Sega Ages Virtua Racing
From Sega Retro
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Sega Ages Virtua Racing | ||||||||||
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System(s): Nintendo Switch | ||||||||||
Publisher: Sega | ||||||||||
Developer: M2 | ||||||||||
Genre: Racing | ||||||||||
Number of players: 1-8 | ||||||||||
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Sega Ages Virtua Racing (SEGA AGES バーチャレーシング) is a conversion of the Sega Model 1 arcade game, Virtua Racing, developed by M2 as the eighth game of the Sega Ages lineup for the Nintendo Switch.
Gameplay
Sega Ages Virtua Racing retains all of the content seen in the arcade game, but makes a number of improvements to better suit the Switch hardware. The game runs at a constant 60FPS (double that of the Model 1 board) and renders the entire track at once, meaning there is no visible geometry "pop in" as is the case in earlier conversions of the game. Gameplay is rendered at a full 1080p resolution when docked and 720p in handheld (versus the fixed 496x384 of the Model 1).
Sega Ages Virtua Racing also adds new grand prix and replay modes, as well as support for up to eight players competing locally on a Switch console (though with three or more players, the frame rate is halved back to 30FPS), and two players competing online.
The conversion to 60FPS isn't flawless, with some objects still updating at 30FPS, and there are colour inaccuracies, with the greys of the track typically being lighter and greens being more intense than their Model 1 counterparts. By default, the player's red car has a slightly pink-ish hue, which can be fixed by changing its colour to something else, then changing back to red.
History
Development
According to Naoki Horii in an interview, M2 had originally conceived the idea of a modern-day port of Virtua Racing for some time, dating back to the time they were working on the 3D Classics series for the Nintendo 3DS. They had originally intended to port the Sega 32X version, Virtua Racing Deluxe, and looked into the possibility. However, when conducting a fan poll to determine what games would be included in Sega 3D Fukkoku Archives 3: Final Stage, Virtua Racing had lost to Turbo OutRun. Despite this, M2 continued to look into the possibility of porting the game to the 3DS for three months until it was officially announced that the 3D Classics line would be ending.[2]
With the announcement of Sega Ages for the Nintendo Switch, Horii and M2 restarted the project, only this time with the scope of porting over the original Model 1 version. However, the source code for the arcade version was lost, thus the game had to be rebuilt from the ground up. According to Kazuki Kubota of M2, it took a long time to do so, and many times they would find something likely, only for it to be model data for Daytona USA or development data from Virtua Fighter. The team had even found curiosities such as prototype data for the unreleased Sega 32X version of Wing War.[2]
Fortunately, Rieko Kodama had asked her old colleagues for assistance, and discovered that one of the main programmers for Virtua Racing had still kept data for Virtua Formula, an expanded version of Virtua Racing which used the original code as a base, so M2 used this code to "re-develop" the original arcade version.[2]
M2 based this version of Virtua Racing off of the Deluxe version of Virtua Racing, which used 16:9 widescreen monitors but had no multiplayer support, so it had to be programmed back in.[2]
Magazine articles
- Main article: Sega Ages Virtua Racing/Magazine articles.
External links
- Official website (Japanese)
- Sega Ages Virtua Racing on Nintendo's website: JP
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 http://archive.fo/PuLNK
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 https://www.siliconera.com/2019/04/24/m2-talks-about-the-long-process-of-how-virtua-racing-ended-up-on-the-nintendo-switch/ (Wayback Machine: 2019-05-02 15:27)
Virtua Racing series of games | |
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Virtua Racing (1992) | Virtua Formula (1993) | |
Virtua Racing (1994) | |
Virtua Racing Deluxe (1994) | |
Time Warner Interactive's VR Virtua Racing (1995) | |
Sega Ages 2500 Series Vol. 8: Virtua Racing FlatOut (2004) | |
Sega Ages Virtua Racing (2019) | |
Virtua Racing related media | |
Virtua Racing & OutRunners (1993) | Yu Suzuki Produce G-LOC/R360/Virtua Racing (1998) | |
Virtua Racing Hisshou Kouryaku Hou (1994) | Virtua Racing: Official Racing Guide (1994) | |
Virtua Racing: Virtua Video (?) |