Sega was really starting to hit high points with Saturn development at this time. It's amazing how they went from figuring it out to getting stunning results in just a short time frame.

Pepsiman getting his own theme as a victory fanfare is perfect.

Useless Fact: Honey has a counterpart named Honey The Cat, in Sonic The Fighters. It is code hidden because she was just a test character while they were developing the FV engine and left her there. Later re releases of the game would crash trying to hack it to make her playable, but I think they re-added her again at some point? But she was casted as a character in the Sonic comics though!

The Saturn version is amazing considering the hardware!

This is probably one of the few games I've seen that had great ports on all systems 👍

This is peak polygonal Sega outside Virtua Fighter. I remember seeing a high energy ad on TV for the game in 1997.

I have the japanese version of this game on my Saturn and we played it a lot back in the day. One of my most favorite fighting games of all time!

Fun fact about Pepsiman in Fighting Vipers is that his moveset comprises of a Dural style mishmash of the game's roster's moves with some extra Virtua Fighter thrown in. His moveset and model was repurposed into Kuhn in Fighting Vipers 2

Honey/Candy is my main in Fighters Megamix.

Fighting Vipers is soooo cool on Saturn. I finally got the Japanese version a few weeks ago, made me so happy to add it to my collection. Pepsi Man is a hoot.

I have the full version of it on the MW3 Limited Edition Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.

2:40-2:42 Perfectly cut blood splatter

My favourite fighting game. Never played the sequel.

Sometimes I forget this wasn't just a Saturn game

I just loved the music in this game, still play it even in the car. Never owned the Saturn version but did finally get it on the 360 and it is awesome.

i got a series X as of last week. and didnt know this game ran on it. off to buy this

I think the only surprise was no PC port back in the day as Virtua Fighter had one. Still a great game and all the home ports are very good. Such a shame the series has been dead for a long time now...

Xbox360 port is the best but my favorite will always be Saturn's version, still have original disk.

The ports on Saturn & PS2 are definitely showing there age. Best to play Fighting Vipers in 2023 on the Original Model 2 Arcade Machine (if you are rich enough or lucky enough to track one down), a Model 2 Arcade Emulator is another great option, or of course either the XBox Live (XBox 360) port, or the Playstation Network (PS3) port.

AM2 really understood the Saturn. Kinda wonder what they're version of VF3 would have looked like. I’m guessing better than the Dreamcast one at least from a gameplay perspective

A weird thing I noticed with the 360 version is at the start of each round the announcers voice skips a bit so it sounds like "let-e action begin" instead of "let the action begin"

Used to have a giant poster of Candy/Honey in rather revealing attire; lol my step dad always felt uneasy about it - even though its that typical silicon graphics pre rendered type deal. I think i got it from sega Saturn magazine.... Funny thing is.... I have never actually played fighting vipers, only the sequal (I bought last bronx instead) and never played megamix either!! One of my regrets for not having those in my collection (irrelevant obviously as its all gone now...) Oh well. And this is why I love battle of the ports because I still feel part of it even though I haven't had my collection for a decade now.

I remember playing this on DreamCast I think that was part 2

That's one game I didn't remember existed. I remember you could play as the Daytona USA car in the Saturn version... I think.

The sequel Fighting Vipers 2 will have an Arcade perfect port in Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man who Erased his Name!! FV2 on the Dreamcast was an almost perfect conversion of the Arcade original. Even a bit better than Virtua Fighter 3TB on Dreamcast.

Awww, no mention of the Daytona USA car in Fighters Megamix? :)

i don't usually like the saturn but i must say this game really showcases what it was capable of. it's a shame there wasn't the support for the saturn like there was for the playstation.

Xbox360, Arcade, Saturn, and PS2. Yes, putting the Saturn ahead of the PS2 due to poor interlaced PQ, too dark, and bland colors. XB360 is the sharpest, and appears to have the best color out of the other ports. The backgrounds look so much more detailed and vibrant as well. The Saturn image is clean, but has mesh transparencies, something I can't stand. The VDP does a great job on the ground textures, and the backgrounds look good to me. I use to own it on Saturn back in the day as well.

I remember seeing screenshots of Fighting Vipers in magazines as a teenager but some how I just kept missing out on the game in Arcades, couldn't afford a Saturn in the mid 90's and didn't know they had Fighting Vipers 2 for Dreamcast a few years later. Funny story is I did my first PC build ever in 2008 getting a Phenom X3 720 with a Radeon HD4850 video card. At the same time about a week after my build I discovered emuparadise had the Sega Model 2 emulator for windows with a handful of dumps including Fighting Vipers. When I played it for the first time I was blown away loving the game but frustrated that I was only getting 25 to 30fps despite the upgrade. Out of desperation I went back to CompUSA exchanging the AMD mobo for an Intel mobo, exchanging the Phenom X3 for a Core 2 Duo E8600 and the HD4850 for the NVidia GTS450. Despite losing some value cause of their stupid "restocking fees," and blowing all my money past my budget, I went through all that just to fully enjoy playing Fighting Vipers with an improved 75 to 80fps lol. 🤣😇

I imported the Japanese version so I got to play as PEPSIMAN!!!!

