Virtua Cop | Code Like It's 198x

Before Virtua Cop, the gunmen in arcade shooting games were sprites: drawn, as in Operation Wolf, or digitised from filmed actors, as in Lethal Enforcers. Sega’s AM2 team, in Edge’s words, “gave the gun-game genre the 3D polygon treatment”. The camera swings round corners, climbs to the brow of a quarry and watches a lorry burst through a stack of crates, and every gangster is a 3D figure who reacts to where the bullet lands. Shoot one in the arm and he clutches it; shoot him in the leg and he collapses; shoot the gun out of his hand and he is disarmed. Some observers at Japan’s Amusement Machine Show in 1994 dismissed it as “Lethal Enforcers with polygons”. A year later Sega Saturn Magazine claimed that arcade gun games “were dead before the appearance of Virtua Cop”, and that its innovations had tempted regular arcade-goers “to pick up a gun again”.

Fast facts

Developer: Sega AM2, with Yu Suzuki, head of AM2, credited as producer.
Arcade: 1994, on Sega’s Model 2 board; two players, each with a pistol.
Story: detectives Rage and Smarty take on the EVL corporation’s gun-runners across three stages, each ending with a boss.
Saturn: Japan, 24 November 1995; UK, 8 December 1995, at £59.99 with Sega’s light gun or £44.99 without.
Reviews (Saturn): Edge 7/10; Sega Saturn Magazine called it “arcade perfect”.
Sequels: Virtua Cop 2 (1995) and Virtua Cop 3 (2003).

Polygons on the firing range

In its December 1994 show report, Edge found Virtua Cop “a simplistic task but, as it turns out, a highly enjoyable one, especially as all the characters react differently according to the situation”. The magazine’s caption was blunter: “Although essentially a Lethal Enforcers clone, AM2’s Virtua Cop sports fantastic Model 2 visuals which put it way ahead of the pack.” It ran on the first version of the board, alongside Daytona USA.

The 3D models did more than look good. Because each villain was built from separate parts, the game could tell where he was hit. Computer and Video Games explained the scoring: a shot dead centre earned the most points, several hits on one enemy “juggling their body through the air” set off a score multiplier, and the most valuable shot of all knocked the weapon out of a gangster’s hand. That shot is the “justice shot”. Scenery broke too. Players could shoot out exit signs, computer screens and car windows, and at the start of the second stage a shot at a stack of fuel drums brought a whole tower down.

The player’s pistol held six shots and was reloaded, as in most gun games of the time, by firing off the screen. Innocent bystanders ran through the gunfights, and hitting one cost a life. Edge noticed how the designers used them: enemy patterns trained the player to fire at the same spot, until “the pattern [is] changed and a civilian [pops] up in place of a gun toting terrorist”.

Target circles

The idea that set Virtua Cop apart from its rivals was a warning sight. A circle locks onto whichever enemy is about to shoot, and changes colour as the moment approaches. Sega Saturn Magazine explained it for newcomers: green means the villain is preparing to shoot, amber means “there’s still time to shoot before he manages to fire at you”, and red means he is firing. With a crowd on screen, the circles tell the player which target matters most, so the game tests judgement as well as aim. Computer and Video Games noted that the sight homes in only on enemies needing “immediate attention”, so gunmen in the distance still had to be spotted without help.

Three stages

There are three stages. Computer and Video Games called the first the beginner level:

The Arms Black Market: a dockside maze of packing crates, gangsters escaping in a lorry, and a warehouse where the boss, Kong, bombards the player from a crane.
Underground Weapon Storage: a building site where the gang drives lorries and a digger at the player, then an underground store and a boss called King.
Gang HQ: the EVL corporation’s office tower, from the car park and reception through offices full of computers whose screens shatter under fire, to a vault of soldiers in chemical suits.

The Saturn conversion

AM2 split its Saturn team into three sections at the start of 1995, Sega Saturn Magazine reported in November, “with each mini-department assigned to work on VF2, Daytona and Virtua Cop respectively”. In August 1995 Edge saw the conversion at 20% complete, with almost all the polygon models for the levels finished but slowdown at several points, and doubted it was “anything more substantial than a few hours’ target practice”.

