If you were alive and sentient in the early ’90s, you might have had you first VR experience with a Virtuality SU 2000, an early pod-like VR system for arcades. If you’re looking to relive those low-poly glory days, the current IP holder of all SU 2000 and SU 3000 games, VirtuosityTech, is actually looking to port them to modern headsets.

As first reported by Reddit user ‘eigenlaut’, and further confirmed by Road to VR, VirtuosityTech CEO Michael Cheatham says that the company intends on bringing its library of early VR games to today’s VR platforms.

There’s no further information to go on yet, and no planned release date as such, however Cheatham says more information will follow as plans solidify.

Games currently on the table for porting include Dactyl Nightmare 2, Buggy Ball, Ghost Train, Missile Command, Virtuality Boxing, Zone Hunter, Pac-Man VR, X-Treme Strike, and Shoot for Loot. 

Granted, there are a few unofficial versions out there already (read: not actual ports), including Pac-Man VR and Dactyl Nightmare, the latter of which is marketed under the name Polygon Nightmare for Rift.

Having all of those titles in a single pack however would make for a great at-home museum piece of sorts, giving you access to an era of gaming that would have otherwise been lost to time.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Michael Lupton

    Wonder how long til we get a modern official VR port of Beachhead…

  • David Hothersall

    Straight ports, wow those will look awful. They were clunky enough on the original machines, but they never made anyone ill like current VR does, guess its the low resolution, update and polygon levels.

    The later 2000SU games weren’t as good as the originals Dactyl and Exorex (Heavy Metal/) in my opinion but Virtuality Boxing and Zone Hunter were excellent.Boxing particularly went down well in the Head to Head mode as your were fighting a virtual (real) person in the other machine.

    Just to clarify I owned 2 1000SD machines (still have one, gave the HMD off the other to Palmer Luckey) and 2 2000SU units (still have one of those as well) We used to use them at exhibitions & corporate events so if you ever did VR at a party or exhibition in the UK in the ’90s it may well have been me :)

    • Ad

      I don’t even think I was alive when this came out.

    • brandon9271

      People enjoy “ugly” 8 bit games to this day. Looking “awful” is part of the charm of retro gaming. 90s VR games wont have mass appeal in 2020 but they aren’t supposed to in my opinion. :)

      • David Hothersall

        I get that but I think some of those will need a bit of tidying up especially as they’re a bit more ‘in your face’ than an ’80s sidescroller :)

        • brandon9271

          Oh I agree 100% If they ported these at 276×372 res and 25 FPS I think no amount of nostalgia will excuse that! :) lol

  • I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this!!!
    Hurry up and come to Quest, dammit!!
    ♥️♥️♥️

  • I said they should do this years ago, back in 2016 when the Rift and Vive were coming out. Although, I have a sneaking suspicion this will end up either never coming out because they want way too much money to port these things, or that it will come out in some absurd structer and ask way too much money for a package that should be free as part of a history lesson of “look how far we have come”.

    Mark my words, if this isn’t free and packaged all together it will fail 100% and never be heard from again. Using VR can be so great for preserving history and making virtual museums interesting. But no one wants to put forth the effort to make something good. Low effort, maximum profit; that’s the death knell of VR.

    • Charles

      Or they could charge like $2 each. That would be fair.

    • Ad

      Eh, if it has all of them it would be fine as a 20 dollar purchase. Especially is it’s like Game and Watch Galley where they do cleaned up basic remasters alongside the originals.

    • Jistuce

      Pac-Man and Missile Command definitely won’t be in a free bundle. I’ll be impressed if they can secure the Pac license for a paid release, as Namco is much more controlling of the brand than they used to be.

      • David Hothersall

        It’ll depend how the deal was structured. Virtuality were working with Namco at the time on a VR system for them (still-born obviously) and the licence was part of the deal iirc. If it was in lieu of fees then it may well be the guys who own the IP still have the rights to use those titles.

        • Jistuce

          After the whole Midway thing*, I think Namco was always careful in structuring their licenses to make sure they retained control, particularly over as big a character as Pac-Man.

          *Basically, after licensing Pac-Man, Midway made Ms. Pac-Man without asking. Namco was pretty ticked when they found out, but Midway transferred the Ms. Pac-Man rights to Namco to appease them and they were cool again.

          But then Namco’s own sequel, Super Pac-Man, flopped and they were upset that Midway had made a successful sequel where they hadn’t.

          …
          And then Midway made Pac-Man Plus, Jr. Pac-Man, and Baby Pac-Man without asking. And then Namco found out and cancelled Midway’s license.

          The whole thing is actually kind of hilarious. “Nuts, we got caught making an unauthorized sequel and had to give the game away to keep the license. Welp, let’s go do see how many more times we can do it.”

          • David Hothersall

            Interesting, I wasn’t aware of that.

  • Cdaked

    I have played Exorex in 1990, in Barcelona.

  • Tailgun

    My friends and I spent all our cash on this when it came around on a national tour to our local arcade. I couldn’t get enough!

    • I dread to think how much we’d spend every Wednesday at the Trocadero, but it was like nothing else, it made Sega’s motion arcade machines (afterburner 360, etc) suddenly feel very old fashioned?

    • David Hothersall

      Was that the Faberge, ‘Hero’ hang gliding promo tour? We bought that machine as well after they’d finished with it.

  • Ad

    This is wonderful. I would love to play these with online multiplayer in a collection, and maybe a remaster pack at some point. The idea of a “retro VR collection” is hilarious.

  • Yeah, put them all in one compilation. And make sure there’s options to play in both original mode and modern mode that let’s you run them in full screen and 90fps and the like too.

  • Ad

    Does anyone know anything about the unofficial port of Pac Man VR they allude to?

  • dk

    time to use my Blank Account

  • David Hothersall

    Wow that must have cost a fortune. I remember been taken to The Trocadero by Chris Yewdall from W industries (As the company was still called at that time) when we were buying our first machine so we could see an installation in action and they paid for us to have a few goes on Exorex. I seem to remember £5 a game?

  • TheThornZ

    looks like this may not materialize, been waiting and have heard nothing. Just says coming soon on the site.