Hands-on with Outrun 2 – World’s first unrestricted access to fresh build
Outrun 2: The unXboxable game
At a secret location in London yesterday we were lucky enough to spend two hours alone with three Outrun 2 machines as Sega prepares one of its biggest coin-op launches of recent times.
The three cabinets consisted of two single-player stand-up units, housed in the Crazy Taxi/Jambo Safari generic Naomi set up (Wheel, stick, bench pedals) and one sit-down two-player version housed in Sega’s standard driving cabinet, as seen with Initial D etc… We were told that Outrun 2 will be available in an all-new deluxe cabinet, though the possibility of a standard sit-down or stand up had not been decided.
Unfortunately, the cabinets were in basic set-up, with no continues allowed. The force-feedback had not been implemented, replaced as it was by a sprung rubber Ferrari-liveried race wheel.
There was a certain familiarity radiated by Outrun 2. It is unmistakably the spawn of the original games, with the ethos and general feel of the 1986 Suzuki smash hit still intact.
The version we were looking at is the latest build to come from the studio and the first, we were assured, to have all stages and all cars open to play. It had both automatic and manual transmission options available, with all cars having six gears.
There were four music tracks: Magical Sound Shower, Passing Breeze etc. - all the music from the original remixed. Interestingly, there were several (three perhaps) locked music tracks - strange, we thought, given that the cars were all unlocked. Anyway…
This particular version was in a much better state than when it debuted in Japan several weeks ago, where it was still a little rough round the edges. The actual game content looked terrific, with the pop-up problems of the earlier build either fixed or fogged out. Indeed, it could almost be described as complete. Only the transition sections, as in the decision as to whether to turn left or right, had not been finalised with a straight, boring concrete-walled run the only scenery between checkpoints.
Other niggles were found with some of the effects. Reflections and other unimportant candy add-ons had obviously not been completed, as was the case with the particle effects caused by either skidding or driving off the road. Indeed, if you go off the road at any point, the car’s back wheels throw up grass, even if there’s not a blade for miles.
The mainstay of Outrun is, of course, Outrun Mode, a classic romp through some pseudo-realistic earthly beauty spots. All the Ferraris were available to play, from the humble Dino through to the monster super-car F50. For the enthusiast, the classic Testarossa is also there. Importantly, the choice of car seems more an aesthetic decision than a gameplay choice, as all cars at this stage of development handled identically, with no differences in terms of cornering, speed, grip or acceleration - kind of in the same way that Initial D cars, be they four, rear or front wheel drive, 1.6L DOHC or huge turbo charged affairs, have only a negligible difference.
And the comparisons with Initial D run somewhat deeper than just the car handling. Initial D is a game that demands a great deal of physical input from the player. It’s not a question of accelerate, brake and, you know, steer a bit. You really have to throw the wheel around if you want to win, or at least not be embarrassed by the Japanese 14 year-old girl with the trick RX-7 who’s challenging you, selecting Love is in Danger for BGM and smirking at your three race old ‘86 as she holds down the brake pedal to disable slow-player catch-up so that you loose and her boyfriend can take your seat… Or perhaps that’s just us. Anyway, where were we…?
Ah yes, the control system underpinning Outrun 2. Not that girl, and her pockets full of coins and high-grade Initial D cards.
One of these days…
A great part of the driving focuses on the player’s ability to drift, and drifting in Outrun 2, is absolutely fantastic. Again showing its somewhat tenuous blood line shared with the Sega Rosso–developed Initial D, drifting around corners makes you go faster. As with, say, Daytona, the drift is activated by letting off the gas, tapping the brake, then full gas and into the corner.
Yet Outrun 2’s drift mechanic, even at this developmental stage, is far more intuitive than those of its predecessors, albeit totally unrealistic. You can get the car to almost travel backwards and retain control. It works very well as the drift is managed by a combination of opposite-lock steering and the amount of gas you apply. Drift out too far and just apply more gas, as with any racing game, though the amount of multidirectional control Outrun 2 affords the player is unsurpassed and only hampered by the width of the machine and the increased likelihood of crashing into other vehicles.
The true videogame elation achievable when you manage to slide your car at a ridiculous angle between six or so NPC cars, all in different lanes, making constant unnatural adjustments is worth the (Sega Amusements Band #2) price of play alone.
As stated, all fifteen stages were on open play and the game was completed taking the easiest, second easiest and third easiest routes. We came within metres of the finish line of the two hardest endings, though it would seem that no mistakes are allowed if these goals are to be reached.
Outrun 2 has that trademark Sega brightness and sheen that fans of the firm’s antics have come to cherish. It looks delicious. Even at this comparatively early stage, all manner of incidental detail is implemented. Windmills turn, trees bustle, waterfalls, erm, fall and so on. In the Industrial Complex level, a whole world of mechanical mayhem is happening off road, while the desert is a rolling barren place complete with a beautiful pyramid.
