OutRun Longplay (Mega Drive/Genesis) [60 FPS]

Developed and published by Sega in 1991.

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Rounding out my week of OutRun videos is a longplay and review of the Mega Drive version, released in 1991.

Until the Saturn version came along a few years later, I would have expected this to have been the definitive version that gamers would have been able to play in the comfort of their own homes (short of owning an arcade cabinet). Surprisingly, I came away feeling somewhat disappointed after playing this version.

The graphics are something of a mixed bag here. The main Ferrari sprite looks like it has been redrawn and re-coloured in this version. Whilst the artists have tried to give the car specular highlights to give it a glossy finish, the end result actually makes the car look more like an inflatable raft than a car and should be able to float on water; this becomes more apparent when the perspective shifts, showing more of the car from above. Also, the driver and passenger don't sit properly in the car; the guy's left arm simply disappears into the side of the car and just looks odd.

There are also some graphical glitches, such as the way roadside obstacles sometimes get a cut off at the same point as the horizon, so you can see the distant mountains through the object. Bottom halves of the traffic sprites occasionally wink out of existence at certain distances before reappearing, and there are times when the game's frame rate takes a noticeable dive when the screen gets busy.

I also noticed that cars occupying the same lane would warp through each other somewhat disconcertingly. It might seem that I'm nitpicking this version of the game, but I genuinely didn't notice this problem in the other versions that I played.

One of the biggest problems I had with this version was the car handling and severity of the corners. There were many occasions where the road curved round at such a sharp angle that, if this were reality, would have looked as though you were doing several laps of a roundabout.

While the traffic likes to change lanes and generally makes a pain of itself in most versions of the game, the coders of the Mega Drive version decided to put some genuine psychos behind the wheel. The cars here don't simply change lane, they drift across the whole road with no regard for any other motorist, least of all yours!

The three main audio tracks from the arcade version are all present and correct, although they all sound somewhat flat compared to the arcade version; even the PC Engine version sounded more alive than this (although this version does have considerably better sound effects...).

Make no mistake, the Mega Drive version is still an excellent conversion, especially when compared with the abominable Amiga and Atari ST versions (I might work up the courage to longplay those at some point...). It's difficult to put my finger on it, just that I feel that some of the original magic of the arcade version is missing here.
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