Format: 32X
Genre: Racing
Developer: Sega AM2
Publisher: Sega

When Sega's flat-colored, ground-breaking 3D racer originally hit arcades, this reviewer spent wallets' worth of quarters watching plumes of leaves and tire smoke rushing forth from the back of his polygonal car as it travelled, practically, right into the future! The colorful backdrops and sensationally appealing track layouts make the virtually effortless leap to Sega's affordable Mega Drive add-on, with only a marginally reduced draw-in and a subtle loss in surface counts betraying the less powerful hardware.

The arcade version's digitally sampled music, compliments of the Model 1 hardware's PCM audio chips, was technically impressive for the time-- but in one of those counter-intuitive moments, the 32X renditions of the songs just sound better; a fellow named Yoshiaki Kashima did the conversions, and he magnificently leverages the YM2612's typical clarity for the melodies, while using the 32X hardware for percussion effects. Foreshadowing the truly bizarre Daytona USA audio, this port even has the quite strange voice acting of the arcade original, along with the digital "passing car" engine sounds!

The game only runs at maybe twenty frames per second, but the sensation of speed, and the smoothness with which it's delivered, is wonderful! Throttle and brake buttons are present, along with-- just as was with the arcade original-- devoted "V.R." buttons to flip between the game's various perspectives. Flicking the dpad up and down changes gears, although the novice will undoubtedly have his hands full just in "Automatic" mode! Steering is nicely layered in with dpad direction holds, effectively emulating the arcade steering wheel experience.

What makes Virtua Racing so impressive is that it's one of the rare arcade racers which also rewards taking realistic lines through the courses, and utilizing a "slow in, fast out" apex-oriented approach to cornering. Its spiritual "bounce off of walls" successor, Daytona USA, can not claim this much, nor can even further genre entrants such as Ridge Racer. As for this port, it so faithfully replicates the timeless arcade aesthetic, even one-upping its big brother in terms of music, that it makes one wonder what could have been for Sega's turbocharged Mega Drive add-on.