Video Game History Foundation shows us what Sega VR could have been

» [Mega Drive] Nuclear Rush is an uncomplicated shoot-’em-up distinguished primarily by its early VR support.

Back in 1993, Sega Of America was planning an ambitious virtual reality headset for the Genesis.

It would track your head movements like a modern VR unit, it would support a variety of games, and it would cost just $200. Avid Sega fans will know that no such unit was ever released, but this wasn’t just talk – Sega had actually shown off this device at CES in the summer of 1993, and at least four games were in development. This year the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) was able to use source code for the game Nuclear Rush, provided by the programmer Kenneth Hurley, to not only build a playable version of the game but adapt an emulator to provide VR support. To find out more about this revival of a lost peripheral, we spoke to VGHF co-directors Frank Cifaldi and Kelsey Lewin.

“A friend of ours, Dylan Mansfield from Gaming Alexandria, had been in contact with the programmer of the game and as far as I know was asking about his unfinished work,” says Frank. “He managed to find, among other things, the original source code for this game Nuclear Rush on a CD that he had burned way back – it was his own personal backup of his work – and he put it up on GitHub.” This was the first step towards reviving the game, but Frank points out that it wasn’t in a playable state. “It was literally his raw code and the raw art assets that the artists on his team had generated.”