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Sega Confirms OutRun 2 For Arcades
Thanks to several readers for pointing out that Sega AM2 have opened an official page for their forthcoming arcade driving game, OutRun 2. This sequel to the all-time classic racer, originally released way back in 1986, was unveiled at Sega's private show in Tokyo last night, and confirms earlier information that it would run on the Chihiro arcade hardware, a modified Xbox arcade board, making it a prime candidate for conversion to Microsoft's console. The game also sports licensed Ferrari cars (the F50, F250, and Testarossa), and apparently, driving 'cool' will impress the girl in the passenger seat and get you different game endings.
Different game endings depending on how much the girl is impressed?
Maybe a happy ending?
Graphics was astounding at the time.
My friends were even more impressed than me, because that game let you dream to be "on the road" with a fabulous blonde near you (at the time I didn't care of this detail, but they were AT LEAST 2 years older than me... mind you that at the time I was at a seaside summer camp, when I was older I started to care of that detail as well :D).
Outrun 1's music was awesome as well...
Now, to get ontopic: When this beast comes to the XBox, I really wonder how they will compress the landscape appearance of all the 15 levels to fit the XBox Ram, or if they will make things to be loaded on the fly like "SWIV" for the Amiga (so that you will have to load only 3 levels at a time, current level + the two other levels).
The landscape anyway seems to be a bit simplistic, maybe is Sega's choice of screenshots, but only this image shows a complex building on the roadside. This is fully in spirit with the original game... I only hope to see some parts with many of the wacky fake advertisement billboards that used to be there in Outrun, Turbo Outrun and the fabulous Super Hang-On.
This Outrun does not stand out for graphics (if you want to see one of the best graphics look this game here), but I really really hope that it will stand out again for the "Cool" factor. Outrun was cool as a snowball that did not melt in hell at the time (the second game that made that effect was Bubble Bobble).
Hope to see it soon in an amusement arcade here :) (or a good XBox conversion as well).
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There is a similar contrast with Dreamcast titles when you compare AM2's Ferrari F355 Challenge to others on the console. Crazy Taxi High Roller looks more like your average game but when you see OutRun 2's graphics it is like day and night. It's a shame the DC is dead otherwise Sega may have ported OutRun 2 to some future incarnation of the DC. If the X-Box receives OutRun 2, I'll definitely pick one up.