FV because of VF

Oh one last thing judgment has fighting viper

i own the ss and ps3 ports...cool game...only surpassed by fighter megamix and fv2 ^^

Never played it before, looks fun, i remember reading about it's sequel Fighters Megamix, and how VF characters included there also had moves from VF3 :) Wonder why Pepsiman game wasn't converted for PSX?

I remember Fighting Vipers, at the Saturn port is still the best port and a landmark for Saturn development with it being the first Saturn game that was rendered almost completely in 3D, oh and the Japanese version gets Pepsi Man as a hidden character which is so cool and the Saturn port even has lighting that was wasn’t even in the model 2 arcade original, as for the PS2 port, it should have been arcade perfect while the Xbox 360 version is arcade emulation, anyway great battle of the ports as always and I’m also surprised you hadn’t covered this until now.

From PS1/Saturn till PS2/Dreamcast eras have been a great time for the fans of fighting games, especially for those wanting to try non-mainline titles that are not made by SNK & Capcom. Fighting Vipers is one of them and I would love to see the new installment of this game, perhaps they could combine with Virtua Fighter & make an all star Sega fighting game. Sega only focuses more on Sonic, Yakuza, Megami Tensei & Persona series these days and Sega needs to bring back old franchises.

I have the (American) Saturn version of Fighting Vipers, and it does play great. Also great fun in Fighters Megamix, a game I keep hoping Sega will revisit, though highly unlikely at this point. I do have the Japanese version of FMM (got my Saturn switched to play Japanese games back in 1998, since clearly the best Saturn games never made it to the US). Also, I have the 360 version on my Xbox One X, which does 4k. Haven't played it in awhile so I should look and see how it looks in 4k :)

Thank every last one of yall in the comments.... Keep this game ALIVE!!!!! ArmStone City Still Stands!!!!

Owning a Sega Saturn back then and trying to find information of Fighting Vipers in the U.S.A. left you looking for the American gamer magazines of the time that had already or most of them apparently decided not to give the arcade game much coverage. (they were covering Tekken, Tekken 2, Soul Edge/Blade, Street Fighter variants and Mortal Kombat variants with Virtua Fighter barely getting much coverage) It took a few if not just one of the American gamer magazines to immediately point out that there was some censorship with the American or North America release (since Sega of America basically held the gates) so on one had it is understandable that Pepsiman is not possible to be included but a lot of the extra content like Honey's variant outfits and bonus art.. all of which is covered, is early CGi and fairly tame for back then and looks G rated now and yet that stuff was removed by Sega of America's 90s staff who kept doing these things not just with Sega Saturn games but MegaDrive/Genesis games coming from Japan and all because they kept insisting that their target age was twelve year old boys... so any new retro fans should not be surprised why apart from the Sega of America staff created 32X and intentional mishandling of the Sega Saturn overall that most late teens and twenty year old plus gamers ended up going to Sony PlayStation so as not to be treated like twelve year olds after they used their hard earned job money to buy a game system and games... see this is a key detail that most fanboys forget about... the tyrants that managed Sega of America during the entire 1990s decade would intentionally and deliberately alienate the older gamers while SoA tried to chase Nintendo fanbase money and then turned tail around 97 and all of a sudded wanted to support JRPGs... meanwhile Sony's PS1 was weaker hardware in some areas but any staff trying to pull those SoA antics ended up let go even when some of those ended up somehow at SoA because they had the same line of thinking. Also note that on Dreamcast, neither Virtual On nor Fighting Vipers 2 were officially localized by Sega of America... not even Shemue II for that matter which is why some of us will always say that the entire 1990s Sega of America staff were tyrants who sucked and brought the company to ruin, something not even Sony or Nintendo could do... Microsoft technically did because Sega would end up stuck in fourth place but that's by 2001.

I wonder if anyone ever mistook Jane for a man.... She does have some resemblance to Vasquez from Aliens. As does Bahn to JoJo, of those bizarre adventures.

Can you please fill out the incomplete timecode list in the description which is showing only the arcade version?

Not a stinker in the lot. Amazing how great AM2 was.

