Virtua Athlete – Arcade

Virtua Athlete, also known as Virtua Athletics is a sports game published by SEGA for the NAOMI arcade system. It is based on the Dreamcast game Virtua Athlete 2K, released a year earlier, though cuts some features to better suit the arcade market.  This game represents a rare example where the console version came first.

Virtua Athlete is a series of mini games where the player competes in one of several Olympic type events.  The gameplay consists of timed button presses and holds to complete each mini game.  The goal is to complete the entire circuit of games with the highest score you can attain. Elimination from any event will not get you on the leaderboard.

This game is a crazy amount of fun, once you get the hang of it.  Since each mini game has slightly different controls, the initial learning curve is steep.  Once it clicks, you want to keep playing to add a few more points to your overall score.

Game Tournament Rules

  • Pick any player you want. Each player has a specialty in certain events.
  • Start with any event you want.
  • You must place in all events to get on the leaderboard.
  • Your final score in at the end of the game is your score for that attempt.
  • Beat the current high score to win that game… for now. Anyone else can try to beat your score in the tournament.
  • Return at any time to try again.

Game Controls

  • Use the joystick to highlight players and events.
  • Button 1 selects the player/event.
  • The controls are different for each event. Don’t skip the cutscenes!  They tell you the controls for that event.

Game Video

Unfortunately I could only find the Dreamcast version of the game for a video, but they are almost identical from a gameplay standpoint.