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author: admin
generator: pandoc
title: Virtua Racing
viewport: 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes'
---
admin
2013-03-03T03:48:21+00:00
[{.size-medium
.wp-image-626 .alignleft width="300"
height="229"}](http://jumpnshoot9000.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/virtuaracingmegadrive5.jpg)
I've always wanted to square off *Virtua
Racing* against *Starwing.* That's a much bigger job than just reviewing
either one of them individually, and since I lack the time
to immediately that, *and*, having been playing a bit of *Virtua Racing*
recently, I thought I'd forgo my original plans to review it alongside
its early home console 3D-graphics competitor. In its home console form,
\_Virtua Racing \_is obviously important for two reasons, the first
being its conceptual import, and the second its innovativeness in terms
of its use of hardware.
Previously, racing titles relied on a carefully constructed \_two
dimensional \_illusion of distance and depth of environment in order to
convey a plausible game scenario. While *VR* wasn't the first 3D racing
game to do away with these techniques, it was the first to do it *well*.
What was definitely not lost in *VR*, and indeed continues to be an
important concept in racing games after their transition to
three-dimensional environments, is its persuasive illusion of speed.
{.size-medium
.wp-image-624 width="300" height="234"}
I didn't find *VR*'s *Acropolis* level to be particularly well-executed
level in conceptual terms, but its intermediate-difficulty level, *Bay
Bridge,* a shining example of what Sega and Yu Suzuki were trying to
achieve. While *VR*'s environment can be divided up binarily,
interactively speaking, into obstacles and non-obstactles, *Bay Bridge*
demonstrates the kind of raw, intuitive feeling that you can only get
from a (what was then) realistic three-dimensional environment. On the
level, you pass through the namesake steel bridge, which is enormous. It
towers over you, and the feeling of that empty column of space stays
with you the rest of the level. You pass through a mountain in a tunnel,
underneath huge freeway-like concrete manifolds, and alongside imposing
grey retaining walls. The level design and eye-candy work together to
drive home this concept of speed and transit in a very convincing
manner.
[{.size-medium
.wp-image-621 .alignleft width="300"
height="224"}](http://jumpnshoot9000.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/virtuaracingmegadrive3.jpg)
The only time this breaks down is when you crash, or, through naive
level design, become aware that--much like any 2D racing game, \_Hang
On \_and *Out Run* being famous Sega examples--basically all of the
world is proceeding towards you from a point in the middle of your TV
screen. At these two moments you'll realise just how much *VR* has
inherited from its ancestors, as it will become patently apparent that
the car onto which you're projecting your will, and the environment
around it, are not inhabiting the same plane of existence: the player's
car, at times, feels as if it is being drawn on top of everything that's
happening on the screen, like it's not really 'there' on the road. This
should all be regarded as forgivable, because, first, most of the time,
the player's car feels flush with the road, and secondly, this criticism
is minor gripe. Seeing as the technology powering *VR* was very, very
new, the fact that they managed to pull off a game as atmospheric and
realistic as they did is a real achievement.
[{.alignright
.size-medium .wp-image-623 width="300"
height="197"}](http://jumpnshoot9000.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/virtuaracingmegadrive1.jpg)The
second important thing about *VR*, its use of hardware, is also
something worthy of praise. I think it speaks to the great flexibility
of the cartridge format that game manufacturers were able to incorporate
secondary processors into their games in order to better realise their
creative ideas. Today, one is more-or-less stuck with the hardware they
have when they come to possess a new game title, but that was not
necessarily so with cartridge-based software. Cartridges could--and
did--contain extra RAM, or special memory bank switching hardware (think
the NES) in order to push the envelope in terms of sprite and background
complexity. As with Nintendo and their Super FX line of chips, Sega made
use of a secondary microprocessor to handle the calculations necessary
to display 3D visuals on their fourth-generation console. What
distinguishes *VR*'s special chip, the 'Sega Virtua Processor' (good
old-fashioned marketing spin at work here) from the Super FX is that it
was not a full, multi-purpose microprocessor. It was a [Digital Signal
Processor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signal_processor) (DSP).
[{.alignleft
.size-medium .wp-image-622 width="300"
height="225"}](http://jumpnshoot9000.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/virtuaracingmegadrive2.jpg)A
DSP is microprocessor that is custom-built for a very particular
purpose, which is frequently a very simple and repetitive, but
power-hungry task. That's not to say that all custom-built
microprocessors are DSPs, but in this particular case, the "SVP" was
designed to perform two operations (multiplication and addition) for the
purpose of calculating *VR*'s 3D polygonal data, and transforming it
into ["8×8
tiles"](https://code.google.com/p/genplus-gx/source/diff?r=31&format=side&path=/trunk/docs/gen-hw.txt) (which
one can assume to be 8×8 *pixel* patterns). These two-dimensional tiles
are transferred, ultimately, to the Mega Drive's video RAM via Direct
Memory Access (which is only possible through the use of cartridges!).
You could be forgiven for thinking that the SVP stood in the same league
of semiconductor fidelity as the RISC Super FX chip, because, short of
performing some sort of hard empirical comparison
between \_VR \_and *Starwing* in terms of their polygon-count (*VR*
displaying somewhere between 300-500 polygons @ 15 FPS), early
alternative to Z-buffering (see Quake's [Binary Space
Partitioning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning)),
use of colour, and frame-rate (&c &c), the visuals that both games push
are comparable. Honestly, whenever I pick up \_VR \_I forget that the
SVP is only capable of rendering polygons on-screen in 16 (!!!) colours.
[{.alignright
.size-full .wp-image-639 width="256"
height="224"}](http://jumpnshoot9000.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/starfox-venom.png)There
may be something to be said for *Starwing*'s better player
game-environment interactivity and command of atmosphere (NB
but, short of performing the all-out compare-and-contrast disclaimed
above, *Virtua Racing* is an absolute stellar title. I'm asserting this
despite the fact that I don't particularly like racing games as a
genre--as a game in itself, the world environment that this title
manages to convey to the player is reasonably deep and tangible. While I
haven't spoken about the game's controls at all, its scheme of
interactivity is solid. In that manner, it doesn't fail as a racing
game.
The great thing about *VR* is that it is able to be acquired on eBay and
other retro gaming shops on the internet for ten to twenty dollars.
That's a far cry from the game's [original asking
price](http://www.retrogarden.co.uk/reviews/virtua-racing/). With Mega
Drive systems being correspondingly so durable and cheap, it's worth
getting both and learning a bit about the history surrounding the video
game industry's fits and starts into the 3D graphics era. Retrogarden
puts it pretty well when it says that
the SVP chip brought hope to die-hard and downtrodden Sega fans; if
Virtua Racing was possible, why not Virtua Fighter too? Could
3^rd^ party developers take the SVP chip and use it to port Doom, or
even make a Starwing-type game?
The SVP represents the highly contingent nature of the aesthetics of the
Western video game industry from the mid-nineties onwards. The
progression to more and more complex foundations of hardware didn't push
more complex artistic ideas with it, as disillusioned Sega fans can
surely attest. While *VR* offered a glimmer of hope, the future wasn't
secure as the industry moved into the mid-to-late nineties, as everyone
is so obviously aware.
For a brilliant in-depth hardware analysis of *Virtua Racing* (which
Jump'n Shoot will probably exploit later) on the Mega Drive, see this
[blog
post](http://imagequalitymatters.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/retro-tech-analysis-virtua-racing-md-vs.html).
For more information about the "Sega Virtua Processor" (a Samsung
SSP160x Digital Signal Processor), see this [forum
thread](http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=47143).