Fighters' Impact

Players select a game mode to play then select one of the sixteen initially available fighters based on American gang stereotypes. Each fighter represents one of four different street gangs. Four bosses become available for selection upon certain conditions being met. Twelve different arenas based on real-life locations are used for combat. Fighting styles used include karate, aikido and kung fu.

The title is a port and localized version of Fighters' Impact which was released in Japanese arcades in September 1996, retaining the game engine, most of the play mechanics, and some animations and other elements, but introducing an entirely new lineup of characters, new arenas, and a soundtrack of licensed music.

The characters were designed by former Marvel Comics artist Kurtis Fujita. According to Fujita, "The main idea and theme of Vs. was to create a game which had characters that Americans could identify with, while still maintaining the visual flair of Japanese anime and manga." Some of the characters, such as Harold, were designed by Fujita on spec, before he knew of the street gang theme that THQ wanted for the game. The characters were animated using motion capture footage recorded at Polygon Magic's Tokyo studios.

Reviews for Vs. were mediocre, with most critics commenting that while the game is decent at worst in every respect, it fails to hold up against its contemporaries. GamePro, for example, summed up that "Vs. is an extremely competent game with the misfortune of stumbling into some bad timing.

If it had been released, say, 18 months ago, it would've been the greatest thing since sliced bread and probably could've started its own religion. Unfortunately, Vs. offers nothing new to the already solid lineup of 32-bit 3D fighting games established by Tekken 2, Soul Blade, and Fighters Megamix." Common subjects of criticism were the unimaginative characters and the lack of variety in the moves.