The bright star among the fighting simulations, Virtua Fighter 5, has offically gone live with its current Xbox 360 port (available since October 30 for the Xbox 360 with additional online play). The developers of Dead or Alive 4 already provided an online mode; but laggy games in slow-motion were mostly the result of this. How did AM-2 managed their online mode? After all, the general hardcore community was always against one due to lag issues.

SEGA-AM2 (who also made Shenmue) developed the Virtua Fighter series to run at exactly 60 frames per second. Thus, it is possible to do an input every 1/60th (0.016) second. Not without reason Virtua Fighter shines as the deepest fighting game ever made; but how does this translate online? How is it possible to provide an input-tight gameplay running at 60 fps (0.016s) if you have a ping of - let's say - decent 60 ms (0.06s)?

Somehow, SEGA-AM2 was able to develop an netcode that could compensate and sync two players online just as good as if they were playing offline. This may sound illogical, especially if you think about the fact that there will always be loss, and delay online. But even special techniques such as hit-throws, fuzzy guarding, reversals, and sabakis (an offensive strike that evades the first in-coming punch, or elbow) that do need a frame-precise input, and situation work perfectly.

AM-2, well done!