Outrun 2 is a game of ups and downs, with the scenery constantly forcing the race up blind hills and down into sweeping valleys. The Europe Stage, which we believe was unplayable until yesterday, shows the Eiffel Tower half a mile down the road from Nelson’s Column, tongue-in-cheek Sega scenery at its best!
The difficulty of Outrun Mode is decided by the course you take. Starting at the head of an exponentially expanding pyramid, you begin on the obligatory opening stage, then can choose from routes left or right, the further right being the more difficult. A maximum of five stages can be played per credit, unless there’s a bonus mode we didn’t get to see.
On the more difficult courses the NPC racing and “civilian” traffic will be more aggressive and denser. The roads will be more demanding with lots of S-bends. Whereas the easier stages will see relatively open roads and passive NPC cars with long sweeping turns that provide plenty of warning.
The other modes available are Time Attack - pretty much self-explanatory - and Heart Attack Mode, a new addition to the Outrun series. This entails following a set if instructions dictated by the girl in the passenger seat of your car. She’s a racy lass, enjoying driving close to other vehicles and long drifts. The more exciting, dangerous stuff you do, the more she loves you, as (not) in the real world. There is a combo system at play, which no doubt the hardcore will stretch to ridiculous extremes when the game goes on general release.
We had been told by a fairly senior source within Sega Amusements that a card reader akin to those employed by Initial D, F-Zero AC and Derby Owner’s Club would be implemented in Outrun 2, though no evidence of this was apparent. However, there was that unlockable music content, so who knows… We’ll make some more inquiries and get back to you in the coming weeks, though we were assured the system would be used…
Now as far as an Xbox version is concerned, this does seem less likely now that we’ve played the game, though in fairness, opinion is mixed.
The bottom line is that to complete Outrun Mode, takes about seven minutes, no more. There are fifteen courses, but they are A to B affairs, not the looping tracks conducive to good multiplayer console play. The game would also lose a lot of what it fundamentally is outside of the arcade, in the 99% of gaming homes without a steering wheel.
However, there is life in an expanded Heart Attack Mode, and the game could be beefed up, in terms of content for the Xbox, perhaps with Xbox Live support.
And as far as Sega is concerned, this would not be the worst arcade-to-console sales disaster in the making, that is for sure.
So will it come out on Xbox? We really don’t know. We’d all like it to, though it just seems a little unlikely. However, Sega did launch a multiformat release of 18 Wheeler so anything, as they say, is possible.
We’ll keep you updated.
The three cabinets consisted of two single-player stand-up units, housed in the Crazy Taxi/Jambo Safari generic Naomi set up (Wheel, stick, bench pedals) and one sit-down two-player version housed in Sega’s standard driving cabinet, as seen with Initial D etc… We were told that Outrun 2 will be available in an all-new deluxe cabinet, though the possibility of a standard sit-down or stand up had not been decided.
Unfortunately, the cabinets were in basic set-up, with no continues allowed. The force-feedback had not been implemented, replaced as it was by a sprung rubber Ferrari-liveried race wheel.
There was a certain familiarity radiated by Outrun 2. It is unmistakably the spawn of the original games, with the ethos and general feel of the 1986 Suzuki smash hit still intact.
The version we were looking at is the latest build to come from the studio and the first, we were assured, to have all stages and all cars open to play. It had both automatic and manual transmission options available, with all cars having six gears.
There were four music tracks: Magical Sound Shower, Passing Breeze etc. - all the music from the original remixed. Interestingly, there were several (three perhaps) locked music tracks - strange, we thought, given that the cars were all unlocked. Anyway…
This particular version was in a much better state than when it debuted in Japan several weeks ago, where it was still a little rough round the edges. The actual game content looked terrific, with the pop-up problems of the earlier build either fixed or fogged out. Indeed, it could almost be described as complete. Only the transition sections, as in the decision as to whether to turn left or right, had not been finalised with a straight, boring concrete-walled run the only scenery between checkpoints.
Other niggles were found with some of the effects. Reflections and other unimportant candy add-ons had obviously not been completed, as was the case with the particle effects caused by either skidding or driving off the road. Indeed, if you go off the road at any point, the car’s back wheels throw up grass, even if there’s not a blade for miles.
The mainstay of Outrun is, of course, Outrun Mode, a classic romp through some pseudo-realistic earthly beauty spots. All the Ferraris were available to play, from the humble Dino through to the monster super-car F50. For the enthusiast, the classic Testarossa is also there. Importantly, the choice of car seems more an aesthetic decision than a gameplay choice, as all cars at this stage of development handled identically, with no differences in terms of cornering, speed, grip or acceleration - kind of in the same way that Initial D cars, be they four, rear or front wheel drive, 1.6L DOHC or huge turbo charged affairs, have only a negligible difference.
