Dear Reader:
SEGA and M2 reveal the many struggles and challenges of creating SEGA AGES: Virtua Racing
SEGA AGES: Virtua Racing is now available on the Switch in Japan, and with the launch comes a special interview featuring M2 and Sega. Check out a summary of details from the interview below.
- the idea for this port came about back in the 3D Classics days on the 3DS
- back in those days, M2 wanted to port the Sega 32X version of Virtua Racing, and began looking into the possibility
- the fan voting for the third Sega 3D Classics Collection lead to Turbo OutRun being included instead of Virtua Racing
- the team at M2 continued to test out the possibility of Virtua Racing on 3DS for another 3 months
- once it was officially announced that the 3D Classics line would be ending, work ended
- when SEGA AGES was announced, the team picked the project back up, and this time aimed for the arcade version
- the source code for the arcade version was lost, which meant the game needed to be built from the ground up
- it took quite a long time to bring the project together
- one of the main programmers for Virtua Racing had the arcade data for Virtua Formula, the updated release of Virtua Racing
- this used Virtua Racing as the base, so M2 could utilize it to move forward
- the SEGA AGES release is based on the Deluxe version of Virtua Racing, which used 16:9 widescreen monitors
- this version lacked multiplayer, so it was built back in
- all the polygon models were upgraded into HD by M2, but the backgrounds and 2D sprites were all left untouched
- the Switch version plays at 720p in handheld mode, and 1080p in docked mode, both at 60fps
- draw distance has been improved
- you now have the option to play with up to 8 players total