Out Run is one of the finest arcade games of the 1980s. The blue skies, toe-tapping synth soundtrack, and silky-smooth super scaler visuals helped cement Sega’s brand identity, delivering a laid-back eighties cool as you and your girlfriend zip through Europe on a race against the clock.
But where the first game captured a quintessentially 80s dream, OutRunners is a creature of the early 90s. Rather than a single Ferrari Testarossa you get a selection of neon-colored cars that’d look at home on a Hot Wheels course, populated by a cast of characters that play homage to stuff like Smooth Criminal-era Michael Jackson or Thelma and Louise.
The minimalist original will always be my favorite, but at least OutRunners forges ahead with its own identity. And, more importantly, it looks incredible doing it.
Along with Jurassic Park this is one of Sega’s final super-scaler games before they switched gears to the ‘Model’ series and it’s a phenomenal-looking title. Screenshots simply don’t do OutRunners justice, so watch this video and luxuriate in the number of sprites it hurls at the screen, the cool zoom effects, and the sheer maximalism of it all:
Whenever I spot this in an arcade I always settle in for a go, as emulating it in MAME just doesn’t convey the volume of an arcade or the fun fiddly bits like the radio included in the cabinet. So, on seeing it in Seville’s Arcade Planet, I couldn’t resist.
It’s a stunning title that shows ’90s Sega in all its pomp, so it’s genuinely bizarre why OutRunners has never seen a proper home release. Yes, there was a Mega Drive game called OutRunners, but frankly it doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the arcade game.
The closest we’ve gotten is it being included on the Arcade 1UP Out Run repro cabinet, though at $1200 that’s hardly a release for the masses (in my wildest dreams I consider buying one, despite having nowhere to put it).
So why has OutRunners never been ported? You might suspect it’s to do with licensing the cars, though unlike Out Run they’re all fictional cars based on real ones, with the Ferrari equivalent now the more generic ‘Speed Buster’
Alternatively, you might suspect Sega are wary of porting super scaler games as they look too old-fashioned, but titles like Space Harrier, Out Run, and even Power Drift have gotten the remaster treatment over the years in various SEGA AGES compilations.
The most prosaic explanation is that they’ve lost the source code, though I can’t believe the wizards at M2 can’t work with the ROM files and arcade hardware to pull something together. The simplest explanation is probably generalized Sega internal chaos getting in the way, with their arcade back catalog riddled with great games that remain trapped on aging hardware in the back of grimy arcades.
That said, at least it makes spotting OutRunners in the wild exciting. If you see it, play it.
Pixel Hunted 