Virtua Racing was a good technological piece, as well as quite fun too.
So in 1994, Sega had an idea to release Virtua Racing on a console. Their choice was the Genesis. But how? The Genesis was an 16 bit system...and had no capabilities of producing a 3D game. Enter the SVP chip. It was created in response to the FX chip used by Nintendo in two of their SNES titles. The practice of adding chips to carts, to let them do things they couldn't normally do via the system itself, was nothing new, but this chip did something a bit more extraordinary. It could produce polygonal graphics better then the FX chip could ever do. It could produce them with more detail, and at a smoother performance. It's only limitation was the Genesis it was used on. Had it been coupled with the 32x or the Sega CD, who knows how far this chip could have gone.
But alas, that's history. Virtua Racing for the Genesis is the only cart, game to use it. The tradeoff, was it nearly doubled the price of the game, leaving some retailers to sell it for $100 a pop.
Sp yeah, because of te cost per cart, and Sega's unfocus techniques, VR was the only one to use the chip.
But regardless of price, Virtua Racing is a fun game to play.
It sports 3 difficulty levels, and 3 different race tracks. Single player mode (similar to it's arcade route) and a very fun 2-player mode. It also has a freeplay mode, to practice your skills on. It also has different views to view from while racing, such as the driver view, behind the car views and sky views.
The graphics are pretty stunning for it's time, some views had problems will clippage, but overall, for what it was, VR was good at its time for an arcade port.
The sound was also pretty good, though there was no continuous background music playing. But still, the checkpoints had their own background music and other sounds to make up for this.
VR's real value comes from it's race tracks, it's challenge, and it's very fun 2 player mode. During 2 player racing, the game is at it's best, with no slowdown, and more fun. The tracks were well designed too, it's had it's own speciality, track 3 had it's hairpin turn and tight racetrack, track 2 had it's many corners and track 1 was a more traditional racetrack. You can also pit in case your car suffers from damage.
While more expensive back then, Virtua racing s more cheaper to find, and if you do get a chance to buy it, pick it up. t's a good technnological piece for your Sega Genesis, and quite fun too for retro players.