I must admit that I'm already feeling a little "fighter fatigue" with this long run of Street Fighter games, so I went into playing the year's top arcade game Virtua Fighter 2 (my first time playing any of the series) dragging my feet a bit and ... I enjoyed it immensely! I was reminded of the feeling of experiencing an impressive addition to gameplay as if I was living in 1995, because the first time that the viewpoint swung around to reveal another angle of the fighting arena and I was suddenly forced to kick behind me as my opponent danced around to the other side, I gave a little "Woah" in my best Keanu voice.
I took on the game as Lau and had my traditional success through the first three fights before the CPU decided that was enough and shut me down.
On the other hand, Mortal Kombat 3, taking top spot as the best-selling console game (for the Sega Genesis) didn't bring anything dynamically new to the table. New characters (although I went for old-school Sonya) and new stages, sure, but once I'd achieved my now traditional three wins off the bat before being beaten, I was quite content to move on.
By the way: now that it is a definite pattern of winning three games in easy enough fashion, I should explain that I'm not naively amazed by the fact that a game will get harder as it goes on; I've just been amused that it has been exactly three fights and then a sharp rise in the difficulty every time.
Donkey Kong Land for the Game Boy is next, assuming the number-one slot for handheld game sales. It, like MK3, is also offering some thing more familiar than far-out: it's a repackaged but familiar version of the DK Country SNES game that took top console spot last week. As far as a marketing strategy goes, it's totally understandable: you now have a companion game that you can play on the go, and that would have been worth the purchase for any DK fan.
Me not being a big fan, though, meant that I played a few levels, and found it to be an obviously less-graphically immersive version of the game whose graphics were the number-one selling point. So, not really for me.
Finally for 1995, the top PC game Command and Conquer ruled the computer-game sales market. It is a frantic game, at least for the opening period in which you are exploring territory and making battle with an opposing army (you choose the side of either the Global Defense Initiative or the Brotherhood of Nod; I went with the GDI).
As per usual, I'm only getting a sample size of the game as I played long enough to explore a good part of the map but only won a few skirmishes before being wiped out, but it was enough to pique my interest and to show how it would have been an easy game for my to get into in '95, but it just somehow passed me by. I'll add it to my list of games give some more time to someday, though.
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