Collection essentials #338 & 339: Virtua Cop (Saturn) & Virtua Cop 2 (Saturn)

I don’t do this very much, but I’m gonna highlight two games in one today, mostly because they’re similar, in the same series, and I don’t have a ton to say about them.

As you may know, I dig light gun games. I already talked about The House of the Dead on Saturn, which came out later in the console’s lifetime, and is my current favorite light gun rail shooter. The Virtua Cop games can sort of be seen as a predecessor to them. Not as great, but still plenty of fun and respectable as trailblazers. Up until Virtua Cop’s arcade release in 1994, most light gun shooters used 2D sprites or digitized actors of some kind. Virtua Cop was one of the first to use full-on three-dimensional polygon graphics. 

As you might guess from the title, Virtua Cop has you (and perhaps a friend) playing as law enforcement taking on areas swarming with armed criminals in an attempt to save the day. The core gameplay mechanics aren’t super revolutionary, as it’s mostly stuff that was already established in previous light gun games such as Konami’s “Lethal Enforcers”. You have unlimited bullets, but you will have to reload after a certain number of shots by shooting outside of the screen. When an enemy is about to appear, a large brightly-colored crosshair will zero in on them so that the player(s) isn’t/aren’t caught off-guard. You have to be careful not to shoot innocent civilians, because doing so means you lose a hit point, and it’s easier to make that mistake than it sounds. Some more-powerful guns can be found if you shoot certain areas in the levels, but those have finite ammo so you don’t want to spam their bullets too recklessly. Each stage culminates in a fun boss fight at the end, too.

A subtle thing about gameplay that may not seem like such a big deal in modern times is that enemies will react differently when shot in different parts of their body. That wasn’t the norm for the genre yet! In fact, you can score more points by shooting in the vicinity of the enemy’s weapon to disarm them without killing them, which is a pretty neat touch.

Virtua Cop 2, as you might expect a video game sequel to be, is a similar deal, but with more to offer, and with some extra polish. The most notable difference is that levels have branching paths for players to choose which way they want to go. This adds to replay value because players will want to try out all the areas they didn’t pick the first time, and perhaps eventually find what series of routes usually nets them the best score.

The biggest problem with these games is that there’s not a whole lot of content on offer. Both games only have three levels, though the second game’s levels have more content due to the branching paths. There is an options menu to customize your experience a bit, and the games are certainly meant to be replayed and mastered so you can see how high of a score you can land. 

Virtua Cop 1 was one of the games that came with my original Sega Saturn bundle that I bought in 2004. I got 2 much later and don’t have as much experience with it, but did play it to the end once. These aren’t my #1 go-to light gun games, but they’re still very solid and a good choice when I want some arcade action, especially with a friend. The games have been rereleased before, but not anytime recently since it’s harder to reproduce the experience of light gun technology on HD television sets. Thankfully I always intend to have an old-school TV with which I can break out my Saturn guns whenever I please.