It arrived in Japan on 24 November 1995 and in Britain on 8 December. Sega Saturn Magazine set arcade screenshots beside Saturn ones and declared the result “arcade perfect”, and Computer and Video Games agreed. In an interview printed in Sega Saturn Magazine, Takashi Isono said that the team had kept details such as the change of light as the player moves from the dark outside into a bright car park, and that the game read its data from disc between stages, never during one. The conversion added a Saturn-only training mode, a shooting gallery that two players could play against each other.

Sega sold the game with its own light gun, which Computer and Video Games called “arcade-identical”. In Britain the bundle cost £59.99; the game alone was £44.99 and extra guns £24.99. CVG and Sega Saturn Magazine called it the Virtua Gun; Saturn+ and American mail-order adverts called it the Stunner. CVG’s reviewer was blunt about the difference it made: without the gun, “we’d give this game a lowly 65% because it’s no fun without it!”

Edge gave it seven out of ten in February 1996. It praised the “glitch-free polygons and crisp texture maps” and the way the enemies used the scenery: “in level two an enemy character gets in a truck which has previously been used as a hiding place and drives it at the player”. It found the game short, though: with the default continues it could be finished “within a few hours”, and its fixed enemy patterns could be learned in days. Its verdict: “an interactive Stallone film”, and “great fun”.

Sequels and later versions

Virtua Cop 2 followed in the arcades in 1995. Edge found that it “retains the basic gameplay but adds a few visual embellishments”, among them a car chase and exploding barrels that clear the screen. The first game came to Windows PCs in 1996, sold in America as Virtua Squad. Computer Gaming World reviewed it in March 1997 as “a near miss”, a once-fresh arcade design that had dated. On the PlayStation 2 both games were collected in 2002, released in Europe as Virtua Cop: Elite Edition.

Time Crisis, Namco’s 1995 answer, owed an open debt to it: Edge thought Namco had “improved on the formula” with a pedal that let the player duck behind cover. Sega’s own The House of the Dead followed on Model 2 with zombies in place of gangsters. Virtua Cop 3 arrived in arcades in 2003 on Sega’s Chihiro board. While it was still in development, a 2003 light-gun history reported that it would let the player change weapons and would add a foot pedal in the style of Time Crisis. On release the pedal slowed time.

Sources

Edge issue 15, December 1994, pp. 10–11: Amusement Machine Show report (Virtua Cop on Model 2, “Lethal Enforcers with polygons”, characters that “react differently according to the situation”).
Computer + Videogiochi (Italy) issue 42, November 1994, p. 19: news of Sega’s Model 2 coin-op.
Edge issue 23, August 1995, p. 41: Saturn prescreen (“the 3D polygon treatment”, 20% complete, polygon models, slowdown, the planned light gun).
Edge issue 25, October 1995: Virtua Cop 2 arcade prescreen.
Edge issue 29, February 1996, pp. 78–79: Saturn review, 7/10, £60 with gun (civilians, the truck, the three stages, length, “an interactive Stallone film”).
Sega Saturn Magazine issue 1, November 1995: AM2’s Saturn division split into three teams for Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA and Virtua Cop.
Sega Saturn Magazine issue 2, December 1995, pp. 34–39: showcase (EVL, Kong and King, the target circles, justice shots, arcade and Saturn screenshots compared, interview with Takashi Isono); pp. 69–71: review (“dead before the appearance of Virtua Cop”, hit reactions, joypad and gun) and UK release date, 8 December.
Computer and Video Games issue 169, December 1995: Saturn preview (Japanese release 24 November, the Virtua Gun packed in).
Computer and Video Games issue 170, January 1996: Saturn review (scoring, the target sight, the three stages, prices, “a lowly 65%” without the gun, training mode, breakable scenery).
Saturn+, December 1995: the gun sold as the Stunner (£24.99). GamePro issue 92, May 1996: US mail-order listing of the “Saturn Stunner Gun”.
Computer Gaming World issue 152, March 1997, p. 136: Virtua Squad (Windows) review.
Edge issue 27, December 1995: Time Crisis at the JAMMA show, Namco’s pedal “improved on the formula” (see Time Crisis).
UGVM issue 6, August 2003, p. 9: light-gun history (Virtua Cop 3 in development, weapon changing and a pedal).
Wikipedia, “Virtua Cop” (web, secondary): arcade release months, Yu Suzuki as producer, Windows and PlayStation 2 releases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtua_Cop
Wikipedia, “Virtua Cop 3” (web, secondary): March 2003, Chihiro, the slow-motion pedal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtua_Cop_3