Fighters Megamix: Beautifully broken

Fighters Megamix stumbles right from the start. By default I have to make Virtua Fighter‘s legendary cast abide by Fighting Vipers‘ rules: not just flashy armour breaks and improbable mid-air recoveries, but also the game’s slightly weightier jump and altered hit reactions too—in this mode a strong kick to the face will send an opponent on an exaggerated cartwheel through the air. Not to my tastes? Then I can force the opposite; Vipers’ unique qualities smoothed away until they’re little more than token remnants of a brilliantly bold experience shoved within a more stoic Virtua Fighter shell. There’s no elegant melding of styles here, just two fundamentally mismatched fighting games butting up against each other in the same space—and these irreconcilable differences are one of the reasons why it’s so easy to adore Megamix’s mad muddle. Because these two games are as similar-but-different as Ridge Racer and Sega Rally, or Mario and Sonic, even I, perpetual fighting game amateur, can…