For a glorious few years in the mid-1980s, Sega’s Super Scaler tech hurled video games at your face with enough force to rearrange your eyeballs. Hang-On made rival motorcycling games look pathetic, until Sega’s own Enduro Racer stole its thunder. Space Harrier then gave us the dazzling space shooter we never knew we needed. But OutRun was the real star. Nothing beat parking your backside in that glorious sit-down cab. Shame you couldn’t drive it home from the arcade afterwards though.
Still, thoughtful of Sega to let you have a nice sit-down while you played.
Alas, not every version of OutRun was this fancy. Many cabinets were more traditional stand-up affairs – though even they still had pedals, a gearstick and a steering wheel with force feedback, which left you in no doubt when you’d made a serious error. But the sit-down version added hydraulics that threw you about as you blasted along – a far more immersive experience that felt like you’d been handed the keys to a shiny red sports car.
So this racing game was all about the realism, then?
Not really – because the handling bore no resemblance to driving an actual shiny red sports car. Traffic all headed the same way at ludicrous speeds, and road forks instantly whisked you between wildly different locations with little concern for geography or physics. But OutRun was never about reality – it was about the fantasy of tearing along an open road… which was for the best when you hit the scenery at 180mph and merely flipped the car, rather than becoming a cautionary tale about speeding.
But did OutRun crash and burn anyway? It’s not like we’re drowning in sequels.
In fact it became the top-earning arcade cab of its day, netting $100m by the end of 1987. But it took years for Sega to find top gear again, repeatedly failing with spinoffs that failed to capture the magic of the original. That’s perhaps why the company took a sharp left turn with OutRun 2, which in 2003 updated the concept for modern hardware, adding ludicrous drifting to create a grin-inducing new arcade racer. Alas, Sega then ran out of road again, as there’s never been an OutRun 3.
Main photo from Arcade Decades by Numskull
The long road to OutRun 2
OutRun was – is – a stone-cold classic. What followed… wasn’t. Sega took the scenic route to a follow-up worthy of the OutRun name. Here’s that bumpy journey in full:
Turbo OutRun (1989) added the threat of your girl ditching you for a bloke in a Porsche if your driving was rubbish. But it ditched road forks too. Boo! At least the C64 home conversion had a fab Magical Sound Shower remix by Jereon Tel.
OutRun 3-D (1989) decided normal OutRun wasn’t 3D enough and so had you don stereoscopic specs. It was lauded as the best stereoscopic Master System game around. Not that it had much competition.
Battle Out Run (1989) was another Master System effort. This time, OutRun briefly decided it wanted to be Taito’s Chase HQ – another series that needs a modern sequel. It… wasn’t as good as Chase HQ, let’s say.
Out Run Europa (1991) presumably exists because someone found OutRun’s home gaming rights in a cupboard, dusted them off, and used them as an excuse to make a vaguely related game about blazing through Europe while on the run from the police. It was… fine.
OutRun 2019 (1993) is a strange one. Occasional cityscape stages aside, this Mega Drive/Genesis effort is more ‘duff OutRun with futuristic cars’ than F-Zero. And then actual 2019 arrived, distinctly lacking in 600mph jet cars. Tsk.
OutRunners (1993) found the series head back to the arcades, binning the (slightly) grittier vibes of Turbo and the unwanted complexity of various home gaming titles. Instead, we got another cheerful, breezy and fast journey through vibrant locations. Maybe Sega had finally learned?
OutRun 2 (2003) made fans wait an entire decade, but it was worth it. The name appeared to ret-con every other OutRun game out of existence. No-one cared, because OutRun 2 was an amazing arcade cab, with pitch-perfect console conversions, combining the best bits of the original with ludicrous, grin-inducing drifting mechanics.
OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast (2006) answered the question of how to make OutRun 2 even better. Add a pile of new content, apparently. Yes, this was a home-gaming double dip, but you got a slew of additional cars and tracks, making it the definitive OutRun experience – one that PC folks are still remastering to this day.
OutRun Online Arcade (2009) wasn’t so much a triumphant return as OutRun’s final appearance before being shoved back in the garage seemingly forever. The HD graphics and online multiplayer were lovely, but the lack of stages and brief online availability meant this was hardly the engine-revving finale the series deserved.
