SEGA and M2 have worked together to recreate many classic titles on 3DS. We’ve seen the likes of 3D Sonic the Hedgehog, 3D Gunstar Heroes, and 3D Streets of Rage – among many others. But there’s one title the two companies wish they could have recreated for the handheld: the arcade version of Virtua Racing.

Take a look at this excerpt from an interview with SEGA producer Yosuke Okunari and M2 president Naoki Horii:

Is there a title you wish you could have converted?

YO: That would have to be the arcade version of Virtual Racing for me. It hasn’t ever been faithfully ported. There’re four ports to date: Mega Drive, 32X, SEGA Saturn, and Playstation, but none of them stayed true to the original.

The Mega Drive and 32X versions were amazing at the time, but I wish more attention went to Virtual Racing rather than Virtual Fighter. I wasn’t too impressed with Winning Run (racing game developed by Namco at the time), which was released earlier, butVirtual Racing really caught my attention. The 30 FPS framerate gave it a smoother effect compared to other games like Hard Driving and Winning Run.

There was also a Grand Prix mode, where people could play 15 rounds for 200 yen when popularity started to die. I remember having so much fun playing with three other people and figuring out when to replace the worn out tires at the pits. I do feel that I want to re-experience that some day. Many have told me that there’s no reason to bring it back when there’s so many amazing racing games out there, but I’ve got a lot of great memories associated with that game, so I’d love to bring it back if I had the chance.

NH: I got to say, I agree. I’d say Virtual Racing since I like to work on those primitive era games.

– Despite this maybe being the end of the SEGA 3D Remaster Project, I really hope you can make those happen.

YO: Seriously! But I wonder how many of these “final episode” interviews we’ve had regarding this project. Back during Batch 1’s 3D Streets of Rage episode, I was the one who suggested to put “Farewell!” as the title! I thought that was going to be be the end of the interviews.