Outrunning every other driving game

Does it ring a bell if I tell you that in our next game you have to race with your Ferrari Testarossa over a series of short stages, accompanied by a blonde female (presumably you girlfriend) in the passenger seat, trying pass through four checkpoint between five laps within the time limit? This is perhaps one of the most famous old-school arcade racing games where the cars don't have realistic physics, don't get damaged and have insanely fast speed. Shame on you if you are not screaming “Out Run!” like a madman right now!

The game released in 1986 was designed by Yu Suzuki, who in retrospective interviews has classified it as a “driving” game, instead of a racing game. It was one of the first arcade games that gave the players a genuine feeling of speed, achieving its 3D effects using a sprite-scaling technique called 'Super-Scaler' technology (first used one year earlier in Hang-On and Space Harrier). Other innovations were a moving cabinet (that was great!), the possibility to choose the music you listen while driving and the stages (except the first one) thanks to a fork in the road before every checkpoint, and its strong theme of luxury and relaxation.

Starting at a coastal area, the roads are full of sharp turns and dangers, which can cause the car to roll and make you lose time should you fail to avoid them. Unlike many previous racing games that used a bird's eye view, in Outrun the camera –that appears to travel along the road with the car- is a little above and behind the car, so you can see the driver and his passenger, and gives the player the feeling of passing through the action rather than merely observing it.

There is a great Outrun fan site, where you can even play the game online, and if you are hooked with this one you should definitely check the Wikipedia and the Killer List of Videogames entries about the game.

Run this Trivia past your brain

-The classic red racer you use in the game is quite obviously a convertible Ferrari Testarossa (right down to the "Cavallino Rampante" logo featured in the back of the car), however SEGA had not licensed the likeness of Ferrari products and got into a series of legal issues with Ferrari. The eventually settled but it wouldn't be until OutRun 2 that the car would become an "official" Ferrari.