Apologies for extreme necroposting, but I figured I should share this information somewhere other than SRK:
This site has the most comprehensive look at the series, bar none (such that even
Genki's own page on the game links here), but it could use an update. Quite a bit of info is missing that could be put to good use in the more public eye afforded here. I'll start from the top and work down, I suppose--there's quite a bit to share!
SYSTEM
-Worth noting that Throws, if you're holding the block button, can't be escaped until you let go. If you were holding dodge, the throw becomes inescapable, which shakes up the high/mid/low setup present in other games.
-You can heal faster by holding A+B (or mashing in Piyori). Characters heal at different speeds.
-Counters can actually be "escaped" by holding A+B, kind of like throws. It's sort of like tech-rolls in other games.
FIGHTERS DESTINY-The first game's release date is interesting. It hit US/EU in January/March of 1998--apparently, it missed a Christmas release rush, impacting sales. Whether this holds water is uncertain, but more interesting is that the JP release of Virtua Fighter 3tb came out on the Dreamcast only a couple of months earlier (which, as mentioned in the VF article, was handled by Genki). The broad control scheme (punch/kick/block/dodge) is very similar between both games, so it would make sense if they were cut from the same cloth. Even
more interesting--and something the FD article fails to mention--is that the JP version, Fighting Cup, was released
after Fighters Destiny by 11 months.
-What's been bugging me about the release dates is something also unmentioned in the article: there
are version differences. Some are minor, like character names or voice acting, but more notable are differences in the command lists. I won't go into detail, but suffice to say most characters have at least one attack that's different between versions. I can't say for certain which version was "supposed" to be first: the JP release is an earlier revision, but a later build date (1.2433/Mar. 23 1998); the US vice-versa (1.2495/Dec. 4 1997).
-Speaking of command lists, you can unlock an additional move by playing in the Win-or-Lose mode. Unlocking every move awards a red "Initiate" tag on the character as acknowledgement.
-Masahiro Onoguchi is credited as the game's designer. Onoguchi's company, Anchor Inc., worked with SEGA and other companies as 'Motion Designers'. They did motion capture stuff I guess? As far as I know this was his only designer credit.
-Onoguchi must have liked the sun. A character in Fighting Vipers 2 (Del Sol)--a game he worked on--and one of Leon's attacks (Combo Del Sol) surely aren't a coincidence.
-The pre-release tinkering must have been going on for a while. There's a lonely screenshot of an earlier character select (now only hosted on
this deserted Tripod page), which shows 3D character portraits, a Struggle Hard background, and Leon as Italian. Puts his Colosseum stage in perspective, eh?
-Characters may have been more talkative during development. Combing the sound test reveals some unused quotes for the announcer (some of which are very similar to lines from Fighting Cup), and what are clearly win quotes for every character. There's also supplementary laughs and screams, not all of which get used. Stages that have no foley effects in the sound test get a weird placeholder noise instead.
-That 'placeholder' is actually a snippet from a full sentence in Fighting Cup. It's in Japanese, so I'm clueless beyond catching 'da me' somewhere in there. Something like "No sound here", maybe?
-Apparently European coverage of this game was more expansive--I heard that a magazine revealed Rodeo Mode existed well before they made Ushi, and that Robert was built as a prototype character for their engine. How much of this is true remains to be seen, but I can imagine it's hard finding unnamed European game magazine scans.
FIGHTER DESTINY 2
-The "s" was apparently dropped due to a legal dispute I can't find diddly-squat about.
-The JP release date means this came out a mere 8 months after Fighting Cup, surprisingly--the US version came out in July of 2000 (a ~18 month wait).
-Fighter Destiny 2 is perhaps slightly more polished (more scrolling options in the command lists), but barely.
-Command lists in the two versions are identical, but whether they take after Fighting Cup or Fighters Destiny seems practically arbitrary. Some (Ninja, Abdul, Meiling) gain plenty and lose nothing, some (D-Dog) have to unlock moves they had before, and others (Ziege) are different from
either prior version. This makes the muddy revisions of the first game even more unclear.