Which dreamcast game should I get?

[BogusMeatFactory]

Garou: Mark Of the Wolves. The later SNK titles like this and The Last Blade Series are seriously some of the best 2-D ever to exist. So my vote is for Garou OR anything int he Last Blade Series (also featured on the Dreamcast), as both are amazing games.

[the7k]

I'd highly recommend you get the first MvC over the second. The first is a whole hell of a lot more balanced (in fact, I'm fairly sure it is the most balanced out of all the Versus series games), more polished in many areas (music is relevant, backgrounds are relevant, final boss is relevant, some semblance of a story going on), and - most importantly - the Dreamcast version is the DEFINITIVE version. The only other options you have are the overly expensive, highly-crippled PS1 version or getting the actual arcade.

Aside from that, I'd also recommend Soul Caliber, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, King of Fighters: Evolution, Street Fighter III: Double Impact, Vampire Chronicle For Matching Service (Import), Project Justice, Tech Romancer and Power Stone 1 & 2, as these are all also Dreamcast exclusives (or at least games where the highly-superior version is on the Dreamcast). Games like KOF98-2k2, Last Blade 2, FF:MOTW, SFA3, SF3:TS, MvC2, CvS2 and several other are also great games, don't get me wrong - it's just that at this point, you can get superior versions of them on the PS2, or in the case of MvC2, on the PS3/360. (If you count imports, anyway.)

If you really are trying to decide between SFA3 and FF:MOTW... that depends, I guess. FF:MOTW is a more deep, polished game than SFA3, but if you are playing with casual friends, then SFA3's Co-Op Dramatic Battle can be a great way to have fun playing a fighter with friends who aren't one the same skill level as you.

[Gnashvar]

I vote Garou. But if you hadn't said 2D I would have said Power Stone

[laneyj]

Like others said, games such as Street Fighter III Third Strike, Capcom vs SNK 2, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Street Fighter Alpha III, and Marvel vs Capcom 2 while all classics, have all been ported to other systems..I would suggest getting Project Justice if you want a great 2.5d fighter that has only been released on Dreamcast.

[elvis]

I'd highly recommend you get the first MvC over the second. The first is a whole hell of a lot more balanced (in fact, I'm fairly sure it is the most balanced out of all the Versus series games)

You obviously haven't seen how broken Strider Hiryu / Orange Venom combo is.

And as for the "balance" issue, there have been countless threads on SRK about it. Long story short: MvC2 works because it's so unbalanced. At high level there's a handful of characters worth mastering, and at a casual level it's a great party game because good players can self-nerf (Dan/Servbot/SonSon for team low-tier fun).

The only perfectly balanced game is one with a single character. Everything else will suffer balance issues, and even those are relative to skill level of the individual (not to mention people are still finding new techniques years later with old characters - look at the Spiral/Sentinal lockdown when it arrived, and what it did to the game even after it was supposedly "stale").

Anyways, I'm only paraphrasing here what's been covered in detail on SRK. IMHO MvC and MvC2 are very different games, and both worth owning. I couldn't pick a favourite out of the two, and both get plenty of play time at my place.

With all that said, I much prefer Capcom vs SNK 2 as I think it's a much more solid and traditional fighter. It's my all time second-favourite behind SF2:HF, and the Dreamcast version is the best there is for home console.

[jfrost]

Oh, yeah, there's also Super Street Fighter 2 X for Matching Service on Dreamcast, which is worth owning only for the cover art:

[lisalover1]

If I have to recommend any 2D fighter on the DC, it's definitely Fatal Fury:MotW. For a 3D fighter, it would be Dead or Alive 2.

[the7k]

Well, regardless of where you stand on the balance issue (Personally, I found Marvel vs Capcom to be a much more finely tuned machine than MvC2), MvC1 on Dreamcast is still the definitive version of that game. Ever since MvC2 was re-released on PS3 and 360, the DC version is no longer "Required Reading".

I just didn't like Marvel vs Capcom 2 because I couldn't play as a team of characters I wanted to play as, and still be competitive... mainly because I'm not nearly as much a Marvel fan as I am a Capcom fan, and the Marvel character were much more heavily favored in that game. As soon as I have to drop a team because they are way too underpowered, that's what I consider "bad design". Certainly there will always be tiers, I just think it's bad design when the gulf between Top and Low is so extreme.

As for "Strider Hiryu / Orange Venom", I've never seen anything about them... but for the most part, I've never seen people play as the secret characters. Are they even Street Legal?

[elvis]

As soon as I have to drop a team because they are way too underpowered, that's what I consider "bad design". Certainly there will always be tiers, I just think it's bad design when the gulf between Top and Low is so extreme.

Again, read the multiple SRK threads on this topic, and Sirlin's various posts on his site regarding the issue of "balance". There's some great discussion there covering in depth the rather unrealistic ideal of a perfectly balanced game.

As for "Strider Hiryu / Orange Venom", I've never seen anything about them... but for the most part, I've never seen people play as the secret characters. Are they even Street Legal?

*edit* - I goofed. It's Hyper Venom (I got confused with Orange Hulk).

Hit up YouTube and see the antics in action. You'll reconsider your "balance" statement above.

As for character legality, it varies tourney to tourney. But most will only ban actual game-breaking stuff (game crashing / freezing). It's rare that you'll ever find a soft-banned character (with the exclusion of boss characters, which Hyper Venom doesn't classify as, as he's just a weaker/faster Venom).

[the7k]

Again, read the multiple SRK threads on this topic, and Sirlin's various posts on his site regarding the issue of "balance". There's some great discussion there covering in depth the rather unrealistic ideal of a perfectly balanced game.

Well, I'm not asking for a perfectly balanced game - just a mostly balanced game. A game where I can play as a low tier and still stand a chance against a high tier character.

Honestly, the only time I've ever played a mostly-balanced 2D Fighter in recent memory is KOFXII. I play as low-tier Clark and I still take out top-tier Kyo all the time. Street Fighter Alpha 2 is another that came close, but any game with Ken and Chun Li is always going to have balance issues.

Balance didn't seem like as much a problem in the past because they weren't online - perhaps any issues in many of the games I played in the past simply didn't come up back then because I wasn't fighting the entire globe, just the people in my town.

And of course, I always wonder why in the hell fighting games are somehow exempted from being updated and patched for balance issues in this day and age. Given enough time, any game will be cracked and sploits will be found, sure - but why is it that the fighting game companies simply look the other way, instead of actually fixing the problem? Say what you will about First-Person Shooters like Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4, at least they actually fix balance issues.