Lost “Sega VR” game discovery made modern, playable on modern VR headsets

One of Sega’s most mysterious products to date, the canceled Sega VR headset, has finally emerged in “playable” form thanks to a team of game history conservationists on Friday. It’s the story of the invented ROM, the discovery of its source code, and the attempt to not only recreate the game but adapt to existing Genesis and Mega Drive emulators to translate virtual reality calls from today’s PC headsets.

The story, posted on the Video Game History Foundation’s site, begins with the discovery of Rome by Dylan Mussfield at Gaming Alexandria. The game in question, Nuclear Rush, Was one of four games announced for the Sega VR, a headset system designed to plug into the standard Genesis and Mega Drive consoles.

Not quite 72 Hz …

Gamers of the time probably heard of the Se Sega VR, as the game publisher’s PR Push included numerous mentions in gaming magazines, which were also made public on the 1993 Summer CES and ABC portion. Nightline. But the ambitious device, which was supposed to start at just 199 dollars, was quietly scrapped, and former Sega president Tom Kalinsk finally confirmed it: Researchers have discovered that the device accounts for a percentage of examiners sick of headaches and dizziness.

Today’s discovery explains in part where the symptoms of the disease are possible. By breaking down and understanding the way Sega VR games communicate with Genesis, and so through the Sega VR headset, VGHF Digital Conservation Head Rich Whitehouse discovered the serious limitations of the headset: only 15 Hz refresh for its chlorophyll images, such as 72 hz. (Let alone the 90 Hz standard set by companies like HTC and Valve) In addition, the Sega VR simply translated the pitch and yaw movement for users’ heads, not rolls – and is at the top of a system that already has three-degree-of-freedom ( 3 DOF) is limited as a system, in which users sit.

How did the White House get so much about the functionality of the Sega VR so many years after the add-on disappeared? As it turns out, Mansfield’s day-to-day search for game history errata includes requests from various ’90 developers for whatever old prototypes or code they can pull into the drawer. In the case of Kenneth Hurley, who worked Nuclear Rush As part of Futurescap Productions, he rose to a higher position and sent Mansfield a CD-ROM on August 6, 1994 – which miraculously did not suffocate in Beat Rot.

The White House took the step at this stage on how to compile the rest of the almost complete code (dubbed “final” but not “retail final”), which required a combination of C and assembly. In Whitehouse Exploration: The written code only worked on some Genesis and Mega Drive hardware revisions, depending on how it handles horizontal and vertical scrolling of sprats and assets that need minor modification. Also, the metadata in the code referred to the Shia CES 1994 as shown for the Sega VR that never passed.

Could have used SVP

Although the missing CD-ROM is missing key Sega VR files (called Whitehouse VRDOC and VRTXT), Whitehouse is still missing from the system 16-bit console. Was able to figure out how it would work. The Sega VR IO console’s second controller was moving around the port, although the White House explanation did not specify whether the console’s video-out port would have been redirected to the Sega VR headset or how it would work. In addition, the Sega VR headset will be given two 30 Hz images, which Nuclear Rush Would then split further with its 15fps refresh.

Looking for how to make Nuclear Rush Working as a VR experience in 2020, the White House spoke with the game’s original lead programmer, Capin McGrath, who confirmed that his team had actually worked hard on a Sega VR without a headset to test the V and they invented a test that had Flickr the video output of the game between two computer monitors to see how it can do it with two headset images. Alex Smith, another Sega VR-era game programmer, confirmed that a team working on Outlo Racing never got their hands on a headset prototype before the project was ready.

The rest of the White House’s work revolved around the creation of the Genesis PanVR support, the Working Genesis Emulator, which, among other things, made serious predictions about how Sega VR’s panels were located and shaped, then to the 1994-era Quirks to run more efficiently on modern computers. Curry (Locked at 15fps in part to reduce potential motion sickness from the game of Genesis). The resulting emulator and a compiled pair Nuclear Rush ROM from VGHF article is available for download and testing.

ARS Technica has tested this combination of emulator and ROM on Windows 10 PC running HP Reverb G2 headset, and I can confirm that the game will play as much as you might expect: it’s an Amul 3D tank game, knows That balcony arcade classic Battlezone Rebuilt from Genesis-era sprites and palettes, but it’s all sprat-field tricks, not obscure polygamous content of rent in the early 90’s Star Fox Or Virtue Fighter. (Sega VR games were clearly not being enhanced with extra cart non-cartridge chips like Sega’s SVP, which is used in the Genesis version Virtual racing.)

The resulting restored established game does not experience revolutionary gameplay by any stretch. However, the combined efforts of everyone listed above brought the game back to life, the original version of which would have made you sick. Thankfully, modern hardware (and its entrepreneurial users) can revive canceled games in a way that doesn’t tamper with the history of the game in their cookies, and that’s a compliment to the most modern game-saving movement.

Check out the full, interesting story, complete with a ridiculous amount of technical information, at the Video Game History Foundation.