Ultra Vortek is pretty awesome

[captainblack]

I initially dismissed Ultra Vortek as an MK clone with bad controls, and I guess thats kinda true but its still a lot of fun. The visuals are great and the characters are cool too. If they had cleaned the controls up a bit so it played like Street Fighter or an SNK game it would have been a 10/10 game. 

[Editorb]

It is fairly impressive. And Volcana is hawt.

[Hyper_Eye]

I like it. I think it's the best fighting game on the system and that includes Primal Rage. I think combos are broken in the Jaguar port of Primal Rage. If not they are just incredibly hard to activate. Ultra Vortek plays a lot like an MK game. Learn a character's moves, which are reasonable easy to execute, and there are good fights to be had. It comes off as a reasonably serious fighting game compared to Kasumi Ninja which pretty much has you laughing most of the time. Then there's Fight for Life, Double Dragon, and Dragon The Bruce Lee Story. There's a list of turds.

[tripled79]

Ultra Vortek was the first game I bought for my Jaguar back in late 1996. Great game. Annihilation time!

[+BitJag]

One of my favorites.  I still listen to the soundtrack when driving, and the visuals are some of the most memorable on the Jaguar.  (The roman reliefs with the eyeballs, the old ice factory with the guy with a mouth on his shirt, the final fight with the guardian.)  Yes, definitely a clone of MK, but a very well done clone that obviously had a talented group of people behind it.

[agradeneu]

Love the artwork, don't like the low framerate, and the cheap special moves that break the game (Lucius!) .

[7800JAGFAN]

Its fun, but as mentioned above, Lucius is unbeatable if you spam his special move.  

[SlidellMan]

I consider Ultra Vortek as one of those so bad it's good games.

[doctorclu]

One thing I'm enjoying about the Game Drive is people rediscovering games we haven't played in years.

 

Ultra Vortek is visually impressive, and I love you could play over modem.  As a long time BBSer I would love to try that out sometime.  I still have a land line. 

[sirlynxalot]

The first time I fired it up (around 2013) the choose character screen with the demon really surprised and impressed me.

[+cubanismo]

13 hours ago, doctorclu said:

As a long time BBSer I would love to try that out sometime

Anyone making Jag modems, or have the schematics?

[+Mitch]

1 hour ago, cubanismo said:

Anyone making Jag modems, or have the schematics?

There are a few protos out there. I do not own one.

 

Mitch

[doctorclu]

Here is one that sold, and what you can expect when one becomes available....

 

 

 

[Pete5125]

I remember hoping that this would be the game to show the Jag was a great system back in 95, but while grafix are great, sound is good, control was lacking so much so that their seems to be no block button, this was a big deal to my roomate at the time so much so that Kausami Ninja ranked higher in his mind to Ultra Vortex.

 

This game was ine of the last nailsbefore Play Station and mk3, took over the play time in the apartment, Jag still got play time cybermoph/a vs p/ doom/ is/super burnout/theme park and kasaumi ninja had kept us happy over the last 2 yrs, but Fighter games were very important to 21 yr old me and Atari never found a way to deliver.

[doctorclu]

5 hours ago, Pete5125 said:

I remember hoping that this would be the game to show the Jag was a great system back in 95, but while grafix are great, sound is good, control was lacking so much so that their seems to be no block button, this was a big deal to my roomate at the time so much so that Kausami Ninja ranked higher in his mind to Ultra Vortex.

 

This game was ine of the last nailsbefore Play Station and mk3, took over the play time in the apartment, Jag still got play time cybermoph/a vs p/ doom/ is/super burnout/theme park and kasaumi ninja had kept us happy over the last 2 yrs, but Fighter games were very important to 21 yr old me and Atari never found a way to deliver.

 

You mean Double Dragon V didn't scratch that itch?

[Songbird]

I do still have mine. Think I have two of them, but not sure after all these years. And my brother and I did actually play UV over the modem locally when he lived in the same town as me many years ago, making us probably the only consumers to ever play it that way. This was before the first Xbox came out, so playing a linked game like that including voice chat was pretty amazing at the time.

 

[doctor_shred]

I agree, Ultra Vortek is the best fighter on the Jaguar with Primal Rage a close second (if you can find it).

 

If the Voice Modem had actually made it to production it would have been awesome.  The Jag was already on it's way out when UV was released though so it was non-viable from the start, pity.

 

 

[Schmudde]

Ultra Vortek is a good fighting game. It doesn't have the balance of Super Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat 2 or 3, but it is certainly better than the original versions of these games.

