Nuclear Rush is an unreleased shooter that was in development in 1993 for the Sega VR, the canned “virtual reality” accessory planned for the Mega Drive / Genesis. Four games were apparently developed for the system, each using 16 Mb cartridges that were to be bundled with the headset. One of these was Nuclear Rush, in which the players were able to fly with an hovercraft to fight in a futuristic war.
Thanks to Sega Forever we can read the original Sega VR press release that was published in Sega Visions magazine, August/September 1993:
From the moment you strap on the headset, you know that your gaming life will never be the same again. The world you see through the twin eye-pieces of the virtual reality (VR) headset responds as if it were another world, one you can explore by moving around without leaving your chair. […]
You are playing Nuclear Rush, the game that will be bundled with Sega VR, Sega’s new virtual reality headset. […]
Welcome to the year 2032. Get ready for a cataclysmic trek into a post-nuclear gold rush, where low-level nuclear waste is bartered as an energy source. You are posing as a nuclear pirate, piloting a hovercraft through radioactive wastelands guarded by heavily armed robots and drones.
As Iron Hammer, it’s possible that Nuclear Rush was playable even without the VR accessory. From an interview with Kevin McGrath at Sega 1 6, it seems that Nuclear Rush was completed before the Sega VR was cancelled:
My first project, called Nuclear Rush was to design and code one of the games that was going to be released with the SEGA VR Headset. It was a simple 3D shoot-em-up kind of game, but with the VR Headset it became an intriguing experience. We had concerns about creating nausea for the player, which could happen if the graphics are just slightly out of sync with the actual movement of the players head. Anyway, I spent a year on this project, and although SEGA paid us in full and we completed everything, the hardware never made it past prototype stage.
Thanks to Celine for the scan! (found in GamePower #21). You can also see Nuclear Rush in motion from the video below (thanks to Grooveraider YT channel!).
Images:
Videos:
What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!
(5 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)
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Good video.
Mono look at the scan “Launch games – Sega VR – EGM49” there is another image ( an the 3 other games ) :-)
I’ll check that, thanks Celine :) I’ll probably add the new scans for the games that are already in the U64 archive after i added all the new games that you found
Wow. It was really nice to see this article.
I own prototype cartridges of Iron Hammer and Nuclear Rush that I got from an ex-Sega employee in the late 90’s
(useless trivia: He ended up taking over the desk of the guy who was responsible for the 32-X, and also the Sega Venus [later Nomad]).
From what he recalls the one and only VR Helmet prototype went back to Japan and that was the last he saw of it.
I take it from this article that Nuclear Rush is undumped? If that’s the case someone from Unseen64 can contact me at the email I provided. I have a few other (possibly undumped) Genesis and Sega CD protos.
Hi Rob, thanks for the info! I’m going to send you an email soon
Unused art here:
http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/rvg-interviews-marc-ericksen/
Nice to see more from this game! Thanks a lot Ross :)
Jer Horwitz reporting from CES July 1993:
The VR goggles can be used with other
hardware, programmed with an Amiga, IBM or Mac (like the Sega games of
today; no special kits) and it plugs into joystick port 2 and the AV port
in the back of the Genesis.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/11/lost-sega-vr-game-unearthed-made-playable-on-modern-vr-headsets/
Nuclear Rush is now playable on modern VR hardware. See here:
https://gamehistory.org/segavr/