Virtua Racing on Switch to feature 8 player split-screen action

Pleng · Apr 3, 2019

M2, the team behind the port of Virtua Racing to the Switch (which was originally announced back in September 2018, but I've personally only found out about today, and am totally stoked about, by the way!) have announced that the game will feature a massive 8-way split screen local multiplayer option, for those with enough friends and a big enough TV! Players will also be able to play online although only with a rather underwhelming single opponent at a time.

There's still no firm release date, or any mention of whether the extra 32X tracks or cars will make it into the port.

In other SEGA Ages related news, the developers have suggested that they could well port other Model 1 games - and even Dreamcast games - as they claim to have built emulators for both Model1 and NAOMI arcade boards for Nintendo's ever more popular hybrid system.

What do you think? While I'd love to have 8 friends who all wanted to play Virtua Racing (at the same time!) I think they'd really have been better off putting their efforts into allowing more people to play online at once.

AmandaRose · Apr 3, 2019

They announced the game back in Sept last year lol.

Pleng · Apr 3, 2019

Yup but as this is the only video game related site I generally go to, and there was no news of it here, I didn't know about it!

The 8-player announcement was only made in the last couple of weeks so I figured it was new enough to post here.

(I've edited my original post to clarify)

Reploid · Apr 3, 2019

It's like 8 NDS's

AmandaRose · Apr 3, 2019

Naoki Horii, was recently interviewed and his statements appeared in a recent issue of Famitsu. According to Horii, this Virtua Racing port was originally intended to be brought over to the Nintendo 3DS. But, that plan never came to fruition. Horii did not specifically mention why the 3DS version fell through, but he did make an interesting revelation: the game’s original source code had been lost. Thus, the development team had actually started over and was remaking Virtua Racing entirely. But, there’s yet another catch. Later on in the development cycle, Virtua Racing’s original source code was eventually found by Horii. This has created an interesting situation for the new Sega Ages port on Switch.

Horii eluded to the potential of additional content being made available in the upcoming Switch version of the game but did not specifically say whether or not this will be the case. Though, if it is there, there’s probably a chance its part of the work that was completed when M2 was originally trying to remake the game.

Pleng · Apr 3, 2019

Yes I'd read something similar (after hearing about the game this morning, I've been doing some intense Googling on the subject!)

I guess they have a decision to make as to whether to continue to recreate from scratch, or to update the original arcade source code and run it via their emulator.

AmandaRose · Apr 3, 2019

Sega claimed in the past they had Sega saturn/dreamcast emulation working perfectly on Android and that the Sega Forever titles would include games from all their past systems. Two years later they have only Megadrive games in their Sega Forever lineup and have now said only games for Megadrive will ever be realesed. I don't hold out much hope of them ever getting dreamcast games on the switch sadly.

codyjo · Apr 3, 2019

Two player split screen hurts my eyes enough. No thanks.

Pleng · Apr 3, 2019

codyjo said:
Two player split screen hurts my eyes enough. No thanks.

I hate the way modern games seem to split the screen horizontally as opposed to vertically. I mean I get that old games were designed with a 4:3 aspect ratio in mind, but it still just looks horrible to me having a horizontal split.

AmandaRose said:
Sega claimed in the past they had Sega saturn/dreamcast emulation working perfectly on Android and that the Sega Forever titles would include games from all their past systems. Two years later they have only Megadrive games in their Sega Forever lineup and have now said only games for Megadrive will ever be realesed. I don't hold out much hope of them ever getting dreamcast games on the switch sadly.

Didn't Sega release Crazy Taxi on Android? Is that emulated or a source port?

AmandaRose · Apr 3, 2019

Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio were both ports on android.

Pleng · Apr 3, 2019

That sucks, then. Though I imagine there's possibly a much bigger target market for Dreamcast games on the Switch than there is on Android.

AmandaRose · Apr 3, 2019

Personally speaking I would rather have saturn games on the switch than dreamcast games. But if they did realese shenmue 1 and 2 I would be very happy. As we will probably never get the HD remakes or shenmue 3.

Pleng · Apr 3, 2019

Well the only Sega games I'm really interested in are Daytona, Sega Rally and NiGHTS. Saturn has all three but Dreamcast beasts the Saturn when it comes to Daytona and Sega Rally.

I'd imagine if we ever got Daytona it'd only be a port of the X360/PS3 version - no RinRin Rink

KiiWii · Apr 3, 2019

OCD overload: why not 6 or even (odd) 9 (hehe), 8 just doesn't fit on screen....

AmandaRose · Apr 3, 2019

Pleng said:
Well the only Sega games I'm really interested in are Daytona, Sega Rally and NiGHTS. Saturn has all three but Dreamcast beasts the Saturn when it comes to Daytona and Sega Rally.

I'd imagine if we ever got Daytona it'd only be a port of the X360/PS3 version - no RinRin Rink

Manx TT on the saturn was also rather good it was basically Daytona but with bikes and much longer race tracks.

Pleng · Apr 3, 2019

KiiWii said:
OCD overload: why not 6 or even (odd) 9 (hehe), 8 just doesn't fit on screen....

I was thinking why not 9. I guess the Switch only supports 8 controllers (4 joycon pairs) max?
It would be nice if they split the screen into 9 segments and just had a map in the middle segment

AmandaRose · Apr 3, 2019

Pleng said:
I was thinking why not 9. I guess the Switch only supports 8 controllers (4 joycon pairs) max?
It would be nice if they split the screen into 9 segments and just had a map in the middle segment

Or they could have just made the 9th player computer controlled or just a list of each players position in the race or something else to fill the space.

The Real Jdbye · Apr 3, 2019

That's kind of neat. I think it'll be hard to tell what's going on with so much on the screen, even if you have a projector, but hey at least the option is there. How often do people have that many friends together at the same time that want to play games? Not often, but it happens, and I guess having more options for games than just Smash is nice.

AmandaRose said:
Or they could have just made the 9th player computer controlled or just a list of each players position in the race or something else to fill the space.

Put the map and player list on the 9th square, that's what I'd do.
It just looks odd like this.

Deleted User · Apr 3, 2019

Pleng said:
I was thinking why not 9. I guess the Switch only supports 8 controllers (4 joycon pairs) max?

It's exactly this. 8 controllers Max on the switch.

They should keep it evenly in 3 rows of three, and just have the very middle slot be a minimap.

LightyKD · Apr 5, 2019

YES! I never understood why modern games don't go for 6-8 players locally. The average HDTV is definitely big enough for it!

Virtua Racing on Switch to feature 8 player split-screen action

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