is a 3D

mecha In science fiction, or mechs are giant robots or machines controlled by people, typically depicted as humanoid walking vehicles. The term was first used in Japanese after shortening the English loanword or , but the meaning in Japanese is ...

fighting game developed by

Sega AM3 , known as from 2000 to 2004, is a defunct division of Sega, a Japanese video game company. Established by 1993, AM3 was managed by Hisao Oguchi and developed a number of arcade games for Sega. Series introduced by AM3 include ''Virtual On'', ...

(formerly Hitmaker) and published by Sega. It was released in Japanese arcades only on the

Sega Hikaru Sega is a video game video game development, developer, video game publisher, publisher, and Arcade cabinet, hardware development company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with multiple offices around the world. The company's involvement in the arca ...

arcade system board in 2001. Following its initial release, there was initially no home console port of the game due to the Hikaru's superior graphical capabilities. A region free home port of the game was released for

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...

on December 22, 2010.

Gameplay

''Force'' differs from previous versions of the series in that it features 4-players, 2-on-2 team matches. The battle system is heavily simplified from the game's predecessor, ''Oratorio Tangram'', in order to balance the increased number of players. The left-turbo function is removed, and the speed is significantly slower. The game website states this as a side-effect of the V-converters being less efficient than the Mars crystals. The machine uses a magnetic card system to record player data, with the cards being called a "VO4 Pilot's License". Players start by choosing a base Virtuaroid, which will open up other variants in its family tree as the player plays more of the game. Because of this design, a large number of Virtuaroid variants exist, and the game has the largest VR roster of any game in the series name so far. The VO4 Pilot's License can be used with the VO4 Terminal, which lets players view records, set the pilot name, swap color schemes or use another available Virtuaroid. During the lifespan of the game, an upgraded version named Virtual On Force M.S.B.S. Ver7.7, with new Virtuaroids, new stages and new magnetic card face designs. ''Virtual-On Marz'' can be considered the spiritual home console version of Force, since Marz took its rules, stages and the Virtuaroids from Force, though without support for 4-player matches and only taking a select few Virtuaroids, while leaving most of the variants out due to storage constraints of the game.

Xbox 360 version

The

version retains the same gameplay as the original series, only with a few inclusions: 2 on 2 Leader Battles, co-op boss fight mode, a Mission mode and Xbox Live support for online play. Battles have local 2 player splitscreen or up to 4 player over System Link. The game also has a special Collector's edition which includes a booklet called Virtual On Chronicle 15, that looks back at 15 years of Virtual-On, and a six disc soundtrack called Virtual On Official Sound Data. All of the items come packaged in a box with artwork from

Hajime Katoki is a Japanese mecha designer. A member of the studio Sunrise, he worked on the ''Gundam'' series as well as his work on video games, such as the ''Virtual On'' series and '' Policenauts''. Biography Born in 1963, Katoki created designs fo ...

. Jaguarandi is now available as a hidden character, along with Apharmd the Hatter based on Apharmd J. However, Ajim, which was a playable character in ''Oratorio Tangram'', is not playable in this ''Force'' version. The split-screen gameplay, which was absent from

Xbox Live Arcade Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) is a digital video game download service available through the Xbox Games Store, Microsoft's digital distribution network for the Xbox 360. It focuses on smaller downloadable games from both major publishers and independent ...

version of ''Oratorio Tangram'', makes a return in this version. Preordering of the games allows access and download a special "Thorax" item that adjusts the bust sizes of both female Virtualoids: Fei-Yen and Angelan.

References

External links

Virtual-ON Force Official Site

Xbox 360 Version Official Site

Virtual-ON Force
at GameFAQs {{Virtual On series 2001 video games Arcade video games Japan-exclusive video games Sega arcade games Sega video games Virtual On Xbox 360 games Video games developed in Japan ja:電脳戦機バーチャロン