OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast mini-review

OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast is just lovely. It makes no pretense to be nothing more than to emulate a perfect arcade experience in your carpeted living room. Do people even still go to arcades anymore? I remember spending countless SEGA tokens in the arcade playing Yu Suzuki's original sprite based OutRun but that was not because I was addicted, but because I was crap. Which is why console versions of this classic made so much sense, mainly because first, SEGA World is dead and second, because I am crap with steering wheels. Then I realised it was a waste of money it was buying and then spending Sonic tokens, so I started visiting this PC club where I get to play OutRun for free on old Atari ST and Amiga computers.



Apart from SEGA's own Crazy Taxi games as well as Mario Kart there never have been an arcadey driving/racing game so perfected for home consumption, at least in my opinion. So really when something like this catches your eyes because of a £5 (from £30!) sticker you know you just have to get it. If it sucks I could have just eBay'ed it for a 200% mark-up, but I decided against it, at least until I grew bored of it, but holy I doubt I would ever. Yes, I could have pirated the PC version, then bought a steering wheel, bolt it to the desk while trying to drift my way up. But I would look like a twat.

But I do love driving video games cars, even more so when it comes down to joypad-based racing video games. It's like that Will Smith bloke from MIB 2 who fitted his car with a wacky joypad. That's the future. Instead of cumbersome steering wheels, cars should be controlled by joypads fitted with an analog stick and two buttons, accelerate and brake. Motorways must have giant balls to knock over, ghosts to crash into, meteorites to avoid, blue skies to drive you on and a blonde lady to nag at you. I want to go far away, what is wrong with you! It should also be a law to make it illegal to play anything on the car's stereo other than the infectious 'Magical Sound Shower' or ‘Splash Wave’, but that would be stupid when driving under 95% of the British weather.

Sheffield based Sumo Digital did a fine job in the conversion from the arcade version of OutRun 2 SP, with bonus content and new tracks to boot. Tracks are in typical pyramid fashion, left for easy track, right for increase difficulty, with 15 from OutRun 2 and 15 new American themed tracks. Thirteen licensed Ferrari cars (though they don't differ much in terms of handling/speed) features here. Because of the death of SEGA World throughout the world (yay?), there is no excuse not to get this.

Oh gosh, I am even starting to sound like a disillusioned SEGA fanboy. Get the PSP version for Outrun goodness on the go.

9/10

Buy this from Play-Asia or Amazon UK