Space Pirate Arena will soon be released in Oculus Quest

By IAN HAMILTON

Via UPLOAD VR

Dirk Van Welden of I-Illusions shared a few details about the release of the upcoming arena-scale sequel to the defining wave shooter of consumer VR’s first generation. Space Pirate Arena, of course, is the follow-on to 2016’s Space Pirate Trainer and it takes the game fully multiplayer with intense competitive matches that require some of the largest VR play areas we’ve ever seen.

The sequel was first revealed in 2019 and has been teased a few times since then, but it’s been held back by the size of the play spaces allowed by the Oculus Quest system. Earlier this summer Facebook confirmed to UploadVR it expanded the maximum play area on Quest up to a staggering 15 meters in either direction. Space Pirate Arena requires a safe space of at least 10 meters in either direction, and Van Welden noted the game now includes a single-player mode if you don’t have a friend with another Quest.

Put another way, all systems are pretty much go for the launch of arena-scale Oculus Quest gameplay.

“In a lot of ways, this feels similar to releasing Space Pirate Trainer back in 2016. Back then we didn’t know if people would go out and buy a VR headset. There are a lot of Quests out there now, but we’re asking those people to find a safe 10x10m spot to play Arena,” Van Welden wrote on Twitter. “Similar to SPT, once you have played Arena the way it should be, you’ll be introduced to a whole new kind of experience, and it’ll just sell itself. To make sure Arena is played the right way, it won’t boot unless you found a 10 x 10m space. That’s actually the only threshold, since we’ve added a single player mode to give you a taste of the gameplay. (If you don’t have friends with a Quest) In the process of creating Arena, we had to come up with a whole bunch of original solutions for problems that arise with 1-to-1 movement based gameplay. Let’s hope these set the bar for future similar experiences!”

Here’s the teaser for the experience the developers released back in 2019: