Virtua Fighter/YMMV


 * Americans are Apathetic Towards Virtua Fighter: The series generally has a lot of respect all over the world due to its extremely balanced gameplay and being the first 3D fighter, but it's far less popular in America than (for example) Tekken or Dead or Alive, and much more popular in Japan and Europe. This is due to a number of reasons:
 * Virtua Fighter has always been arcade first, and arcades are practically dead in the States.
 * The consoles the first three games were released to were the ill-fated Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast, as opposed to the much more popular PlayStation (granted, Virtua Fighter is a Sega franchise, so there wasn't anywhere else for the ports to go until the company went multi-platform after the death of the Dreamcast).
 * And finally, because of Virtua Fighter's lack of story development, its lack of gameplay gimmicks, and its major focus on substance and depth over flash and style, it just doesn't attract many casual players the way other fighting games do.
 * Despite the series garnering high praise from players and critics for its deep and balanced gameplay, the last appearance it has had at the Evo Championship Series was in 2012. Virtua Fighter players living in the U.S. have had to make due with the SEGA Cup.
 * And the Fandom Rejoiced: After much poking and prodding, Sega is finally going to bring home Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown.
 * Awesome Music: All the series, but Virtua Fighter 5 and all of its revisions qualify.
 * Foe Yay: Between Aoi and Brad of all people. Depending on how things turn out, this may or may not make Akira an Unlucky Childhood Friend of the former.
 * Game Breaker: Siba.
 * Ho Yay: Sarah/Vanessa has some popularity among fans who can easily see a Bodyguard Crush forming.
 * Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Virtua Fighter has long been popular in arcades in the Middle East, and many Youtubers from those countries have commented that they really like Siba and wish he had been in the game, noting both his badass mercenary appearance and the general rarity of Arab characters in fighting games. In particular, Siba is noted as one of the few Arab characters in games who is not explicitly identified as a villain.
 * Moe: Eileen, hands down.
 * Narm: Anything spoken in English.
 * Polished Port: If there's anything the console versions of the various versions of Virtua Fighter 5 are known for, it's two things:
 * They look prettier than their arcade counterparts.
 * The online netcode is considered by even the most casual fighting game fans to be the best netcode for fighting games out there, with practically no lag except in the most extreme conditions.
 * Porting Disaster: While the game isn't unplayable and it is quite decent, the Sega Genesis port of Virtua Fighter 2. The game was 2D obviously, but you can tell by gameplay footage that the magic is lost. Clunky animations and very basic feel makes this game compare very poorly to the 3D arcade version. Made worse by the fact that inevitably when porting Virtua Fighter 2, this is the port Sega uses, ranging from online game services like Gametap to iOS, both of which are easily capable of handling 32-bit graphics and gameplay. Thankfully, SEGA finally got around to releasing the real-deal Virtua Fighter 2 for PSN and Xbox Live, with online play to boot.
 * Virtua Fighter 3 Team Battle. The first disc printings wouldn't even play in most Dreamcasts.
 * The Saturn version of the original Virtua Fighter was perfectly playable but a graphical mess, due in no small part to Sega rushing the game for the system's stealth launch in May of 1995. Fortunately, the situation was rectified six months later when Sega released a free update to the game called Virtua Fighter Remix via mail order.
 * The Scrappy: A very mild case, but Lion's bratty voice and quotes can be very grating for some fans.
 * That One Attack: Several throughout the series:
 * Jacky's somersault. It does insane damage on a counterhit, and it's a very easy move to execute. Many players tend to throw out this move, even though it's incredibly unsafe on block and can be reversed by Akira and Aoi.
 * Kage-Maru's frontkick in Virtua Fighter 4 and Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution is an absolute nightmare to play against. He can launch it when his combo appears to be over and easily intercept your counter attacks or throw attempts (it has a small time delay just to trick you into an attack). Whenever he hits, the player is completely defenseless against another devastating combo.
 * Wolf's Burning Hammer in Final Showdown, the single most damaging move in the game.
 * Toy Ship: Lion/Elieen for some. Granted, both of them are teenagers, but they're still the youngest in the cast.
 * Uncanny Valley: Most of the character models and faces in 3 look rather off by today's standards. Dural in general also invokes this.
 * The Woobie: Everyone who has been a victim of J6.
 * Kage-Maru and his mother Tsukikage. Kage's mother was abducted and turned into Dural, not to mention his father being killed and his entire clan being wiped out. Even after he saved her, Kage's mother ended up turning back into Dural, and he resolved to finally mercy kill her. The poor ninja has lost almost everything. The only bright side is the Dural he destroyed was just a mass production model.
 * Jacky suffered a massive injury that took two years to recover from because of J6 sabotaging his race car, and then they kidnapped Sarah and brainwashed her into trying to kill him when she investigated what happened. Jacky failed to save her in the first tournament, and even after he did in the second she suffered amnesia and felt no connection to him. Thankfully Sarah got her memories back, but now she's left wondering if she subconsciously really did want to kill her brother. She sees Jacky as a rival now, and they have become much more distant. Jacky is trying to reach out to Sarah, but the ordeal has changed her. And J6 still continues to harass them.
 * Vanessa's parents were killed, she was kidnapped, and she had her body experimented on when she was just a child, all to turn her into another of J6's assassins. She was rescued by Lewis, but he was killed by J6 years later. When Vanessa entered the fourth tournament, she was captured and experimented on yet again for who knows how long before being rescued. She has no memory of what happened, and is struggling to remember. Vanessa became friends with Jacky and Sarah, and her missing is implied to be a big deal to them.
 * Pai lost her mother because of her father Lau's obsession with martial arts, and has spent years trying to defeat him. She has only recently started to patch things up with him, right when he's dying of an illness. Now Pai just wants her dad to be proud of her before he dies.
 * Goh and Jean could each be considered Jerkass Woobies, as neither of them were rescued from J6 and ended up becoming the brutal assassins that Sarah and Vanessa managed to avoid.
 * Lion has some major father issues, and is implied to be a Lonely Rich Kid since he lost his friend Jean when they were young. It doesn't help that his father's company is being manipulated by J6 and Jean, who has little memory of their past friendship, has been sent out to kill several of the tournament competitors, Lion included.
 * Woolseyism: The English dub of the anime has a lot of these, making some jokes work better in English, adding in some extra funny lines, and making characters like Jacky and Pai more snarky.