Outrun Arcade Review

Outrun Arcade Machine Review

Wow, where to begin with one of the biggest icons of my childhood.

I have fond memories of being on holiday and getting myself into trouble because I had spend too much money on Outrun!

As a kid I only got to visit arcades when I was on holiday or day tripping at a seaside resort so I can't really remember my very first encounter with Outrun although I had probably seen screenshots in a computer magazine before getting the chance to play the outrun arcade machine.

Sega really hit gold with the design brief for Outrun.

You get to race a gleaming red open-top Ferrari Testarossa with your blonde girlfriend sat in the passenger seat covering various stages from the starting point at the sea-front, to tunnel ruins, tulip fields and desert.

Right at the start of the game, in bright sunshine and sega-blue sky, your Ferrari skids from the side to the starting grid in front of a captive audience. The flag is waved, and the fast paced racing begins and never falters until you either run out of time or finish the five stage run.

I feel I have to talk first about the fantastic graphics, which were ground-breaking at the time.

What you have to remember was Outrun came out in 1986!

I remember still being wowed by the game five years or more later and thinking wow this game is really standing the test of time.

Technically, Outrun wasn't using a brand new ground breaking engine. We had seen similar visuals in Space Harrier, but where that game was pure fantasy, Outrun took the impressive sprite scaling to a whole new level in the context of road racing.

The other cars for example, although flat sprites they were designed in such a way and scaled so smoothly as you got closer that they really did look 3D at the time.

Other design features that boosted Outruns already flashy visuals were the way roads scaled up and down simulating the rise and fall of hills.  The roadside scenery was also taken to a new level for the time introducing much larger road side objects and in fact one of the stages sees you racing underneath ruined tunnel pillars, which still maintains its hypnotic effect even today!

The general sense of speed was also very accomplished.

The stage selection mechanism was also innovative, instead of choosing your stage at the start you could branch left or right at the end of each stage opening up a pyramid of a total of 15 stages with 5 possible endings.

Gameplay was pretty much spot on, all you could ever ask of an arcade racer. Steering sharply made the car skid continuously towards the edge of the bend possible inventing the arcade-style powerslide mechanic.

Outrun was much more forgivable than Super Hang On which I reviewed earlier, you had to be really rubbish to not be able to get to the second stage and this forgiveness extended to the ability to recover some crashes by changing down, spinning your Ferrari and then carrying on!

The cherry on the already very tasty cake was of course the amazing soundtrack.

Yet another innovation allowed you to select your music on the radio at the start and each of the three tracks were lively up-beat happy melodies that had a carribbean vibe.

But I never could decide which was better Magical Sound Shower or Splash Wave!  

Sega would go on to create more awesome games like Super Hang On and Afterburner. Check out my other reviews.

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