As I entered the scruffy building, there was a wall of cigarette smoke that hit me in the lungs oh so hard, and beyond the smoke was hundreds of flashing lights and bright screens. The noise was nearly unbearable, with dings, chimes, bells and a background hum constantly battering your eardrums. I could barely make out the song that was being played on the radio - something by The Petshop Boys, I think. I located what I was after, climbed into the cigarette-burned plastic seat, and inserted my sweaty credit, which I had saved for ages in my pocket. The arcade game sprung to life with a bright graphic on screen and a coin-inserted noise, which will stay in memories forever, and eventually find its way onto people’s email notifications and mobile phones. Select your music, and begin. The Ferrari Testarossa wheels spin furiously into the start position, and you’re off! Floor it, slap the gearbox into high, and slide round those corners avoiding other cars and big signposts at the edge of the wide, sun bleached tarmac. Remember? It was OutRun, of course. You know the deal, everyone loved it. A true arcade classic that started it all. Conversions of varying quality to all the home consoles and computer formats followed, but none could come anywhere near to recapturing the magic...
OutRun-ometer
Nearly twenty years later, SEGA announce a sequel to OutRun. Thousands and thousands of adults’ hearts race as they hear the announcement. “OutRun2 is coming out in the arcade! That was my favourite game when I was a kid!” they say to their mates down to pub or on MSN. “I hope they don’t try and do something different with it,” screamed the fans worrying SEGA might not get it right. We wouldn’t want a Crazy Taxi 2 or 3 on our hands, would we?
The arcade version was released in Japan in 2003, and the sigh of relief can be heard across the globe. People start to play it, and love it instantly as they did in 1986 as a child. Grown men (and women) are almost crying as they are reliving part of their childhood that was so special. Outrun meant a lot to them then, and the arcade sequel that took nearly twenty years to arrive is making people feel the same way again. Questions were asked about a home port. “It’s not going to happen,” we were told in numerous press releases. We kept asking and asking. Eventually earlier this year, SEGA finally confirmed what everyone wanted to hear – OutRun2 is coming home (to Xbox) in 2004.
OK, so fast-forward a few months - how does it compare to the Arcade version? As the Arcade version is running on Xbox-based hardware, the port is relatively straightforward, and although I don’t want to use the word “perfect” (because I am sure some anal individuals would disagree), the Xbox version is well… Pretty damn near perfect. It looks, plays, sounds and most importantly, feels like the arcade version. Daytona USA fans need not worry about the twitchy steering that was evident in the Dreamcast port, Daytona USA 2001. The steering is absolutely spot-on with the Xbox Controller S. The analog stick feels superb, and the car moves around the track so smoothly as you gently move the stick around. It couldn’t have been done any better than this – it really is fantastic. Car models, traffic, trackside objects, effects, draw distance and everything graphically is exactly like it was in the arcade version, and it screams along at a super smooth sixty frames per second. You would have to put both versions side by side to spot differences, as it really is an amazing port. SEGA were involved with UK-based Sumo Digital, and they were the team that actually ported the game to Xbox.
The real beauty of the game is the drifting mechanic. Wide corners which sometimes seem to last forever make up much of the courses (the main game is split into fifteen different routes, just like the original), and the way to get around most of them is to drift, SEGA style - approach a corner, tap the brakes and slide around. You have so much control over the slide, and you can manoeuvre your car around other traffic and flick it in the other direction during a drift, and its all done through varying the throttle, changing up and the down gears quickly (which brings the car in tighter) and subtle steering movement with the analog stick. It looks amazing, and anyone who doesn’t crack a smile when playing this game has something wrong with them. It also gives you a great feeling when playing, and not many games do that.
Although most fans of the game would be extremely happy with a straight port of the Arcade game with no extras, Sumo Digital and SEGA have put together a huge host of extras to keep players busy. ‘101 Mission Mode’ is a mode, which non-surprisingly has 101 challenges to complete. Challenges range from having to drive through cone gates on the track (which adds a second to your timer every time), drifting for as long as possible to build up your heart gauge (how impressed your girlfriend passenger is with your driving), and more bizarre things like doing maths and remembering fruit sequences whilst driving along! You get ranked in typical SEGA fashion, with E to B being ‘bad’ to ‘not quite good enough, have another go’, and A, AA, and AAA being the ‘pass’ rankings you’ll be wanting to get. These all serve as a way of unlocking extra cars, music, tracks and secrets in the game. You also unlock cards, which normally show Ferrari car history on them or merchandise available from the official shop. Other extras include Xbox Live ghost time trials, Xbox Live multiplayer racing for up to eight players, and system link.