I wish they had done a Dreamcast port. :(

Request for 23th September 2023: Battle of the Ports - SoulCalibur Show 478

6:34 Isn't it that standard NTSC TVs only could do 480i or 240p? Unless you mean it would've been better that it be 240p instead of any form of interlaced.

this was segas response tp battle arena toishinden and tekken ........i thought it was VF 2.5 really

The Saturn version was incredible 😮 This game is very weird playing now 😢

Ranking and Random Mode also appears in the original Arcade release as well. You mention the XBL/PSN release as being emulated, and while that's true, the PS2 version was also an emulation of the arcade program ROMs with graphical data optimized for load times on the PS2 rather than the graphic ROMs. In the side-by-side comparisons, the arcade version (I'm assuming m2emulator emulated), clock/timing emulation is not completely accurate, which is why the arcade version looks to lag behind in the attract mode. 30 elapsed ingame seconds takes 33 realtime seconds for the m2emulator.

Like Virtua fighter 2, I always find it amazing that not only did the game run at 60 frames a second, but they also put it in the Saturn's high res mode. The only thing that I don't much care for, in the entire game, is that stupid helicopter on the last stage. I remember Dan Jevins, gamefan magazine's "knightmare", actually apologizing for asking Sega to put the helicopter in there. LOL

No Dreamcast port? What were you thinking AM2?

BAHN. Character in Japanese games (mandatory) that is "Totally Not a Nod to Kūjō Jōtarō!®️" In the last seven years (or so) in popular culture: "Is that a..." Reply: "No, it's not a JoJo reference😉"

I think you need to fix the time stamps in the description.

There's a Dragon Engine version of the game that is available in Judgment and Lost Judgment, two Yakuza / Like A Dragon series spin-offs. I am not sure if it is just emulation or a modified port of the PS3/X360 versions, but at least is in 1080p, since it is possible to play it on PS4/5, PC and XOne/Series.

Amazing game! My cousin had it, and also Virtua Fighter 2. Lately, I bought Fighters Megamix for my own console 😏. Great memories with that games.

It's funny that you did this comparison now because I just looked into it myself and purchased the Xbox 360 Live Arcade version a few days ago. All the Model 2 ports on 360 are nice. A shame that they pulled Daytona USA off the store and never offered the Virtual On port for the US (despite having the newer OT Dreamcast sequel). By the way, you forgot the port in Yakuza/Lost Judgment which can be played in the Club Sega arcade with crappy scanline filters over it! LOL

I do want to pick up the Japanese Saturn version at some point, but priority for next Saturn purchase right now, when I decide to make that purchase, will be Last Bronx, Japanese version as well.

4:57 PEPSI MAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

'90s gaming magazines like Gamefan called Pepsiman "Dural's mutant Brother." We'll have a legit playable version of Fighting Vipers 2 in the upcoming Yakuza/Like A Dragon game. The series is well known for featuring playable old-school SEGA Arcade games.

The best way to play SEGA games is on SEGA hardware. Period. While the X360 looks good and sharp, the Saturn is just way better overall.

Saturn port was great!

Oh shoot, this game brings me back! I remember loving it on the Saturn while playing as Grace. I also remember reading some gaming mag & was annoyed that the Japanese version have all of these exclusive extras since I only had the USA one. Especially Pepsi-Man! I never heard of that mascot back in the days but I just love drinking Pepsi. Hell, I start drinking 7-up more cuz of the 1st Cool Spot game.

I was wondering : "Wait, he didn't make a BotP on this game ?!" Also, since you made a episode on this game, you have to talk about his little brother, aka Sonic the Fighters.

You say Pepsiman is the best extra character in the Saturn version but what about... ...the Hornet 41?

Missing time codes 🙂

As someone who didn't grow up playing either game, I actually prefer Fighting Vipers over Virtua Fighter 2, if I'm to be honest. That said, I can understand why people don't, because of the goofy characters. I've only ever played the Saturn versions, and they're great.

Wow! They just straight up stole Jotaro Kujo and slapped the name "Bahn" on him. What's the deal with these kinds of fighting games and somehow managing to skirt copyright infringement?

Pepsiman?

Hi Mark, Mark, I was wondering if you be interested on taking another requests for you to review on the Battle of the Ports bro. The game is called. "The Last Ninja". I checked onto your channel to do a quick search, but I came up with nothing. The game is available on the Commodore 64, Apple II, Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Apple IIGS, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, and Archimedes I think it would make a fine edition for the channel bro. 8^) Anthony..

SEGA SATURN!!!!!

This one just never did anything for me. I'd place it under Last Bronx in terms of holding my interest.

Somewhat impressive at start but it gets boring after a while, same or even worse goes with its sequel. Its legacy was saved at Fighters Megamix though as thats a great game.

Yet another 3D fighter from Sega? And what sets this one apart form Last Bronx and Virtua Fighter? Yeah, it looks like a fine game and all, but Namco does 3D fighters better IMO. I see you're taking it easy this week with yet another game that only has 3 home ports. Honestly, that's completely valid after all you're suffering last week. You have anything planned yet for the 500th episode? I can't believe you've already reached that milestone, seems like it was yesterday. Honestly, you need to compare Jungle Hunt soon, a true classic from Taito. I don't think that would be a good 500th candidate per say, but definitely one to consider for some time.