YMMV / Virtual-ON

• Anti-Climax Boss: Tangram in MARZ's Story Mode.
• Awesome Music: Lots and lots, even those in the ill-received MARZ!!! Among the most notable ones are the theme of Temjin and the victory song from FORCE.
  • Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, composer and singer of many of Sega's most famous arcade tunes, performed a vocal version of the song "Conquista Ciela" from FORCE and MARZ. And it is glorious.
  • Now has its own page.
• Difficulty Spike: Tends to vary between games, sometimes bordering on Schizophrenic Difficulty.
  • In Operation Moongate, the difficulty suddenly gets jacked up to increasing levels of infuriating when fighting Dorkas at Stage 3, Bal-Bas-Bow at Stage 5, and Fei-Yen at Stage 7 (Stage 8 if you were unfortunate enough to meet Jaguarandi, who's a Purposefully Overpowered SNK Boss). Dorkas will start shamelessly reading your inputs, baiting your movements and recovery frames to punish you for thinking you could steamroll it like with Temjin and Viper, forcing you to start using more advanced movement strategies and knowing when and when not to attack. Bal-Bas-Bow turns the match into a game of cat-and-mouse where you need to constantly keep it under pressure without allowing it to set up its traps. Fei-Yen is both of these at once, effortlessly dancing circles around you while evading your attacks constantly, and it only gets worse once she enters Hyper Mode. If neither Dorkas nor Bal-Bas-Bow were frustrating enough to fight against, Fei-Yen is considered the breaking point for many players.
  • In Oratorio Tangram, a few of your opponents are randomized rather than the game being fully in a set order. Because of this, you could end up having a fairly easy run-through of the game, or a difficult one depending on who you face. Standout examples include Fei-Yen (again), Cypher, and Dordray. Raiden as the game's sub-boss is also much tougher than how it was in the previous game, and the 10/80 Special from 5.66 is a surprising contender considering it's meant to be a joke version of Temjin.
• Ending Fatigue: MARZ sadly had a case of this given the repetitive gameplay; by the time you come back to Mars a second time, and then have to gather what's left of the dymon fragments, it gets really old from there.
• Even Better Sequel: Operation Moongate is already a solid game on its own right, but Oratorio Tangram improved so much on original game's formula and added more depth to the gameplay, it's no wonder the first sequel is a favorite among fans.
  • Sega even held a poll asking Japanese fans which game in the series was their favorite, with Oratorio Tangram winning 70 percent of the votes ^note Five percent went to MARZ while the rest is mixed between Operation Moongate and Force.
• Fanon Discontinuity: MARZ is widely shunned by fans of the series' previous installments due to being an Oddball in the Series.
• Funny Moments: Jennifer Poison, one of the Rose Sisters pilots, can be considerably cheesy compared to some other named pilots. Took even further in MARZ with her cheesy voice acting that can make someone laugh.
  • The Fei-Yen series as a whole is this thanks to its Fighting Clown status.
• Game-Breaker: Fei-Yen from the original game, in the hands of a remotely skilled player is near-unbeatable, especially after her Hyper Mode.
  • Viper-II's Homing Beam can be fired at point-blank range in Close-Combat mode when long-range weapons are not supposed to work. Considering it's massively overpowered and, well, homing, this can do a lot of damage.
  • Raiden and Specineff in Oratorio Tangram are the two strongest VRs in the game due to their ability to utterly dominate the neutral space with their powerful zoning tools. Raiden has projectiles for every possible situation and boasts the highest damage laser in the game, while Specineff is one of the fastest mechs in the game as well as a god at sniping who turns the entire battlefield into an increasingly dangerous hazard zone. They alone are responsible for some of the most lopsided matchups in the game, with quite a few units simply having no consistent means of countering them.
  • Ajim borders between this and Lethal Joke Character, due to being a Glass Cannon Blessed with Suck. While it can potentially be the most powerful unit in Oratorio Tangram, its absurdly low defenses, constantly depleting health, and the random factor of its attacks make it highly unstable and very difficult to control effectively.
  • VR-747 Temjin "The White Knight" in MARZ. It's extremely hard to obtain, but once if you have it, it takes Jack of All Stats up to eleven.
  • Jaguarandi in the Polished Port of FORCE for Xbox 360. Sure, Let's Go with That... It's huge and slow, and the sluggish controls don't help. But if you could control it wisely, it could destroy an enemy in very short time. Even the final battle with Ajim and Guerlain could be an easy task with two Jaguarandis.
    • Jaguarandi is also this in both the Saturn and Sega Ages ports of Operation Moongate. In the Saturn version, the playable Jaguarandi is shrunk down to a fixed, more manageable size and is slightly more clunky in terms of movement...but his weapons are still the same as his boss version, meaning he loses none of his immense power. The Sega Ages port simply lets you play as the boss version outright, and can single-handedly clear the entire game in mere minutes.
• Good Bad Bugs: In the very first version of Oratorio Tangram (Version 5.2), a glitch would occasionally occur in which the floor on the Public Port stage would end up not rendering correctly, resulting in the floor being seen as a series of transparent Tron Lines. This glitch was actually rather positively received by the playerbase, as it was seen as an interesting graphical effect that added to the stage's identity, so when it ended up patched out in 5.4 it ended up rather lamented. This version of the stage later became an Ascended Glitch in the port of Version 5.66, where it was re-added to the game as its own unique stage slot.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The sound of Temjin preparing to fire a Wave-Motion Gun in Oratorio Tangram.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Meta example. The FORCE and MARZ games were not well-received, but the related plastic toy models are more popular than the games themselves, at least for hobbyists. And they're still producing till today.
• Nightmare Fuel: Be warned if you enter this cockpit.