 

Crafting a fighting game is a delicate art. It's not something you get perfect the first time around. Beyond Games were talented developers, but it's their first fighter AFAIK.

 

While imperfect, it has a distinct aesthetic style and some memorable characters. I never struggled with the controls, but I've also put a lot of hours into fighting games. Maybe that's why. So yeah - I loved this game.

 

Early magazines called it Ultra Vortex. Is this a case of the magazines just getting it wrong? Or was there some IP conflict? Does anybody know?

[captainblack]

6 hours ago, Schmudde said:

Ultra Vortek is a good fighting game. It doesn't have the balance of Super Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat 2 or 3, but it is certainly better than the original versions of these games.

 

Crafting a fighting game is a delicate art. It's not something you get perfect the first time around. Beyond Games were talented developers, but it's their first fighter AFAIK.

 

While imperfect, it has a distinct aesthetic style and some memorable characters. I never struggled with the controls, but I've also put a lot of hours into fighting games. Maybe that's why. So yeah - I loved this game.

 

Early magazines called it Ultra Vortex. Is this a case of the magazines just getting it wrong? Or was there some IP conflict? Does anybody know?

Good point, UV2 could have been a hit.

[tripled79]

On 5/29/2021 at 5:33 PM, Pete5125 said:

I remember hoping that this would be the game to show the Jag was a great system back in 95, but while grafix are great, sound is good, control was lacking so much so that their seems to be no block button, this was a big deal to my roomate at the time so much so that Kausami Ninja ranked higher in his mind to Ultra Vortex.

 

This game was ine of the last nailsbefore Play Station and mk3, took over the play time in the apartment, Jag still got play time cybermoph/a vs p/ doom/ is/super burnout/theme park and kasaumi ninja had kept us happy over the last 2 yrs, but Fighter games were very important to 21 yr old me and Atari never found a way to deliver.

I'm pretty sure Kasumi Ninja doesn't have a block button either...

[Pete5125]

12 hours ago, tripled79 said:

I'm pretty sure Kasumi Ninja doesn't have a block button either...

Controls

Joypad Up          Jump
Joypad Left/Right  Move Fighter
Joypad Left        Block
Joypad Down        Duck
A Button           Press Once To Punch, Repeatedly For Rapid Punches
B Button           Kick
C Button           Hold To Perform Special Moves (see Move Lists for details)
Down + B           Sweep Kick
Up + B             Jump Kick
Back + B           Roundhouse

Numpad 0           Toggles Music On/Off
Numpad * + #       Resets Game

[tripled79]

left or back isn't a block button. Ultra Vortek uses the same concept which was popular in Street Fighter at the time so to go back to my original point it's confusing to like Kasumi Ninja over Ultra Vortek because they both use the same control scheme as far as "blocking" goes...

[Pete5125]

13 hours ago, tripled79 said:

I'm pretty sure Kasumi Ninja doesn't have a block button either...

Controls

Joypad Up          Jump
Joypad Left/Right  Move Fighter
Joypad Left        Block
Joypad Down        Duck
A Button           Press Once To Punch, Repeatedly For Rapid Punches
B Button           Kick
C Button           Hold To Perform Special Moves (see Move Lists for details)
Down + B           Sweep Kick
Up + B             Jump Kick
Back + B           Roundhouse

Numpad 0           Toggles Music On/Off
Numpad * + #       Resets Game

[Pete5125]

I will have to drag out my copy of uv, but my memory playing with my roomate that was a huge mortal kombat fan. That uv, sucked because control was bad with no block feature, and even though kasumi had sluggish controls and weird finishing moves, it was superior, for the simple feature of a block move.

 

Looking at the instructions their is no mention of a block.

 

Intresting looking up kn on wiki, says it was a 20 character game that was completely different atari cut them down to a 2 meg cart and you got the digitized game we recieved, plus a canceled kn 2cd

[agradeneu]

46 minutes ago, Pete5125 said:

I will have to drag out my copy of uv, but my memory playing with my roomate that was a huge mortal kombat fan. That uv, sucked because control was bad with no block feature, and even though kasumi had sluggish controls and weird finishing moves, it was superior, for the simple feature of a block move.

 

Looking at the instructions their is no mention of a block.

 

Intresting looking up kn on wiki, says it was a 20 character game that was completely different atari cut them down to a 2 meg cart and you got the digitized game we recieved, plus a canceled kn 2cd

Both KN and Ultra Vortek work like Street Fighter 2 - press "away" on the dpad to block.

While MK games had that extra block button.