0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Advanced V.G 2

      

Advanced V.G 2 is an all female roster anime inspired action fighting game, that was released on the Playstation 1 on the 23rd of September 1998, the game was developed and published by TGL there full name is Technical Group Laboratory, the game was released exclusively in Japan

The game has five base positions from which to attack an opponent, Standing, Standing Close (to the opponent), Crouching, Jumping (straight up) and Jump diagonal, with each of these attack positions there are specific moves that go with each position, for example standing, you have a jab, low kick, claw thrust and sidekick as main moves, some moves can also be cancelled into a special move, the characters also have chain attacks with each character having a specific list of these moves they can perform.

The game has five modes in total (see story section for Story Mode), starting with Normal mode which like the previous game is basically your arcade mode, you select one of the total of 12 characters that are available, Material and Miranda Jyhana are not available in this mode, to progress in this mode you must defeat a total of eight opponents, in best of three matches, the first six opponents are random with the character specific sub boss and last boss completing the arcade run, dialogue between the player character and sub/last boss will take place as well.

The third mode is Vs Mode, is made for 2 players with each player selecting a character, each of the matches is a best 2 out of 3, prior to the beginning of the fight the players can adjust the players handicaps, stage select and adjust the speed of the game, with the player using up or down to change fields and left and right to change the match settings.

On to the fourth mode which is Time Attack, where the player is timed on how quickly they can beat all of the main characters, before you begin you can choose any of the 14 characters to go through the time trial, each of the matches is just the one round, no matter which character you choose for this mode the lineup of opponents will always be in the same order Tamao, Manami, Jun, Ayako, Eleanor, Satomi, Kyouko, Chiho, Kaori, Reimi, Saki, and Yuka, don’t worry if you fail to be an opponent, with the screen switching to the continue screen you have infinite time to press continue, and you carry on from the point you were defeated.

The final mode is a practice mode where you can acclimatise yourself to the different characters and learn the games mechanics, in this mode like Time Attack mode you can choose any of the fourteen characters, and then select any of the other characters to be your punching bag,, you can also modify the options where you can change the key config, free gauge this is for the players power gauge, life recover, key display and cpu action, here you can change the opponents stance, weather it jumps, if the CPU can control youR opponent, and when active you can set the CPU level of difficulty from 0-8, with 8 being the hardest and 4 being the default difficulty.

The story of Advanced V.G 2 like the previous game is centred around a Variable Geo fighting tournament to find the strongest female fighter, this story in V.G 2 focuses on Tamao Mitsurugi, and her introduction to the V.G fighting tournament, and her ambition to meet Yuka Takeuchi, before that however she must prove she is capable of fighting the best, with the player guiding her through the ten main chapters, with a final eleventh chapter against Miranda Jyahana, one additional not to unlock Material as a playable character you must complete story mode, then you must complete normal mode to unlock Miranda, it must be done in this order to unlock them.

Reviews for this Japanese only release are next to impossible to find so once again we head to GameFAQs for their user ratings with a total of 22 users rating this game, with an average user rating of 3.73/5, with user ratings not dropping below a 3/5, with the majority giving the game between a 3 and 4/5.

Difficulty wise a total of 18 users have rated the difficulty with a massive 81% rating the game as having a just right difficulty a couple of users found the game easy while one user found the game simple (I sense someone with a giant ego).

The games lifespan has a varied bunch of rating from the 10 users that have rated the games lifespan with playtimes ranging from less than one hour all the way up to 80 hours most of these lifespan ratings are one person, with the most people 3 in total rating the games lifespan at 4 hours, averaging out the game comes in at around the 22 hour mark.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, along with Retrogames.co.uk don’t stock this Japanese only title, so we head off to eStarland.com who do stock the game however like the last edition of the series the game is out of stock, the usual price for the game is between $29.97 and $49.95, so quite a pricey game, the trade in price for the Playstation version is $22.

Now on to Amazon.com and as you might have guessed by the price at eStarland, a used copy does not come cheap, with a good quality copy of the game costing a minimum of $34, this converts to £26.39 in the UK, in Euro zone countries you will be looking at around €29, while in Myanmar you will be looking at a cost of 46902.10 Myanmar Kyat.

A very good quality can be picked up for a couple of dollars more a cope with free shipping is currently on sale for $36.76, again this converts to 49833.69 Myanmar Kyat, in the Euro zone countries it will set you back €31.41, while in the UK you are looking at a cost of £28.56.

It is however new copies where the price really goes insane, even with new copies being far more abundant on Amazon than used ones, the starting price for a new copy is $359.34, I will just let that sink in for a moment…… okay that converts to £279.16 in the UK, in the Euro zone countries you will be paying €306.98, while in Myanmar you are looking at 487139.27 Myanmar Kyat which equates to about 5 months minimum wage in the country, new prices don’t just stop at aroud the $360 dollar mark either prices currently reach a high of over $450 for a new copy of Advanced V.G 2.

Ebay.com is light on copies with just two copies on sale at the time of writing this, both are used copies in good condition with the minimum price you are going to pay at $50.81, this copy comes with free international shipping, as does the other copy but that one is priced at $64, there is also a Advanced V.G 2 memory card on sale as well which will set you back $38.60.

Written by

P J Gibbon