Virtua Cop[a] is a 1994 light gun shooter video game developed and published by Sega for arcades.
Played in a first-person perspective, players must use a light gun (or a joypad in the Sega Saturn version) to shoot criminals and advance through the game.
[9] A detective in the player's department uncovers an illegal gunrunning operation and traces it back to a powerful crime syndicate named E.V.I.L.
The policemen Michael "Rage" Hardy and James "Smarty" Cools must face that organization led by Joe Fang and his followers Kong, the King, and the Boss.
[9] The Saturn version features a full-motion video sequence of Michael and James driving on the dockyard before confronting Kong; designer Kazufumi Ohashi originally animated Kong flipping the bird, which Isono rejected, moving Ohashi to work on the training mode instead.
They subsequently began work on the third level, since it was the most difficult to convert due to the large polygon areas of the office building walls and ceiling.
Tim Davis of Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it a positive review, praising the polygon graphics, the zooming camera "that takes you all over" the place, the "automatic target sighting which pinpoints" enemies, and the weapon power-ups.
[3] Computer and Video Games also gave it a positive review, calling it "a classy title" and praising the 3D graphics, "excellent" animation, weapon power-ups, and the gameplay in both single-player and multiplayer modes.
[27] There was initially some skepticism over its introduction of 3D polygons in a genre that previously used realistic digitized sprites,[25][30] most notably Konami's Lethal Enforcers.
[24] Next Generation later revised their views, praising its use of 3D technology to introduce the ability to target specific body parts with realistic consequences, which "totally eliminates the hit or miss polarity of other light-gun games and adds a whole new level of detail to the genre".
Next Generation gave it a positive review, applauding the impeccable accuracy of the port, but opted not to give it the full five stars they awarded to the Saturn's other two arcade ports of that month (Virtua Fighter 2 and Sega Rally Championship), as they found that the game, while sufficiently long for an arcade game, was too short for a home console release.
Similarly to EGM's reviewers, he remarked that the game is a near-perfect arcade port but too short and completely lacking in replay value, though he nonetheless gave it an overall recommendation.
[28] Game Players gave the Saturn version of Virtua Cop the award for "Best Shooter" of 1995, calling it "beyond entertaining — it's therapeutic.
[22] Next Generation voiced similar criticisms: "It's noticeably slower on the majority of PCs than in the arcade or on Saturn, running at speed only on the most high-end Pentiums.
According to creator Martin Hollis: "We ended up with innovative gameplay, in part because we had Virtua Cop features in a FPS: A gun that only holds 7 bullets and a reload button, lots of position-dependent hit animations, innocents you shouldn’t kill, and an aiming mode.