Out Run asked the player to do something unusual for a 1986 arcade game: enjoy the drive. There are no rival racers to beat, only a clock. You sit at the wheel of a red Ferrari Testarossa convertible with your girlfriend beside you, pick a tune on the car radio, and head down a coast road towards one of five finishing lines. At every checkpoint the road forks, and the route you take decides the scenery, the difficulty and the ending you see. Yu Suzuki directed it for Sega, and in Britain it became the arcade licence of 1987: US Gold’s home versions sold in huge numbers and were argued over for years.
Fast facts
- Developer and arcade publisher: Sega, from Yu Suzuki’s arcade team (later known as AM2). Suzuki directed; Yoji Ishii, credited as designer, handled production and project management.
- Arcade release: 1986.
- Cabinets: upright and sit-down versions, all with a steering wheel, a two-position gear stick and pedals. The deluxe sit-down model moved with the car.
- Music: “Magical Sound Shower”, “Passing Breeze” and “Splash Wave”, by Hiroshi Kawaguchi, chosen on a car radio before the start.
- Structure: five stages per run out of fifteen in total, with a fork at the end of each stage and five goals.
- Home versions: Master System (Sega, 1987); Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Amiga and PC (US Gold in Britain, 1987–1989); Mega Drive (Sega, 1991).
The drive
A run starts on Coconut Beach, the one stage every route shares. The Games Machine explained the rules in February 1988: 80 seconds to reach the first checkpoint, then 65 for the next, less time at each stage, with whatever you have left carried forward. At each fork you choose left or right, and after five stages you reach one of five goals, which the magazine named as the Vineyard, Death Valley, Desolation Hill, the Autobahn and Lakeside. The Ferrari has two gears, low and high. Hit another car and you lose speed; hit a roadside rock or tree and the car tumbles over, leaving the driver and his passenger sitting dazed by the road while the seconds run out.
Yoji Ishii remembered that Sega first thought of basing a driving game on the film The Cannonball Run and sending the team across America. Sega’s president, Hayao Nakayama, said America was too dangerous and suggested Europe instead, so Suzuki and Ishii flew to Frankfurt, hired a car and drove around Europe, coming back via Rome. Ferrari never licensed the game; Sega Retro reports that the company complained but took no legal action.
The arcade machine
Out Run used what Sega called its “Super Scaler” hardware, the same approach as Suzuki’s Hang-On and Space Harrier. There are no polygons. Every tree, sign and car is a flat picture, drawn larger as it comes closer, while dedicated road hardware draws a road that curves, climbs and dips towards the horizon (see sprite scaling and pseudo-3D roads). Sega Retro describes the board as having two Motorola 68000 processors, a separate video board for the scaled graphics and the road, and a Z80 running the Yamaha FM and PCM sound chips.
The deluxe cabinet was what British players remembered. Sinclair User described it as the version that “jerked around in a hydraulic fashion as you sat in it”, lurching and bucking “at every corner and dip in the road”. Mean Machines reported in 1991 that Sega had made about 10,000 Out Run machines and that, according to Sega, every one of them sold.
US Gold’s conversions
Geoff Brown of US Gold flew to Japan and came back with rights to Sega’s arcade games, Out Run among them. The conversions were made in a hurry for Christmas 1987. The Games Machine noted that the games were in the shops before review copies had gone out, and US Gold claimed more than 200,000 copies sold in the first two weeks. In the box was a cassette of the arcade soundtrack, recorded from the coin-op, to play on a Walkman while you drove. Computer & Video Games called Out Run the best-selling game of 1987, and its readers voted it Game of the Year at the Golden Joysticks in March 1988.
The reviews were another matter. Each version had to give something up, and each gave up something different.
Spectrum
The Spectrum version was programmed by Probe Software and cost £8.99 on cassette (CRASH listed it at £7.99). It loads each stage from tape as you reach it; a 128K Spectrum keeps the stages it has loaded, and plays the arcade music too. CRASH scored it 72% in February 1988, but its three reviewers disagreed completely. Nick gave it 93% and called it “an essential purchase”. The other two gave 63% and 59%: one called it “one of the worst multiloads in history”, and the other, already let down by US Gold’s California Games, called it “a full-price, full-scale letdown”. Sinclair User gave it 8 out of 10, noting that the Z80 “begins to cough and protest” when more than about four large objects are on screen, and added that if the game had been called Sunday Driver “everyone would have been bowled over”. In the same issue it gave Electric Dreams’ Spectrum Super Hang-On 10 and called it the best road race game on the Spectrum, “and that includes Out Run”. Your Sinclair gave Out Run 8 out of 10 in March 1988 and The Games Machine 61%. ACE printed a reader’s letter complaining about the colours, and answered that it had yet to find anyone “who’s been satisfied with Out Run”.
Commodore 64
The C64 version dropped the forks in the road. Instead you load one of five fixed routes from tape before you start, and it was fast but far too easy. Zzap!64 gave it 68%: “Out Run isn’t a disaster, but only offers a few hours’ entertainment — which isn’t enough for a tenner.” ACE’s reviewer felt that without the junctions, “it’s hard to call this Out Run at all”, and The Games Machine gave 67%.
Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad version kept the route choices, loading the next stage from fifteen on the tape or disk, but it had no engine noise at all, only a beep when the tyres skidded. Amstrad Action gave it 37%, with 5% for sound (“tape soundtracks don’t count”), and called it “probably one of the worst” arcade conversions. Computer & Video Games said that “words such as travesty leap to mind”.
