Virtua Cop (バーチャコップ, Bācha Koppu) (known as Virtua Squad for the North American Windows version) is a 1994 light gun shooter game developed by Sega AM2 and designed by Yu Suzuki. It was originally an arcade game on the Sega Model 2 system, and was ported to the Sega Saturn in 1995 and Windows in 1996. The Saturn version included support for both the Virtua Gun and Saturn mouse, as well as a new "Training Mode" which consists of a randomly generated shooting gallery.[7]
Virtua Cop was notable for its use of real-time 3D polygon graphics with texture mapping, with Sega advertising it as "the world's first texture mapped, polygon action game".[8][9] Emphasizing the real-time nature of the game, enemies would react differently depending on where they were shot.[10][11] It was one of the first games to allow the player to shoot through glass. Its name is derived from its 3D graphical style, which was previously used in Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter, and later Virtua Striker.
Despite some initial skepticism over its introduction of 3D polygons in a genre that previously used realistic digitized sprites (most notably Lethal Enforcers), Virtua Cop went on to become a commercial success and received critical acclaim for enhancing the genre with its 3D graphics, camera system, realistic animations, and ability to target specific body parts with realistic consequences. It was influential on later shooter games, with 3D polygons being adopted by subsequent light gun shooters such as Time Crisis (1995) and The House of the Dead (1996) instead of the digitized sprites previously used in the genre, as well as inspiring the first-person shooter GoldenEye 007 (1997).
Virtua Cop was followed by Virtua Cop 2 and Virtua Cop 3. The game was later bundled with Virtua Cop 2 in Japan and Europe on the PlayStation 2 as Virtua Cop: Elite Edition (Virtua Cop Rebirth in Japan) on August 25 and November 29, 2002 respectively. It included gallery extras and implementation of Namco's G-Con 2 lightgun support. In 2004, a port was developed for the handheld Nokia N-Gage, but was cancelled by the quality control team before its release. Very few beta units of the N-Gage version were manufactured.[12]
^"News: Connected" (PDF). Computer & Video Games. No. 156 (November 1994). EMAP. 15 October 1994. pp. 6–7 (7).
^"Video Game Flyers: Virtua Cop, Sega (Japan)". The Arcade Flyer Archive. Sega. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
^Cite error: The named reference EGM2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"Virtua Cop Short Stories". Maximum: The Video Game Magazine. No. 2. Emap International Limited. November 1995. p. 117.
^Cite error: The named reference GMaster was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"Sega Entertainment's "Virtua Squad" delivers gaming justice on the PC; "Virtua Squad": a PC gamer's equal opportunity right to arcade-action includes two-player network gameplay". Business Wire. November 11, 1996. Archived from the original on December 5, 2015. Retrieved August 11, 2021 – via The Free Dictionary.
^Hickman, Sam (December 1995). "Call the Cops!". Sega Saturn Magazine. No. 2. Emap International Limited. pp. 34–39.
^"Virtua Cop: The World's First Texture Mapped, Polygon Action Game With New "Model 2" 3-D Computer Graphics!". The Arcade Flyer Archive. Sega Enterprises. 1994. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
^"Apprehended! Virtua Cop: Another Big One from Sega". RePlay. Vol. 20, no. 3. December 1994. p. 19.
^Cite error: The named reference SatMag1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"Next Wave: Virtua Cop" (PDF). Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 78. Sendai Publishing. January 1996. pp. 102–3.
^Nork, Christian (July 26, 2004). "Virtua Cop". n-page.de (in German). Archived from the original on 2018-08-27. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
VirtuaCop (バーチャコップ, Bācha Koppu) (known as Virtua Squad for the North American Windows version) is a 1994 light gun shooter game developed by Sega AM2...
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Saturn: Virtua Fighter 2, VirtuaCop, and Daytona USA. Due to unexpectedly slow progress in the Daytona USA port, a number of members of the Virtua Fighter...
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original on October 27, 2008. Retrieved February 24, 2021. ""Virtua Fighter 2" and "VirtuaCop" Top Videos" (PDF). Game Machine (in Japanese). No. 511. Amusement...
game, then ported to the Dreamcast. The game is in the same style as the VirtuaCop series or The House of the Dead series, with support for one or two players...
games such as Sega AM2's Virtua Fighter (1993) and Namco's Tekken (1994), and 3D light gun shooters such as Sega AM2's VirtuaCop (1994) and Namco's Time...
No VirtuaCop Arcade / PC / Saturn Shooter 1994 2 Local Shared No VirtuaCop 2 Arcade / PC / DC / Saturn Shooter 1995 2 Local Shared No VirtuaCop 3 Arcade...
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such as Daytona USA, fighting games such as Virtua Fighter 2, and light gun shooters such as VirtuaCop. Namco responded with 3D fighters such as Tekken...
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