ARCADE WATCH
Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene
The arcade has a rich heritage of asking us to stick our faces against apertures in order to get an enhanced view of the action, dating back to Midway’s Sea Wolf in 1976, casting you as a submarine commander. The concept lives on today in VR systems, and Sega’s latest lightgun shooter gives it a spin by attaching a headset to its gun controller, requiring you to hold it up to your face as you take down assailants.
VR Agent feels like a spiritual successor to the Virtua Cop series, but it also brings to mind Konami’s Police 911 thanks to its vertically oriented screen. It doesn’t have the motion-sensing technology of Konami’s game – asking players to move their bodies too much while covering their eyes would probably be asking for trouble – but it does at least pack an “air cannon” to “jolt players for a tactile experience” across five missions, with co-op support.