Atari ST, Amiga and PC
The Atari ST version arrived in spring 1988 at £19.99, again by Probe: written by Ian Morrison, with music by David Whittaker. ACE gave it 873 out of 1,000: after “a weak showing on the C64, a poor Spectrum performance and an Amstrad version little short of dismal”, it said, the game had reached the ST “and — it’s great!” The Games Machine gave it 79% and C&VG called it “at last a decent version of Out Run”. An Amiga version followed and was in the Amiga charts by early 1989, though a Commodore User reader listed it among “lame ST port-overs”. By July 1989 ACE had cooled on both 16-bit versions, and said the new PC conversion was “by far the best version yet”.
Sega’s own versions
Sega kept the console versions for itself. The Master System cartridge came out in 1987, sold in Britain by Mastertronic at £24.95. The Games Machine thought it came “closest to the original coin-op” of all the home versions and gave it 72%, though it disliked the way passing cars juddered or vanished. A Mega Drive version followed in 1991, adding a fourth tune, “Step On Beat”. Mean Machines gave it 69%, finding it attractive but “very, very easy” on every setting except the hardest.
Looking back
Opinions of the Spectrum game kept moving. Your Sinclair re-rated it 62% in January 1990, and in November 1990 the reviewer who had given it 8 out of 10 admitted: “When I reviewed it in YS ages ago I thought it was quite good, while everyone else thought it was utter tosh.” Kixx reissued it at £2.99 in 1990. CRASH gave the budget version 58% (“you’ll be lucky if you can stand having a second go”), Sinclair User gave it 81%, and it climbed from 20th to first in the budget chart that Your Sinclair printed in February 1991. Your Sinclair commented that it was “not particularly brilliant with hindsight”.
Later games
Sega followed the original with Turbo OutRun in 1989, which US Gold again converted to home computers. US Gold also had Probe develop Out Run Europa, a home computer game set on European roads. Your Sinclair put it on its cover in May 1989, but that first version was dropped to make way for Turbo OutRun, and the game finally appeared in 1991. Suzuki returned as producer for OutRun 2 in 2003. The soundtrack has had a life of its own: Sega Retro notes that “outrun” became a name for synthwave, the electronic music style that borrows the sound of Kawaguchi’s tunes.
Sources
- Steve Jarratt and Damien McFerran, SEGA Master System: a visual compendium (Bitmap Books, 2019), p. 59 (the arcade game, 1986, the Master System version) and p. 60 (Yoji Ishii on Suzuki’s role, The Cannonball Run, Nakayama and the drive around Europe), and p. 89 (Super Scaler hardware).
- Sega Retro, “OutRun”, “OutRun (home computers)”, “Sega OutRun hardware” and “Hiroshi Kawaguchi” (web, secondary): the Japanese release date, Ferrari’s complaint, the arcade board, the composer, the arcade cabinets, the home computer credits and the name “outrun” for synthwave. https://segaretro.org/OutRun
- The Games Machine issue 3, February 1988, pp. 60–61: multi-format review (Master System 72%, Spectrum 61%, C64 67%); copies in shops before reviews; timings and the five goals. Issue 7, June 1988, p. 66: Atari ST review (79%) and credits.
- CRASH issue 49, February 1988, pp. 22–23: Spectrum review (£7.99; 200,000 copies claimed; 93%, 63%, 59%; overall 72%). Issue 83, December 1990, p. 63: Kixx re-release (£2.99; 58%).
- Sinclair User issue 70, January 1988, pp. 12–13: Super Hang-On (10) and Out Run (Probe Software, £8.99, 8/10). Issue 105, November 1990, p. 60: budget re-release (81%).
- Your Sinclair issue 27, March 1988, p. 28: review (US Gold, £8.99, Probe Software, the Walkman soundtrack). Issue 49, January 1990, p. 97: “1990 Rating: 62”. Issue 59, November 1990, p. 79: driving games round-up. Issue 62, February 1991, p. 23: budget chart.
- Zzap!64 issue 34, February 1988, p. 87: Commodore 64 review (£9.99; 68%; the soundtrack tape).
- ACE issue 5, February 1988, pp. 38–39: C64 Out Run review (Coconut Beach; the missing junctions) and Electric Dreams’ Super Hang-On. Issue 7, April 1988: letters. Issue 10, July 1988, p. 64: Atari ST review (873). Issue 22, July 1989, p. 80: PC racers.
- Amstrad Action issue 30, March 1988, pp. 46–47: Amstrad review (37%).
- Computer & Video Games issue 76, February 1988, p. 25: C64 and Amstrad review. Issue 80, June 1988, p. 30: Atari ST review; best-selling game of 1987 and Game of the Year.
- Commodore User, March 1989: Amiga chart and readers’ letters.
- Mean Machines issue 13, October 1991, pp. 64–65: Mega Drive review (69%; “Step On Beat”; 10,000 arcade machines).
- Wireframe issue 43, September 2020, p. 89: OutRun 2 (2003) with Suzuki as producer.
- Your Sinclair issue 41, May 1989: OutRun Europa cover preview. Issue 48, December 1989: Turbo OutRun announced as US Gold’s Christmas game. Issue 93, September 1993: OutRun Europa developed at Probe, its first version dropped for Turbo OutRun.
- Zzap!64 issue 77, September 1991: Out Run Europa review.
- Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean, The Story of US Gold (Fusion Retro Books, 2015), pp. 50–51: Geoff Brown’s licensing trip to Sega.