Virtua Cop

Virtua Cop
Developer:	Sega
Publisher:	Sega
Release date:	1994
Genre:	Fixed Shooter
Game modes:	Up to 2 players simultanously
Cabinet:	Standard
Controls:	Lightgun
Monitor
Orientation:	Horizontal
Type:	Raster, medium resolution
Notes
The first 3D lightgun shooter; One of the first arcade games to use 3D texture mapping

Virtua Cop is a video game shooter created by Sega-AM2, headed by Yu Suzuki. Its original incarnation was an arcade game in 1994 and it was later ported to the Sega Saturn in 1995, PC in 1997 and finally to the Dreamcast in the United States and Japan in 2000. It has been recently annonced there is going to be yet another port, this time to the handheld Nokia N-Gage during 2005.

Players would assume the role of police officers and use a light gun to shoot criminals and advance through the game, with penalties for shooting civilians. Virtua Cop was notable for its use of polygonal graphics instead of the animated sprites that were popular for previous games in the same genre. Its name derived from this graphical style, which was previously used in Virtua Fighter, Virtua Striker and Virtua Racing.

Virtua Cop was followed by two sequels, Virtua Cop 2 and Virtua Cop 3.

It was later bundled with Virtua Cop 2 in Japan and Europe on the Sony PlayStation 2 as Virtua Cop: Elite Edition on August 25, 2002 and November 29, 2002 respectively. It included gallery extras and implementation of Namco's G-Con 2 lightgun support, being the best port of the games yet.

External link

• KLOV's entry for Virtua Cop