Screenshots from VG Museum

Year released: 1985 (SEGA Master System)

Number of Players: 1

Hit the gas!

Graphics: Everything comes off great. Though you can tell there is a lack of color, the design of the graphics (except for the size of the other cars on the road, which seem to be smaller than they really should be) is realistic. Even the road coming at you is crystal clear. The graphics seem to change at each extension point (extension points explained later).

Play control: A bit off. Button 2 to go, Button 1 to brake completely. Left and right to move accordingly. Even though everything listed here works great, the curves are what set the control off. If you head straight into a curve and it's short enough, you'll come out of the curve aligned with the road again. It's no big deal, really, just something that makes the game unrealistic.

Sound: Half the reason I played this game at first was for the sound. The sound effects are really cheesy, but the music is awesome. I could listen to this stuff all day!

Challenge: This is the only thing that brings the game down for me. You start out with 80 seconds to race along a road. Soon after you go through a fork in the road, there is an extension point where your time is extended. Out Run is, essentially, about out running the clock. While that's a good and interesting concept, to get to the first extension point, you need to be perfect. There's a really nasty point, too, where you can't tell just when you're going to curve. That is, you see signs telling you that you have to curve, but you're going up a hill, so you can't see where the curve is up ahead on the road. There are also cars to avoid, but they don't crowd up the road too much.

Gameplay: Just cruising along the road with some great tune playing is kinda soothing. You bend along with your thumb and your car into a curve sometimes weaving imbetween cars. It would be dull gameplay, but you're sweating to get to the next extension point. Also, accounting for cars soon gets complex as they start inhabiting curves on the road. Not to mention that one can just play to take in the various scenery that comes along.

Bottom line: Out Run isn't dull; there are cars to avoid, nasty curves, the view is sometimes shortened by hills in the road, and you have a limited time to get to the next extension point. While these points, especially the last, make for a hard game, the gameplay is soothed by scenery, music, and those moments where you have the road to yourself. It's weird... an experience unrelatable to any other game... soothing gameplay and great difficulty. I'm not a big fan of the traditional racing games--Rush and Cruisin' USA for Nintendo 64 comes to mind--but Out Run has that everlasting AM2 appeal. (AM2 is a division of SEGA, which was also behind Space Harrier.)

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