. Cheesy but pretty bland rock tunes seem to be the norm for the game, and the only sound effects are blows connecting, grunts and the occasional taunt, all of which are in Japanese.

So, how does the game fair in the playing department? It’s a fairly mixed experience really.
The game doesn’t offer the same depth as the VF titles, and the characters seem to all be built round a generic set of moves with only a short selection of their own signature attacks. While VF-style complexities aren’t required, this just seems to have been so dumbed down its just not that fun. The armour adds a nice dimension to gameplay, only it takes so much of a beating to get it off that it really only comes into effect in the minority of fights.
The majority of fights in the game are just not anything very inspiring, and its just so hard to get an air of excitement about it, even on multiplayer, which is something that all fighting games should do. When me and my friend played this, there wasn’t any rivalries, any great bouts, nothing. Very few fighting games have ever failed to ignite some sort of rivalry amongst us, but somehow this one managed it, despite not being bad.
The thing that makes this even more frustrating is the fact that you know that it has a decent engine and isn’t by any means bad, it just lacks any real kick, and any reason to choose it over another one of the plethora of fighting games released for the Saturn. If you want the simple control system and general feel of the game, AM2’s VF2 is just so much better. But if the realistic martial arts of it put you off, AM3’s weapons based effort Last Bronx uses the same control scheme and is much more fun.

The game, like seemingly all AM2 fighting games, offers no endings, or any incentive to play the game on single player for very long. Coupled with the fact that this doesn’t have the realism and competitive factor of the VF games, this almost wipes its chances of a positive score out.

Fighting Vipers is like the Virtua Fighter series slightly slow little brother. While it contains the majority of the same ingredients, but is slightly different, the game just isn’t as good, despite having a good core to it.

At the end of the day, the Sega Saturn has so many good fighting games in both 2D (X-Men, Marvel Superheroes, Streetfighter Alpha 2, King of Fighters 95) and 3D (Virtua Fighter 2 , Fighters Megamix, Last Bronx) that there really isn’t any need to look into Fighting Vipers unless you are a complete fighting game junkie. In which case, there are much worse titles you could pick up, but I would recommend any of the above mentioned beforehand if possible.

Related Reviews
Virtua Cop for Sega Saturn
Virtua Fighter 2 for Sega Saturn


Recommended: Yes