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As we strolled past the Megaking booth on the show floor, I spotted an Outrun 2 machine in the distance. Drawing closer, I noticed that it was a feature of the CRI (now a subdivision of SEGA-AM2) booth. A polite elderly Japanese fellow swiped Brandon’s and my ID cards; he handed us pamphlets and old-fashioned Japanese fans with the CRI logo on them. Only two people were before us. The initial plan was, I -- being such a fan of the original Outrun -- would play the game, and subsequently write up my impressions. Time was short.
As we waited, I read through a bilingual "Naze Nani CRI" comic, which illustrated for kids on both shores the benefits of MPEG SofDec and the ADX compression algorithm. A middle-aged Asian man stood behind me, arms crossed in front of his ID badge. "Do you like the original?" he asked. We nodded and grinned, politely.
The screen rocketed in first-person mode along flat-lit mountain roads. "That doesn’t look so great," Brandon said. I looked up. It was true; from what we could see, the game did not seem up to what I expected from the Xbox-based Chihiro board it ran on. If someone had told me that it was on NAOMI hardware, I would have been tempted to believe it. Then again, this was first-person mode; all we could see was a close-up of the scenery. Aside from the odd placement of roadside obstacles and decorations, and the remixed arrangement of Splash Wave that danced through the air, it could have been any random driving game before me.
"Let's wait until we see the car," I suggested. "That might be... nice."
The man behind us ventured another comment. "It's a shame this cabinet does not move. The old one -- it moved." He gestured, tentatively.
It was now my time. I stepped up. I chose the easy car; the... yellow one. I know nothing of cars. I hate to drive. It makes me nervous. Yet, since when was Outrun ever a car game? It's just a game.
I was done after about seventy seconds. Whoops. Looks like AM2 has put some driving back into Outrun, after all. Yet: it still feels like Outrun -- both in its system and in atmosphere. The player car is indeed pretty as hell; it ties together the whole composition. Why one would choose first-person mode is beyond me, as the car is the clear focal point of the screen and the whole Outrun world. The driver and passenger constantly express their enthusiasm and disappointment, waving and their arms and shaking their heads. When the driver makes a mistake, the girl beside him punches him in the shoulder. When the player's car hits a stone pillar at full speed, it sails comically into the air and bounces across the pavement. It seems, however, that since 1987 its occupants have discovered the joy of the seat belt; they stay in place as their Ferrari flips and tumbles, ready to take off again the moment it rights itself.
The world of Outrun is still one of tunnels (literal and effective) and tight corners. Trees and turrets give the familiar, surreal sprite-scaling effect of the original. The menu sound effects are the same. As my car pulled up to the starting gate, I was greeted with the "Get Ready!" command from Outrun's companion game, Space Harrier. The world remains bright and breezy. Everything looks and sounds as it should: not so much realistic, as convincing. The world of Outrun is that of youthful dreams; of a high-speed road trip with a pretty girl, through an idealized world. All its highways are strung together, for your whim alone. Where do you want to go? Just follow the road. The harder path is to your left.
When you get down to the mechanics, it becomes clear that, as a game, Outrun 2 is not unlike a realization of the dream proposed seventeen years ago. Perhaps the best illustration lies in the game's Heart Attack mode. Here, the female passenger makes requests of the driver ("Keep Passing Cars!" "Drift More!" "Don't Crash!"); fulfilling these requests fills a heart meter. Mistakes subtract from that same meter. After each task, the game grades the player's performance. This all occurs in addition to the ever-present timer; it is just an added challenge, to give the skilled player more to do on his trip.
Brandon's note: The higher grade you get, the better your ending becomes. Your score in this mode is not time, but how well you've performed over the full stretch.
What is fun here is that this mode is just an extension of a little-exploited element of the original Outrun formula. That girl has always sat next to the driver; why not give her more to do? And if she is going to have some input, why not focus that input along the key gameplay elements which happen to define Outrun?
If the original game is characterized by its power drifting, then Outrun 2 revolves almost wholly on sideways driving. While the drifting is more technical now (and, without practice, a bit difficult for me), it remains exaggerated, both in its relative ease of execution and its practical use in-game. If anything, the Heart Attack mode helps to point out the stretches of track which are designed to drift through. Similarly, when your girl tells you not to crash, it is in places where you are most likely to send your car careening around like a pinball -- in true, exaggerated Outrun style. When she tells you to pass (or, outrun) other cars, it is in the long stretches where you would do best to build up speed and rack up points. The girl is a guide and a critic both. It's like taking a spin with Teacher -- and if you impress her enough, you score.
Brandon's note: I was struck by how whipped the driver is. He just does any damn thing the girl tells him, then at the end she makes him go shopping, and he carries her packages. Either that, or he tries to kiss her and she (usually) resists. I found this rather humorous - the typical 'guy who loves driving games' is an otaku that would do anything a girl told him to do in a car, just to show off. I don't know if it was an intentional parallel, but it was pleasant.
The balance is so pure, Outrun now feels like a modern-style shooter -- or a performance-compulsive game like NiGHTS. Outrun has been analyzed, quantified, qualified, defined, refined, restructured, reinforced, and reillustrated: all of its charm is all of its structure, and all of its structure is all that it is. Outrun 2 is a game based upon the premise and the distinguishing factors of Outrun -- a game which, in its original incarnation, was little more than a product of luck and inspiration; it is the Super Metroid to Outrun's Metroid; all of the ideas are still there, as is much of the atmosphere -- only now the game is self-aware. It understands why it works as it does; what makes it special. It then capitalizes on those very highlights, to further define and pronounce its personality. "This is Outrun", it states with a steady voice and unwavering stare.
And. Well. It is. This game has brought the game to the game.
After each of us had had our go (Vince, with the Testarossa, got the furthest, ultimately beating the game several times over the next few days), we stepped aside and allowed the old fellow behind us his turn. He paused, then raised the outside corners of his eyebrows. "Do you want to see the end?" he asked. The three of us looked at each other, then back to the man. I shot a few more glances at the man's ID card. It was at the wrong angle. The man climbed into the cabinet. He chose the yellow car, and -- oddly -- automatic transmission. Nevertheless, he played well; without a hitch, until around the fourth leg. There, he mistimed a power slide and bounced into an obstruction, and all over the screen. A stupid mistake.
The man never recovered; his time ran out. When his time was up, he ran out himself. He bowed, and was gone.
I never did see his badge.
Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh
rides the bus
Extra Brandon notes: The level structure was rather fantastic, and similar to the original. At the end of each level, you choose to go left or right, and this will bring you to a new stage. If you go left, you'll find an easier level, go right, and there's a harder one. And there's another interesting element to Heart Attack mode; 'secial requests.' These are assignments you only get to undertake if you've reached a certain level of proficiency (you seem to have to get an A average, where AAA is the highest, descending to AA, A, B, C, D, E). These include drifting in a certain pattern, or knocking down a set of cones.
I was struck by how much character this game had. The women, though they don't speak, have a heaping load of personality. She is who you watch in the car, she's the one pointing, kissing you, slapping you, these sorts of things. And the driving - the driving felt very good. Everything was perfectly structured, and a joy to play through. There are four cars on the first page, all different models of Ferarri. There's also an additional set of four, which you can access by hitting the 'view change' button. We did not fully investigate this.
The problem is that the game is very much tied to the cabinet. It's the experience of driving that's exciting. Without that seat, without the steering wheel, without the shifter, I'm not sure that I'd be able to have quite as nice a time playing. So if you haven't checked recently, this would be a good time to hit up your local arcade. Outrun 2 begs to be played.
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