What arrived on Sega's 16-bit system may have said Virtua Fighter 2 on the box, but what was found inside was anything but. Genesis couldn't handle all of the moves, or the combos. Genesis couldn't do 3D, and 3D was almost the entire hook for the Virtua Fighter series. Virtua Fighter 2 arrived on the Genesis in 1996 in an excessively watered-down, nearly unrecognizable port that failed to capture even a hint of the magic of the arcade original. The core Sega player was still living on the Genesis – so Sega brought Virtua Fighter to them. Many Sega players had been slow to make the transition, burned as they'd been by the company's string of other failed and abandoned hardware pieces in the mid '90s. Which they did, faithfully, in an excellent conversion for the 3D-capable Sega Saturn in 1995. It was a huge hit for Sega, who sought to capitalize on its success by porting it to a home system. The sequel to the first-ever 3D fighting game, VF2 took the pioneering polygonal graphics of its original installment and refined them – the game was one of the best-looking, best-playing and smoothest one-on-one brawlers of the age. Virtua Fighter 2 was an arcade phenomenon. Virtua Fighter 2, on the Genesis? Is that even possible? The answer is no, of course, and this game proved perhaps better than any other in the past that hardware transition times can be dangerous to navigate. Now that right there should be enough for most readers. But 11 years ago, Sega was stuck in a situation where one of its most important IPs still managed to lose its way – Virtua Fighter 2 on the Genesis. Neither is that bad of an option, as we've seen positive examples of both in Nintendo's shift from the GameCube to the Wii. Or, alternatively, shut down and retool, undergoing a delay to arrive instead on the new, more powerful system. They have to make a choice – complete development on the current hardware, then go to market as the old machine is on its last legs. There's a nebulous span of a year or so, around the time the industry upgrades to each next generation, where projects still in development often lose their way. I’m writing this a bit after the recordings but I’m pretty sure I never actually had to load a state in the SNES game but I wouldn”t swear to it! Again, this is about viewing the games, not my gameplay.Hardware transitions are tough. I did that to a tiny degree here with the SNES version and not at all with the arcade version, for those that are interested. Some methodology notes, when making Utterly Pointless Comparison videos I often use save states in emulators to match sections of the game up as closely as possible. So over the years, despite the insult that it is to both eyes and ears, I’ve spent more time playing the Genesis version than SNES version, although I’ve played quite a lot of both. But it also controls a lot better, with smoother, faster input response. The Genesis version looks and sounds considerably worse than the SNES version of Super Street Fighter II. I was going to add some info about the Genesis version but decided not to, in the video at least, so I’ll do it here instead! Today I look at the arcade and SNES versions of Super Street Fighter II. A while back I compared the arcade and Genesis versions of Street Fighter II CE and SCE. It’s been a while, so here, have a fresh episode of Utterly Pointless Comparisons.