Sega Ages Virtua Racing

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Sega Ages Virtua Racing
System(s): Nintendo Switch
Publisher: Sega
Developer: M2
Genre: Racing
Number of players: 1-8
Release Date RRP Code JP ▼ 2019-04-25 ¥925 (999)999i US ▼ 2019-06-27 $7.997.99 EU ▼ 2019-06-27 €6.996.99 DE ▼ 2019-06-27 €6.996.99 UK ▼ 2019-06-27 £5.995.99 AU ▼ 2019-06-27 $10.9510.95

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

An 8-player local race.

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 tabletop and handheld (versus the fixed 496x384 of the Model 1).

A replay of a 2-player race, with Mr. Virt McPolygon commentating.

Based on Virtua Formula, which originally featured them, Sega Ages Virtua Racing also adds 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 only Joy-Cons held horizontally can be used), and two players competing online. The player can also turn on the Helper feature, which disables collision with other race cars, but will prevent the player from uploading records to the online leaderboards if enabled.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Production credits

• ORIGINAL GAME DEVELOPED BY: SEGA
• DLC VERSION DEVELOPED BY: M2
• Directors: Naoki Horii, Takaaki Hashimoto, Tsuyoshi Matsuoka
• Planners: Tsuyoshi Matsuoka, Takaaki Hashimoto, Kazuki Kubota
• Programmers: Nobuhisa Shinoda, Makoto Harashino, Hiroshi Yoneyama, Hiroyuki Sawai, Jumpei Isshiki, Tomohiro Takahashi, Koji Ando, Youichirou Watanabe, Kengo Takagi, Tetsuya Abe, Masayuki Fukui, Masaki Goto, Akira Saito
• Graphic Designers: Takuya Watanabe, Naoki Takahashi, Keisuke Koga
• Sound Designers: Tatsuhiko Kasuga, Sakuoki Kudo, Jane-Evelyn Nisperos
• Library & Tools: Jun Okada, Toshinori Yuuki (WAMSOFT), Go Watanabe (WAMSOFT)
• Opening Animation: Harukaze Namikai, Taiyo Mamada, Jane-Evelyn Nisperos
• Project Manager: Takehiro Kawachi
• Special Thanks: Takayuki Komabayashi, Takayuki Taira

SEGA

• Producer: Rieko Kodama
• Senior Producer: Kagasei Shimomura
• Supervisor: Yosuke Okunari
• Localization Coordinator: Jonathan Rodgers, Aya Suzuki, Tomokazu Kato
• SOJ Test Team: Akira Nishikawa, Osamu Sato, Isao Akiyama, Atsushi Hirano, Susumu Ookoshi, Daichi Sasaki, Tomoki Matsuura, Kenji Takano, Jiro Kimura, Masashi Horiuchi, Akitoshi Nishida, Kazuya Miyazaki, Takehiro Sekiya, Jun Imamura, Yuta Kuroda, Kenji Takahashi
• SOJ Quality Assurance: Tomoki Kaji, Kazuhiko Morii, Yasuyuki Hattori, Yuji Nakamura, Shunya Shimizu
• Software Manual Production: Yoshihiro Sakuta, Hiroki Osawa, Masaru Kobayashi, Makoto Nishino, Masato Shimamura, Colin Restall, Yoshitake Ohta, Yoichi Takahashi, Kazuki Ishizu, Hiroyoshi Takuma
• Product Manager: Koichi Hanatate
• Promotion: Risa Araki, Koji Uemura, Ikuo Ishizaka
• PR: Teruyuki Kaida, Jun Takemura
• Web Design: Noriko Sanda
• 1st Party Relation: Tetsuo Sasaki, Yoko Fukada

SEGA of America, Inc.

• CEO: Tatsuyuki Miyazaki
• President & COO: Ian Curran
• EVP of Publishing and Strategy: Hitoshi Okuno
• SVP of Publishing: Mitsuhiro Tanaka
• Senior Director of Corporate Planning: Kenya Numata
• Publishing Manager: James Low
• Forecasting and Research Analyst: Jiyang Xie
• Business Planning Analyst: Yuko Shimura
• Financial Analyst: Sawako Yamaji
• VP of Production: Bill Alexander
• Director of Production: Samuel G. Mullen
• Associate Localization Producer: Damian Mougakos
• Senior Manager, QA & Dev Support: Carl Chen
• Assistant QA Manager: Scott Williams
• Submissions Specialist: Justin HQ Phan
• QA Lead: Logan Sandefur
• QA Compliance Specialist: Rob Stone
• QA Testers: Lucas Amutan, Derrick Gutierrez
• Director of Marketing: Robyn Mukai Koshi
• Senior Marketing Manager: Sakura Minamida Harris
• Product Marketing Manager: Melissa Smith
• Associate Product Marketing Manager: Sara Chan, Mathew Roniss
• Product Marketing Specialist: Becky Li
• Senior PR Manager: Jacob Nahin
• Associate PR Manager: Jonathon Stebel
• PR Specialist: Zachary Reese
• Traffic Manager: Ann Namie
• Manager of Creative Services: Ayami Haruno
• Graphic Designer: Amy Shimoshige
• Production Artists: James Ferrell II, Rod Raymundo
• Senior Web Developer: James Kaneshiro
• Web Developer: Erik Nuber
• Web Designer: Ben Schilling
• Senior Media Producer: John Tubera
• Media Producer: Alex Limon
• Media Associate: Jerry Yongjin Song
• Senior Manager, Sales Operations & Administration: Nate Harris
• Sales Manager: Danny Miscevich
• Digital Promotions Manager: Michael Manzanares
• Sales Administrators: Connie Chinn, Leary Salupen
• Digital Operations Specialist: Lauren Welch

SEGA Europe Ltd.

• Commercial Director EMEA: Simon Inch
• Senior Account Manager EMEA: Sam Sadeghi
• Senior Operations Manager EMEA: Linda Kershaw
• Product Marketing Manager EMEA: Melaine Brou, Katharina Bareiss
• PR Manager EMEA: Sarah M D Wellock
• PR & Marketing Assistant EMEA: Sunil Kalotia
• Junior PR and Community Manager EMEA: Mitchell Lineham
• Special Thanks: Hiroshi Kataoka, Toshihiro Nakaya, Takuji Masuda, Atsushi Fujimoto, Toru Sato, Masato Nishimura, Takuma Hatori, Daisuke Sato, Sakiki Tamai, Naofumi Hataya, Shun Nakamura, Tetsu Katano, Sachiko Kawamura, Nobuya Ohashi, Takaharu Terada, Hitoshi Furukubo, Takayuki Iwasaki, Kazuhiro Matsuta, Chika Kojitani, Daisuke Tabayashi, Emiko Mikuni, Rei Aoyanagi, Yoshiaki Endo, Seiji Hayashi, Shinobu Yokota, Yoko Nakajima, Mayumi Ishimura, Genjiro Takahashi, Norihito Fukata, Sarina Okitsu
• Chief Producers: Osamu Ohashi, Eigo Kasahara
• Executive Producers: Haruki Satomi, Kenji Matsubara, Toshihiro Nagoshi

©SEGA

Presented by: SEGA

Source:

In-game credits

Magazine articles

Main article: Sega Ages Virtua Racing/Magazine articles.

External links

• Official website (Japanese)
• Nintendo catalogue pages: JP, US, EU, AU