LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Virtua Racing
built 198 days ago
What made Virtua Racing so special in the Arcade was its seamless, flat-shaded polygon graphics and addictive gameplay. This has all been ported over to the 32X without a hitch -- the visuals are fast, detailed and ripe with effects like smoke and tire tracks. The steering wheel has been replaced with a control pad making handling a bit tricky, but liberal application of the brake will ensure victory. The sensation of speed is outstanding, especially from the cockpit view (where you can even see your driver's hands on the steering wheel). Aside from Arcade and Time Attack modes, you can ... race against a buddy split-screen style. Despite reduced polygon counts on the environments, this mode is still quite playable.
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Virtua Racing was Sega-AM2's first foray into polygon gaming, and the first arcade game to use full polygon graphics. Released in 1992 as the debut title for Sega's Model 1 arcade board, the game ditched the scaling sprites of previous titles from the company for actual 3D geometry, and added four selectable points of view in the process. The Model 1 board was incapable of texture mapping, meaning everything in the game was completely flat shaded, giving a distinctive look that hardcore fans still love to dream about. The Sega Ages version of Virtua Racing is a direct reproduction of the arcade game in terms of sheer look, but it runs at 60fps and features three new tracks and added options.
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Virtua Racing has several factors which appeal particularly to this writer. Firstly, there are the stylised, superbright and ultra-clean graphics, whose sharp lines and simple colours create a far more evocative feel than any amount of gritty, "realistic" modern racers with their fancy textures and round wheels and all. (The look is partly the inspiration for some of the more inventive recent attempts in the genre, such as Capcom's Auto Modellista.) More importantly, VR was pretty much the last "serious" arcade racing game (as opposed to fun knockabout titles like Cruis'n USA) which was more about steering than sliding. It is possible to spin out in Virtua Racing, but you have to make a real effort, and as long as you don't do anything stupid your car will keep facing in approximately the right direction, leaving you to concentrate on going really fast, overtaking the opposition and getting your racing line exactly right on corners (which is the single biggest key to success in the game) - in other words, all the things racing games should be about, not an eternal struggle just to keep the bloody car on the tarmac.
Graphically, Virtua Racing has some polygon reduction here and there, and the tracks aren't quite as detailed as the arcade (or 32X version). However, the game moves at a solid 25fps, and the gameplay is challenging.
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The graphics in Virtua Racing were top notch at the time. This game was in full 3D a feat rarely seen. Sure the people had cubes for heads and rectangles for arms and the trees are really just giant triangular prisms, but it was cool at the time. Effects like seeing little triangles of grass come up when you skimmed over the green area were great. One of the coolest features was there were different views you could switch to while racing. Compare this game to any PS2 racing game, heck even any PS1 racing game and its going to pale in comparison.
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Thankfully, Virtua Racing has been left alone. They haven't crudely pasted textures over everything to make it look more modern as they've done for OutRun and Golden Axe. Instead, VR is pretty much arcade perfect - pop-up, triangular trees, road-built-out-of-tarmac-squares and all. If you're after a decent, smooth version of Virtua Racing to play in your house, Sega Ages Collection might just be worth 20 quid.
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