OutRun Online Arcade

Sunny beaches, ancient ruins, starry skies and a bloke in a Ferrari wearing an Orange shirt. “What more could a girl wish for?”

‘OutRun Online Arcade’, is basically the ‘OutRun 2’ arcade machine ‘SP’ levels but placed lovingly on Xbox Live Arcade. But this, by all means, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Originally, ‘OutRun 2’ was a very over looked game, and ‘OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast’ didn’t do much better, but this newer version has been given an arcade make-over. Looking fresh and shiny in ‘High Def’. The controls are the same as usual and handle better than ever! The sound effects have been slightly improved and it has the same voices for you girlfriends constantly saying “I wanna go far away” or “ARE YOU JUST GUNNA GIVE UP!” but even they still sound amazing emitting from your ‘X Rocker’.

The visuals maybe only seen for a short while, but the textures are improved on the 15 stages, the skies are a work of art and the terrain is still colourful and ‘eye candy-esk’ which will make any rainy day seem great. The cars look extremely polished and reflective and there is ten licenced Ferrari’s to play with, ranging from the sturdy ‘Dino 246 GTS’ to the ‘288 GTO Evo’ for the more advance ‘OutRunner’.

Apart from the newly created ‘front end’ and everything looking super sharp, This is just a very scaled down port of ‘OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast’. It is all about being an ‘arcade game’ and nothing more but quick and fun gameplay! It has the same modes as the console games, (OutRun mode, Heart Attack Mode and Time Attack Mode) The stages are the same as well, but just look even more beautiful than before, and the price of 800 MSP or £7.99 on Playstation network, is a good price for the game and I do think it reflects the fact it’s a polished port.

Some people may disappointed by this, but if you love ‘OutRun’ already and maybe already own ‘OutRun 2’ or ‘Coast 2 Coast’, the playability will be in the multiplayer. Myself and another guy I met via playing ‘OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast’ who’s on my ‘Friends List’ used to be the only two people ever to play it online up until very recently, and yet now, the same game becomes a download, everyone is playing it. So multiplayer for me, is a big reason for buying this game. You can play up to 6 players ‘OutRun Online Arcade’ and you can customise the settings so you can pick the ‘Goal’, if you want normal or ‘tuned’ cars or to turn ‘catch-up’ and collisions on and off! It can get quite extreme on multiplayer, with some very manic ‘driftathons’ as you battle it out around those tight hair pins and seeing who makes it out alive and in first place.

‘OutRun Mode’, you race for time and points. Race to the check point before your time runs out, whilst picking the route you think is best for grabbing points, by drifting, slip streaming, passing cars and beating the rival Ferrari’s without being beaten up by the girlfriend! Instant arcade fun!

‘Heart Attack Mode’ requires you to impress your lady friend by passing other cars and drifting for a certain amount of time and if you impress her enough she will give you more interesting tasks to do, like hitting the blue cones, collecting coins and driving in between 2 marked vehicles. This is a good mode to practice your driving and drifting skills if you are new to ‘OutRun’.

‘Time Attack Mode’ which is really just the same tracks and the same game as the normal ‘OutRun mode’, only you have a ghost car on the track. You need to beat the ghost car in each section to beat the stages. And that’s all it is, but you can practice your time scores.

It would have been nice to have seen a mixture of stages in ‘OutRun Online Arcade’, all the great ones from ‘OutRun 2 SP’ are there, but I still would have loved some of the stages from ‘OutRun 2’. All the iconic ‘OutRun 2’ music is available and the transition from when the song ends and starts again has improved greatly. I was slightly annoyed that I wasn’t able to choose the 1986 versions of the popular songs like you can in the arcade version but that is really all I am annoyed about with the game. Also sadly ‘Richard Jacques’s ‘remixes’ are not playable either, and I frankly miss them as the ‘OutRun 2’ versions of ‘Magical Sound Shower’ and ‘Passing Breeze’ was no way as good as Jacques’s renditions, as I’m all about the ‘proper’ brass not those feeble ‘Soprano Saxa-ma-phones’ but I guess you can’t have everything. ‘OutRun Online Arcade’ also has some easy and some brutal achievements and trophies to attempt ranging from playing to the end in ‘manual’ or getting over 2.5 million points in the ’15 continuous stage’. Seriously, the 15 continuous stage is much harder than you think when competing for a points score…