Virtua Racing Flat Out: Hands-On & Videos

Sega's classic Virtua Racing comes to PlayStation 2 as part of the Sega Ages 2500 series. We've got a copy and bring you these impressions, screens and hi-res videos. Is it finally arcade perfect?

Back at last year's Tokyo Game Show, we reported on the Sega Ages section of Sega Japan's prominent show booth, particularly on the conversion of Virtua Racing. As the eighth game in the Sega Ages 2500 series, Virtua Racing: Flat Out brings the new courses to the mix, along with a pretty much arcade perfect conversion of the original, awesome coin-op.

After our hands-on at TGS we were a little disappointed at the quality of the conversion, comparing it more readily to the 32X 'Deluxe' version of the game in 1995 than the powerhouse 1993 arcade original. But after our latest hands-on we're not so disappointed; for some reason it looks that much closer to the original than ever before, and 'comfort' elements such as title screens, music, effects and such are all completely faithful to the original, so it really does feel like the coin-op.

Graphically, there's something about the shading that makes it authentic to the original where previous home conversions failed, and the PS2 version swallows up sixty frames per second without even trying.

The conversion adds three new courses to the arcade's original trio, and we haven't seen them in any previous conversions. In addition to the original Big Forest, Bay Bridge and Acropolis courses, Island, Mountain and Beltway make their polygonal debut with comparable levels of difficulty to the original three respectively. As you can see, they look nice.

Needless to say, the game plays as well as it always did, offering surprisingly fast gameplay and outrageous arcade fun, comprising some simply awesome crash sequences.

Conspiracy Games recently announced it will be bringing the first fourteen volumes of the Ages series to western markets, including Virtua Racing: Flat Out, which was extremely good news for Sega fans.

To celebrate the game's Japanese launch, take a look at these screens and a video of each track. Then decide for yourself whether or not the game is finally arcade perfect!

Adam Doree
Director, Kikizo.com