And the comparisons with Initial D run somewhat deeper than just the car handling. Initial D is a game that demands a great deal of physical input from the player. It’s not a question of accelerate, brake and, you know, steer a bit. You really have to throw the wheel around if you want to win, or at least not be embarrassed by the Japanese 14 year-old girl with the trick RX-7 who’s challenging you, selecting Love is in Danger for BGM and smirking at your three race old ‘86 as she holds down the brake pedal to disable slow-player catch-up so that you loose and her boyfriend can take your seat… Or perhaps that’s just us. Anyway, where were we…?
Ah yes, the control system underpinning Outrun 2. Not that girl, and her pockets full of coins and high-grade Initial D cards.
One of these days…
A great part of the driving focuses on the player’s ability to drift, and drifting in Outrun 2, is absolutely fantastic. Again showing its somewhat tenuous blood line shared with the Sega Rosso–developed Initial D, drifting around corners makes you go faster. As with, say, Daytona, the drift is activated by letting off the gas, tapping the brake, then full gas and into the corner.
Yet Outrun 2’s drift mechanic, even at this developmental stage, is far more intuitive than those of its predecessors, albeit totally unrealistic. You can get the car to almost travel backwards and retain control. It works very well as the drift is managed by a combination of opposite-lock steering and the amount of gas you apply. Drift out too far and just apply more gas, as with any racing game, though the amount of multidirectional control Outrun 2 affords the player is unsurpassed and only hampered by the width of the machine and the increased likelihood of crashing into other vehicles.
The true videogame elation achievable when you manage to slide your car at a ridiculous angle between six or so NPC cars, all in different lanes, making constant unnatural adjustments is worth the (Sega Amusements Band #2) price of play alone.
As stated, all fifteen stages were on open play and the game was completed taking the easiest, second easiest and third easiest routes. We came within metres of the finish line of the two hardest endings, though it would seem that no mistakes are allowed if these goals are to be reached.
Outrun 2 has that trademark Sega brightness and sheen that fans of the firm’s antics have come to cherish. It looks delicious. Even at this comparatively early stage, all manner of incidental detail is implemented. Windmills turn, trees bustle, waterfalls, erm, fall and so on. In the Industrial Complex level, a whole world of mechanical mayhem is happening off road, while the desert is a rolling barren place complete with a beautiful pyramid.
Outrun 2 is a game of ups and downs, with the scenery constantly forcing the race up blind hills and down into sweeping valleys. The Europe Stage, which we believe was unplayable until yesterday, shows the Eiffel Tower half a mile down the road from Nelson’s Column, tongue-in-cheek Sega scenery at its best!
The difficulty of Outrun Mode is decided by the course you take. Starting at the head of an exponentially expanding pyramid, you begin on the obligatory opening stage, then can choose from routes left or right, the further right being the more difficult. A maximum of five stages can be played per credit, unless there’s a bonus mode we didn’t get to see.
On the more difficult courses the NPC racing and “civilian” traffic will be more aggressive and denser. The roads will be more demanding with lots of S-bends. Whereas the easier stages will see relatively open roads and passive NPC cars with long sweeping turns that provide plenty of warning.
The other modes available are Time Attack - pretty much self-explanatory - and Heart Attack Mode, a new addition to the Outrun series. This entails following a set if instructions dictated by the girl in the passenger seat of your car. She’s a racy lass, enjoying driving close to other vehicles and long drifts. The more exciting, dangerous stuff you do, the more she loves you, as (not) in the real world. There is a combo system at play, which no doubt the hardcore will stretch to ridiculous extremes when the game goes on general release.
We had been told by a fairly senior source within Sega Amusements that a card reader akin to those employed by Initial D, F-Zero AC and Derby Owner’s Club would be implemented in Outrun 2, though no evidence of this was apparent. However, there was that unlockable music content, so who knows… We’ll make some more inquiries and get back to you in the coming weeks, though we were assured the system would be used…
Now as far as an Xbox version is concerned, this does seem less likely now that we’ve played the game, though in fairness, opinion is mixed.
The bottom line is that to complete Outrun Mode, takes about seven minutes, no more. There are fifteen courses, but they are A to B affairs, not the looping tracks conducive to good multiplayer console play. The game would also lose a lot of what it fundamentally is outside of the arcade, in the 99% of gaming homes without a steering wheel.
However, there is life in an expanded Heart Attack Mode, and the game could be beefed up, in terms of content for the Xbox, perhaps with Xbox Live support.
And as far as Sega is concerned, this would not be the worst arcade-to-console sales disaster in the making, that is for sure.
So will it come out on Xbox? We really don’t know. We’d all like it to, though it just seems a little unlikely. However, Sega did launch a multiformat release of 18 Wheeler so anything, as they say, is possible.
We’ll keep you updated.
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