• Polished Port: The Sega Ages 2500 Series Vol. 31 re-release of Operation Moongate for the PlayStation 2, which has fluid frame-rate and updated graphics (up until the HD re-release), crispper sound quality, and slew of extra modes like being able to play as Z-Gradt or fight with chibi-fied versions of the Virtuaroids. Unfortunately Western fans may never be able to play this version since it stayed in Japan.
  • The Model 2 collection version of Operation Moongate, found on Japanese XBLA and PSN Store and also available for play in Yakuza Kiwami 2, is playable in full 60 FPS and has even more enhanced visuals than the Sega Ages version. Sadly, Yakuza Kiwami 2 is the only easily accessible way to play this version in the west, and it's limited to Arcade Mode only.
  • The XBLA port of Oratorio Tangram Ver.5.66 has optional HD visuals, online multi-player, tutorials for beginners, and the color-edit feature from the Japanese Dreamcast version that was implemented into Ver.5.66. The default control scheme works quite well with the Xbox 360 controller. It may also qualify as an Arcade-Perfect Port as the Arcade Mode plays just like arcade version and there's virtually no loading times. The only major downside to the XBLA version is the lack of split-screen multi-player (although it does have system link support), and the fact that it uses the original Model 3 version's soundtrack from 5.45 rather than the updated NAOMI version.
• Porting Disaster: Despite the promotions for the compilation in Japan, including a new version of the Twin Stick controller being made for it, Masterpiece: 1995-2001 Collection is considered to be the worst way to play all 3 of its featured games (Operation Moongate, Oratorio Tangram, and FORCE). Criticisms include, but are not limited to: massively increased input latency compared to the original games, bugs that were not in the original games, the ports themselves being barebones emulation of the Model 2 Collection version of Operation Moongate, the Xbox Live Arcade version of Oratorio Tangram, and the Xbox 360 version of FORCE, and worse netcode compared to all 3 of the original versions which featured online play.
• Sequelitis: Virtual-ON: FORCE was seen as a step down for getting rid of the intense speed that made Oratorio Tangram so popular.
  • MARZ was heavily criticized for, on top of the same problems that plagued FORCE, there is also poor controls, changing the play style into a single player mission-based campaign, long loading times and the narration and story quality, making it infamous as the series' Franchise Killer.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "From the Moon To Me", originally an unused song for Fei-Yen, is pretty much the Sailor Moon theme song in Virtual-ON form, not surprising seeing that Fei-Yen herself is an Expy of Sailor Moon. Not heard in the game, the song would still be released on the first game's soundtrack albums, was remixed as Fei-Yen's theme for the official CyberNet Rhapsody audio drama, and was finally implemented in the Sega AGES version of the first game for the Superboss, the long lost original Fei-Yen.
• Tear Jerker: Tangram in both ending of Oratorio Tangram and the Story Mode in MARZ, especially the latter. While the ending of Oratan is both this and one of Heartwarming Moments, this becomes fleshed into one sober story in MARZ. The Woobie being her original data who's a Damsel in Distress Trapped in Villainy by DYMN, and you fight DYMN units in order to save her from the hands of them. You will feel sad if you don't just Play the Game, Skip the Story. Not even the crappy English dub could hide this ever. And the Adventure Continues as she's telling you to take down DYMN much sooner.
  • The true Gainax Ending of the former game doesn't pull punches either. After seemingly bringing down the place you fought Tangram in, instead of watching your VR barely make it out alive like usual, you're instead treated to a cutscene. It depicts a single V-Crystal in an unknown space. Then a dying Tangram speaks, explaining how War Is Hell and how it robbed her of all her emotion, as footage from World War II appears in the crystal's reflection. Then she goes on to imply that, since the fighting in the Virtual-On world is truly All for Nothing, she's already begun erasing reality. A little terrifying, but deeply tragic for someone like her. Her last words are spent saying how she's glad to have met you, but not before remarking that life will go on long enough for a new adventure. After that, the camera zooms out of what is revealed to be the Moongate as an abandoned Dreamcast (likely yours) washes up on a beach as the cutscene fades to black. The End. And since this is the Golden Ending after all, you've no reason to come back to the MSBS (for the time, at least); indeed, the world ends with you.
• That One Boss: The massive VR Jaguarandi ever since Operation Moongate. In MARZ, you not only have to deal with him, but if you do well enough in the stages leading up to him, you'll have to fight two Jaguarandis at once.
  • While Jaguarandi is an immense pain in the arse in FORCE, the final battle with Ajim and Guerlain is quite possibly one of the most ruthless boss fights in the series, especially coupled with FORCE's more sluggish controls.
  • Ajim in Oratorio Tangram is an SNK Boss Made of Iron, contrast to being playing him. He alone is a good enough reason never to win any time-out victories.
  • In MARZ, there's also the one encounter with the White Knight.
  • Deconstructed and parodied in Operation Moongate if you choose to continue after getting beaten into a pulp. Jaguarandi's armour has halved by then, and to boot, he shrinks to half his size. If you still can't beat him, and continue again, this repeats. Ad infinitum until he's so small he's practically invisible and one hit will kill him.
    • If you're playing the Windows version of Operation Moongate on a newer operating system, however, chances are your game will crash thanks to a bug and you have restart your game from the beginning. This can be very rage-inducing if you lose to Jaguarandi unless you're Fei-Yen, which (strangely) the bug won't cause your game to crash.
• That One Level: Operation Moongate's Superboss level with Fei-Yen from the Japan-only Sega Ages PlayStation 2 port. She runs and runs and runs while firing, and you end up dying because you took more damage than she did and the time ran out.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: MARZ focus on single-player gameplay and using the degraded mechanics of FORCE.
  • FORCE changed the formula into making teams of two fight against each other, which excited players until it was revealed that it came at the cost of the intense speed that made Oratorio Tangram so popular.

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