Virtua Cop

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Virtua Cop

Developer(s)	Sega-AM2
Publisher(s)	Sega
Designer(s)	Yu Suzuki
Release date(s)	December 1994
Genre(s)	Rail shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Platform(s)	Arcade game, Sega Saturn, PC
Input	Light gun, gamepad, mouse & keyboard
Arcade cabinet	Upright
Arcade system(s)	Sega Model 1

Virtua Cop is a shooter arcade game created by Sega-AM2, and headed by Yu Suzuki. Its original incarnation was an arcade game in 1994 and it was later ported to the Sega Saturn in 1995, and the PC in 1997. In 2004, a port was developed for the handheld Nokia N-Gage, but this was cancelled by the quality control team before its release. Very few beta units were manufactured.

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, which were subsequently used in both House of the Dead and Time Crisis, instead of the two dimensional 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 PlayStation 2 as Virtua Cop: Elite Edition (Virtua Cop Rebirth in Japan) 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. Namco for Time Crisis games and Sega and WOW Entertainment for House of the Dead games (by gaming designing logo developments).

The game is also known as Virtua Squad for the PC release.

[edit] Game characters

Michael Hardy is a young man grew up with Hardy family as he became the first VCPD agent like his partner, James Cools. He has brown spiky hair. Michael played as player 1. His codename is Rage.

James Cools is a popular-looking man who was the same side as Michael's. James teams up with him this first game as he was trained to do his duty. James played as player 2. His codename is Smarty.