Virtua Fighter

Virtua Fighter is a fighting game released by Sega in 1993, directed by Yu Suzuki and developed by AM2. Widely credited as the first fighting game rendered entirely with 3D polygons, it ran on Sega's Model 1 arcade hardware and reimagined the genre in three dimensions, with eight characters trading grounded, martial-arts-based strikes, throws, and stance play on an open ring from which a fighter could be forced out by ring-out. Where contemporaries leaned on flashy special moves, Virtua Fighter emphasised timing, spacing, and realistic motion; because a dedicated animator role did not yet exist in the industry, Suzuki had his staff study real martial arts to ground the characters' movement. The game was a critical and commercial success, launched a long-running series, and became a flagship title for the Sega Saturn. Its polygonal, simulation-minded approach was enormously influential on the 3D fighting games that followed, and it cemented Suzuki and AM2 at the forefront of Sega's move into 3D.