Sega and M2 announced today that Virtua Racing is the latest addition to the Sega Ages lineup. They also revealed the top 30 results for the Twitter fan poll earlier this month.
Virtua Racing
Virtua Racing enters Sega Ages as one of the most influential arcade racers of all time, and the first to use Sega’s Model 1 3DCG board. Players choose from one of three tracks to race on, through a designated number of laps.
There are four point of views you can choose from, from a cockpit view to a bird’s eye view, which can be changed smoothly via the ‘Virtua Button’, and Virtua Racing was also the first arcade game to use a 16:9 widescreen monitor. The 3DCG technology used in this game was eventually adapted to create Virtua Fighter later on as well.
While the game has been ported to several different consoles, such as the Sega 32X and Sega Saturn, this marks the first faithful arcade version port in the history of the game. The game’s emulation is being done from the ground up without relying on work from the 3DS Sega releases. More info will be revealed later.
Sega also revealed the top 30 most requested games or game series from the fan poll on Twitter. Only the first vote for each person was counted.
Here are the results translated below:
- Jet Set Radio series
- Shenmue I & II
- Panzer Dragoon Saga
- Virtua Fighter series
- Shining series
- Panzer Dragoon series
- Sakura Wars series
- Puyo Puyo series
- Cyber Troopers Virtual-On series
- Burning Ranger
- Skies of Arcadia
- NiGHTS into dreams…
- Golden Axe series
- Mushiking: The King of Beetles series
- Phantasy Star Online
- Space Channel 5 series
- OutRunners
- Sonic Adventure 1, 2
- Daytona USA series
- SpikeOut series
- Dynamite Cop (Die Hard Arcade) series
- Sonic 3 & Knuckles
- Virtua Racing
- Fantasy Zone series
- Dragon Force series
- Sega Rally series
- Phantasy Star (classic) series
- Guardian Heroes
- Out Run 2 (including SP)
- Wing War
Sega joked that all the Jet Set Radio fans in the world must have voted, because it was by far the most popular pick. However, whether it is possible is still in the works. According to Naoki Horii from M2, while they have been doing their best to get Dreamcast games working, games from beyond that generation is task that they’ll need to work on from now on.
As for Shenmue I & II, there were a lot of requests to bring the games to Nintendo Switch as well. However, the recent rereleases were handled by Sega of Europe and not Japan, so when they meet with Sega of Europe next week, they will discuss the matter.
Virtua Racing is available for Sega Genesis, Sega 32X, and Sega Saturn, but Sega Ages Virtua Racing will be the first arcade-accurate port. A remake called Virtua Racing: FlatOut was also released for the PlayStation 2.
