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(the easiest setting is "normal"), the popularity of its female roster, and the high quality in graphics that still compete with games being released today. While people criticize the series' female fighters and stages as making it "flashy" and therefore irreverent, I should remind you that all of the female characters are just as reliable fighters as their male counterparts, and if the hazards in the stages were just for "flash," then they wouldn't damage your opponent when you knocked them into one. Trying not to get pinned against a wall just adds to the strategy and difficulty. And Team Ninja leader Tomunobu Itagaki doesn't like making easy games. He's also a big Aerosmith fan, which is why they were the only band to have their music included in the game.

The other series to be able to stand the test of time is what those "elitists" would consider to be the personification of a fighting game, Virtua Fighter. And I won't argue with them. The Virtua Fighter series deserves praise. The first to enter the 3-D fighting arena when Street Fighter was champion of the 2-D realm, over the years the series has added more than just an extra dimension. Ring outs, down attacks, fighter customization, and a fighting system capable of exhaustive combos that require ridiculous timing and precision (one requiring an action to be executed in 1/60 of a second). Casual fans can still play. But if you want it to, it can be, in a word, hardcore.

While I will agree with that it has the most in-depth fighting system for the genre, Virtua Fighter is far from realistic. People cannot be suspended in the air by punching them in the foot. But that's not to say that there isn't a level or realism in the games. Every fighting style used is real and can be learned. Every attack, with a few exceptions, could be performed by a real person. And with the addition of Virtua Fighter 5 Online, every stage gets closer to looking like the real thing. In HD, it is mesmerizing to look at.

Another big plus for Virtua Fighter on the Xbox 360, opposed to its PS3 version, is the addition of online versus play. While the game includes a comprehensive tutorial to teach you how to play each character (something DOA4 doesn't have) as well as an extensive and challenging offline component, the 360 is the only place where you can get your VF online fix. Although it will be interesting to see whether or not SEGA supports anything like its VF.TV that runs throughout arcades in Japan that stream live matches of

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