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If you're a fan of Sega's Virtua Racing and have been looking for a reason to dive back into the Model 1-based F1 game, then you might be excited to hear about Wanszai's recently released PC & Xbox-based emulators.
These allow players the opportunity to experience the game on Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows PC — platforms that never got an official port — with a bunch of satisfying quality-of-life options, including 16:9 widescreen, a choice of CRT filters, smoother framerates, control configurations for Xbox controllers and racing wheels, and online multiplayer for up to 8 players.
The emulators came to our attention earlier today via @yoshinokentarou, a Japanese retro news source on Twitter/X, and they seem to be generating significant online attention.
@yoshinokentarou's original post, for instance, currently has over 350 retweets and 1.5k likes as of the time of writing, with some players who have already tried the PC version calling it "legit" and praising how quickly they found another player to race with.
Originally debuting in the arcades back in 1992, Virtua Racing has been remade and port for several different machines since its original launch, including the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, the 32X, Sega Saturn (as Time Warner Interactive's VR Virtua Racing), the PS2 (as Virtua Racing: Flat Out) and the Nintendo Switch (as part of the console's Sega Ages series of retro releases).
Remarkably, though, it has never officially been ported to either Xbox consoles or PC, with these emulators potentially opening it up to a new audience, while giving existing fans a new way to play.
You can download the emulators now for free from GitHub (Windows/Xbox One, Xbox 360). As with Wanszai's previous projects (such as his standalone emulator for Virtua Fighter), however, you are required to provide your own ROM, with none of the game's copyrighted files included in the available files.