Virtua Racing was released to arcades at a time when polygonal racing titles were the province of Namco and Atari Games, and it was pretty astounding at the time. The efforts to make hope ports of it were largely noble efforts. The arcade game got its 30fps render rate by using a bunch of powerful (and expensive) hardware. The Genesis version cost $100, and used a Super FX-like custom co-processor, but even then could only get up to 15fps.

The star of contemporary efforts has to be the 32X version, which almost compares to the Saturn version, which wasn’t developed by Sega. It doesn’t surpass the Saturn release, but it’s competent. Here’s a side-by-side comparison (7 1/2 minutes). It’s kind of hard to believe the Genesis is producing the footage on the left side of the video, even if it is being heavily supported.

In arcades, Virtua Racing, while released in different models and cabinets, was the only game by that name that Sega would make, although the Daytona and Sega GT series would hold aloft the waving polygonal banner. More recently a decent 60fps port was made by M2 for the Nintendo Switch as part of the Sega Ages series.

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The explanation: Did you ever play around with a 32X? Evidently not a lot of people did. It was straaaange. Unexpectedly powerful! A bit misjudged! Hosted a port of DOOM! Had a port of Virtua Racing that compares favorably with the Saturn version! Had that crazy hard-to-play Knuckles game that gave us Vector the Crocodile!

Have you ever hooked one up though? Its hardware is odd. It’s like a completely separate console to itself. The Mega Drive wasn’t made to support add-on processors and chips like that, so Sega used a clever solution: the 32X has its own video output, and also a video input. You plug the Genesis’ output into the 32X, and then the 32X into your TV. The 32X mixes the Genesis’ signal into its own, as if it were chromakeyed. Since the 32X cartridge supplies the program running on the Genesis as well as itself and they can talk to each other, the two processors and graphics chips should be able to sync perfectly, if awkwardly.

But: because the Genesis’ video signal emerges from that console through this external wire before reentering the 32X, it’s possible to do things to it while in transit. The Genesis supplies video timing information that the 32X relies on, so you can’t get a signal from the add-on without the Genesis’ AV plugged into it, but the Genesis does produce a viewable video signal that you can see on its own.

All the details are in the video, which has been embedded below for your convenience and amusement.

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