Sega Ages Virtua Racing

Genre: Arcade Racing

Players: 1-8 Competitive (Local Split-Screen), 2 Competitive (Online), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Sega Ages Virtua Racing is a port of the classic Sega arcade racing game. This was one of the first racing games to be released in the age of polygons, and while it definitely shows its age in some areas, in others it’s surprisingly still quite good.

First, the obvious – as such an old game, the graphics here are outright archaic, save for one caveat. While the extremely simple character models, lack of textures, and lack of visual effects all make this game look absolutely primitive… yet this port of the game looks absolutely silky-smooth thanks to its new 1080p resolution and rock-solid 60fps frame rate, along with improved draw distances. Virtua Racing never looked as good as it does here.

The frame rate does drop a bit in the game’s 8-player split-screen mode however… yeah, this game has 8-player local split-screen. I mean, just that fact alone is pretty amazing, and I suppose even with the archaic graphics of Virtua Racing, it makes sense that presenting eight different player windows on one screen would require a bit of a sacrifice in that department… though the framerates are still pretty good, even then.

The Switch version of the game also supports motion controls, though I didn’t personally care for them. There’s also online 2-player play (with random opponents), leaderboards… a lot of love went into this port, and it shows.

Now, being an older game, the controls are a bit arcadey, the game is a bit overly hard in areas, and the content is… well, very slim. There are only three courses available, no car selection beyond automatic or manual shift… by today’s standards, this is pretty bare bones. However, given the age of the game, what’s included here is far more than anyone is likely to expect.

Sega Ages Virtua Racing is a good lesson to anyone looking to re-release an older game on a modern platform. It may be old-fashioned in some areas, but the folks behind this port have delivered what is very likely the definitive version of the game. The only thing missing is the arcade cabinet.

tl;dr – Sega Ages Virtua Racing gives us the definitive version of the classic Arcade-Style racer, with newly-improved framerates, resolution, and draw distance, and 8-player splitscreen play. It’s still archaic in some ways, but this port has revitalized the game to still be relevant today.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2019 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Port/Remake, Best Driving/Racing Game

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