Big Forest - Virtua Racing

Big Forest/Beginner, 1st place finish, automatic transmission
Expand the description for some driving tips!
MAME 0.189 mamedev.org
Virtua Racing was Sega's entry into 3d racing games on the Model 1 board, led by the famous Yu Suzuki of OutRun, Hang On, and Space Harrier. Virtua Racing's flatly shaded polygonal style is rough around the edges by today's standards, but marked an important first step into 3d gaming by Sega. Virtua Racing focused on promoting immersion to draw players back for more: in addition to the standard twin and upright type cabinets, a deluxe edition known instead as Virtua Formula could also be found at certain Sega GameWorks arcade locations. Virtua Formula had players sit down inside a full-scale replica car body that was moved by a pneumatic system to simulate the forces felt by drivers. Combined with the first person V.R. mode and unusually large 50 inch widescreen display, Virtua Formula was the ultimate in immersive racing in its time. Today, Virtua Racing is increasingly hard to find in arcades due to its unpopular primitive graphics and gameplay as well as a manufacturing defect which crippled US twin cabinets. Virtua Formula setups were gutted and converted to run Sega's Indy 500 using their brand new Model 2 hardware in 1995.
Virtua Racing offered many firsts aside from 3d including its 'V.R. modes:' these allowed you to choose from four different camera angles by pushing colored buttons on the dashboard. While it was not the first 3d racing game released to arcades, Sega's Model 1 board was considerably more powerful than its competitors and allowed Virtua Racing to blow players away by drawing multiple cars, complex scenery, and even animated characters for the attract, victory, and pit stop scenes simultaneously. Despite being groundbreaking at the time, Virtua Racing lacks many of the features that future Sega games had, such as textured polygons and full length music tracks, as these were impossible from a technological standpoint at the time of its release.
Due to its simple handling model, scoring fast times in Virtua Racing is not overwhelmingly hard. Instead, precision and repeatability are rewarded as the tracks are fairly long and require you to complete several laps. If you steer too aggressively, the car will start to slide and, if not corrected, spin out. You can catch the car by simply releasing the throttle and returning the wheel closer to the center. Because the tracks are very wide, finding a good racing line is more important here than in some other Sega racing titles and can help save more time. Try to clear each corner at as high of a speed as possible by driving the widest radius arc that you can: start on the outside edge of the road when approaching the corner, then curve inwards to clip the apex of the corner when half-way through. If you want, you can hold down the start button when selecting your track to switch to a sequential manual transmission, but since Virtua Racing has no powersliding mechanics like future Sega games, the manual transmission offers few benefits other than a slightly increased top speed. (The paddle shifters behind the steering wheel are fun though!) Be prepared to shift up and down quickly since the gears are very short! Since the gears are so short, I often find myself losing time stuck in the wrong gear; I use the automatic transmission so I can focus on driving consistently instead of worrying about juggling gears.

[@mathew3267]

You'll never break any records in that automatic.

[@PacGuy765]

Automatic is for rookies and the hint to getting world records; draft behind your opponents and choose Manuel

[@PacGuy765]

Just a heads up that this will be available worldwide on the Nintendo Switch next Thursday and it has online play.
By the way, you can only get this game in 30FPS on Arcade, the Switch has this playing at 60FPS

[@arcadeparty4946]

Wish I could buy this for Xbox one... loved this on 32X

[@Land_of_D_Cringe]

This game is on xbox?

[@PacGuy765]

What about on the Switch next Thursday?

[@PacGuy765]

@@Land_of_D_Cringe No, but it will be on the Switch next Thursday

[@oldnewpixel]

Well played, love this game too. A shame mame won't let you crank up the rendering resolution.

[@nattila7713]

this is clearly 30fps

[@amaulana090]

The hardware was never meant to run 60FPS, so it was pointless to upload to 60FPS anyway.

[@nattila7713]

@@amaulana090 and misleading... i thought it is a hack or sg :)