YMMV / Virtua Racing

• Awesome Music:
  • Deluxe has a pretty banging theme for its Replay mode, which was rearranged for the SEGA AGES port to match the soundfont of the arcade version's soundtrack.
  • The Japanese version of the credits theme, also from Deluxe, is also a banger.
• Breather Level: The Expert course, Acropolis. While the road is somewhat windy, its only real difficulty is a near-90-degree turn followed by a hairpin right before the second checkpoint. Beyond that, it's less technical than the Medium course. Furthermore, unlike Medium, it does have a pit stop, making it easier to score a first-place win on Grand Prix mode.
• Broken Base:
  • The quality of the Saturn port is highly controversial. Fans of the arcade version greatly dislike the port's deviations from the original, especially in control, and often prefer the earlier Genesis and 32X ports despite their technical inferiority due to being more faithful. Players less concerned with arcade accuracy see the Saturn port as a good racing game on its own merits, especially since it beats out even the well-regarded PS2 version in terms of content.
  • The SEGA AGES version is pretty divisive for reasons opposite to the Saturn port. Fans of it regard it as a faithful and highly accurate port with upscaled 60 FPS graphics, and consider it the next best thing to the cabinet itself, possibly even better. Critics are put off by this version lacking the extra courses and vehicles from the other console releases.
• Funny Moments: On the Beginner course, the race seems to start with you in 1st place...except you're in the pit just having your car's service completed as the timer counts down. When you can finally move, eight cars have passed you on the main stretch!
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: While the SEGA AGES version is highly regarded for its accurate emulation of the arcade original and receiving the 60fps treatment, it also gets criticism for being too faithful and lacking the extras found in previous console adaptations (such as new courses, new cars, or a career mode).
• Good Bad Bugs: The Manual transmission in Flatout is in fact broken; 7th gear achieves the fastest acceleration at any speed.
• Nintendo Hard: The time limit is very harsh even on default difficulty, as is standard of arcade games at the time. It's entirely possible to run out of time while in first place.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The SEGA AGES version is praised by many for having 60 FPS in addition to other qualities that make it a Polished Port, but it isn't the first that the game got the 60 FPS treatment; that honor goes to Virtua Racing Flatout on PS2.
  • The SEGA AGES version runs in 16:9, which seems like a curious hack of the game ROM, but the original 1991 release does come available in a Deluxe version with a 16:9 CRT screen. 16:9 CRT televisions did exist in the 90s and were available for consumer purchase; they were just not widespread as 4:3 back then.
• Polished Port:
  • The Sega Genesis port, despite having to make some obvious compromises including a frame rate of 15 FPS and watered down rendering, as well as having an MSRP of 100 USD, still manages to be quite playable in its own right.
  • Deluxe adds on to the above, introducing new cars and courses and bumping the frame rate up to 20.
  • The SEGA AGES port is regarded as the best version of the game, due to not only being faithful to the original while running at 60 FPS (albeit going back down to 30 if there are 3 or more player slots running) but also adding local multiplayer for up to 8 players, making it the first version of the game since the original arcade release to support that many players at once.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The multiplayer modes in the SEGA AGES port seem like an afterthought:
    • Offline Match (the only way to have more than 2 players at once, by the way) requires players to use the sideways Joy-Con grip. Did you bring Pro Controllers and/or wired controllers? Do you have only 4 or less players, and thus able to use four Joy-Con pairs (since a pair counts as 2 controllers)? Nope, not allowed; the game will refuse to let any controller that isn't a individual Joy-Con connect to the Switch.
    • Online Match isn't much better. There's only two players to a match and there's a distracting thumbnail of the opponent's POV that you can't turn off. Also the connection quality is quite bad, especially if you race against someone who's more than a few hundred kilometers away (which is sadly to be expected of Nintendo console online multiplayer in general, due to the use of peer-to-peer connections). More aggravatingly, this is the only way to have separate-device multiplayer, since this port lacks local wireless multiplayer.
  • For the love of everything that is Virtua, don't attempt to bump the A.I. racers. Odds are the game will count this like a head-on collision, and send you reeling as you lose all of your speed.. while the other racer spins out but keeps going forwards with only a minor penalty. Some roads can be narrow enough that it's more of a struggle to avoid wiping on the back of your opponents than it is to clear the turns and walls.
• That One Level: The Medium Course, Bay Bridge, has several tricky chicanes, and right after the 2nd checkpoint there is a fairly sharp right turn with a very narrow lane (since you're taking a freeway off-ramp) with grass on the left that can make you spin out, leaving no room for error. Have fun trying to take this turn if you're surrounded by opponents. This gets worse in Grand Prix mode, where your tires wear out over 20 laps and unlike the other two courses, this course doesn't have a pit stop, forcing you to work around the increasingly worse steering. It's also harder to get 1st place on this course than on Acropolis, as the AI moves really quickly even during the most difficult turns, forcing you to build up advantage in other portions of the track.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: It's hard to appreciate it now, but back in the early 90's, when racing games primarily used rapidly-scaling sprites or to create the impression of depth and the only other polygon-based racing games really on the market at the time were the low-framerate Hard Drivin' series and the even more primitive Winning Run, the game was a sight to behold with its lush backgrounds and slick framerate. Unlike many other early 3D games, it also has gained a newer appreciation for (unintentionally) bearing a unique "minimalist" look to it.

---