These features do add a lot to the game (in the same way as the mini games did to Virtua Tennis), but the real beauty in the game is the standard arcade mode. Nailing the hardest route won’t take long at all, but it’s all about getting the fastest time possible. This is where OutRun 2’s depth lies, and with the added extra that is Xbox Live ghost run time trials, you can spend forever getting a better and better time on a section or entire route and upload it to the scoreboards, so anyone can download your run and try and beat you.
The game is so faithful to the original Outrun; you really have to appreciate that fact. If you think about the original game, you remember the cool Ferrari, the blonde girlfriend in the passenger seat, the sun drenched ocean-side, sand-spilled start section with palm trees and huge signposts filling the gaps. The music, which SEGA are so famous for, was always such an important choice in Outrun. Do I go for the classic Musical Sound Shower, or the arguably better Splash Wave? OutRun’s power slides were mental and the different areas you went through really stood out against other games out there. Totally over the top, but really fitting with the rest of the game’s style and feel. Outrun2 is exactly like this, in every way. It’s exactly how you remember the original, and that is quite an astonishing feat in classic sequel making if you ask me. Outrun2 is how they would have made OutRun if they had the technology back then, and that means a lot as it shows the game has lost none of its soul in the eighteen years that have passed since it was released. When I heard about OutRun2, this is exactly how I wanted it to be.
One slight problem I think with this is that younger players might not “get” OutRun2, and they might see the game as a shallow port of a simple racing game, and go for something with a bit more noise, such as the recently released (and of course, superb) Burnout 3: Takedown. The two games are very different though. OutRun2 isn’t trying to be different and stand out from the crowd – it’s just a classic SEGA arcade racer with lots of style and history. You can’t even add your own custom soundtracks to the game, and all the better for it. SEGA want you to listen to their music, because it fits the style of the game, and it would be wrong any other way. Every time you play you have to setup your car colour, your transmission choice, and of course what song you want to listen to. And when you finish you enter your name and you get the famous SEGA “Game Over!” spoken by the female voice of the game. The levels grow in front of you as you pass from one stage to the other, and the weather/time of day changes completely in a matter of seconds - It’s all part of the style of the game, and its really great that SEGA didn’t change this in the sequel – they wanted it to feel like OutRun did back in 1986. I think they succeeded.
As far as negatives go, there are a few things that should be pointed out. During some of the missions, there’s a lot of traffic and extra graphical effects on screen, and sometimes you can get quite bad slowdown. It’s never to the point of unplayability, but it does occur and it’s a shame. The main Arcade Mode, however, is solid. The network code for the most part is great, although you do get some car position weirdness sometimes as the game tries to position eight power-sliding cars. There is also no traffic when playing online, which presumably caused problems when they were syncing everything over eight Xboxes. Going back to Burnout 3 online, it does at times make Outrun2 look rather basic as that still has full traffic, and it works perfectly (when EA’s lobby system/servers work, of course). One other thing is that some of the advanced missions are incredibly tough, and you can sometimes feel a bit cheated by it. You can hit a single car in a particular mission type and lose an entire rank instantly, which is a bit harsh. Also the extra long rival races that you enter can be pure evil, as you are passed by AI cars on the last corner of a thirty minute run!
In the end, OutRun2 is an absolutely beautiful arcade racing game. I really believe this is one of the finest racing games SEGA have ever made - It just plays so well, and feels so good, and if you’re into the game, it really will last a long time, as you battle to get a totally perfect run, and upload the perfect ghost run to Xbox Live, or just to play it because its so enjoyable and addictive. It’s also totally different to everything else out there. Other than Burnout 3, virtually all other racers are very serious, or fence sitters between the two genres, so it’s just really good to see a classic arcade racing game brought to a home system.
 
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