OutRun Review (Sega Game Gear, 1991)

OutRun was one of Sega’s biggest and most iconic arcade hits in the 80s. Designed by the famous Yu Suzuki this was a driving game in the guise of a racer. What I mean is that you’re not actually racing against anyone. You’re driving. The goal was simply to reach the end of the track. This was quite a bit different in its time. Sega knew they had a hit, and when they got into the home console industry they put ports of OutRun on just about everything, and I’m here for it. The one version that eluded me however was the Game Gear conversion. This handheld iteration was never released in the USA. I finally got my hands on it, and took OutRun for another spin. How does it stack up? Let’s just say it’s one of the best Game Gear games of all time. Let’s check it out.

The game doesn’t really have a story. OutRun’s premise is simple. You’re a guy with a car with a pretty girl in the passenger seat. It’s your goal to get to drive across the USA. Along the way you’ll contend with a timer that’s constantly ticking down, branching paths, and of course traffic. I like the simple set up here. Plus, what’s more American than driving cross country in a sports car? OutRun was one of the early faux 3D racing games that relied on sprite scaling to simulate three dimensional space as well as speed. That sounds like a tall order for the Game Gear if I’m being honest. Somehow Sega pulled it off, but the game is not without its issues.

We’ll get to the problems later though. Let’s start with the good stuff. You have a few different options for play here. The one player game is a basic re-creation of the arcade classic. There are also two separate versus modes as well. One of these is where you’re competing against a CPU opponent, and another allows you to link two Game Gears together and race against another player. The fact that Sega went the extra mile and included these modes is a major plus in my book. While I prefer the vanilla experience it’s worth noting that up to this point no console iteration of the original had multiplayer.

OutRun on the Game Gear is instantly recognizable at even a glance. It uses the same behind the car perspective, and is entirely sprite based. The game gives the appearance of depth and 3D via it’s sprite scaling. This means that while moving objects simply get bigger. It isn’t particularly smooth, but that’s par for the course when it comes to OutRun ports. The effect is convincing enough in this Game Gear iteration that I can’t complain too much. The only time I ran into any trouble was while dodging traffic. It can be difficult to judge your distance from other cars which are also moving. It takes some getting used to, but eventually I got the hang of it. It’s kind of a problem that there’s no rhyme or reason to their movement. Sometimes the other cars are all over the road.

While the game’s premise is in fact to get from point A to point B within a time limit there’s a little more to it than that. When you reach the end of an area the scenery transitions into the next area, but you have two branching paths to choose from. While you always begin from the same spot you have four different options for a final destination. It’s a defining element of the game, and I’m happy to see that Sega didn’t remove this feature here. The biggest change is admittedly in the graphics, but each area does have different turns and obstacles on the side of the road. Traffic remains consistent no matter which path you take though.

The game is however really challenging. OutRun on the Game Gear is one of the most difficult ports I’ve encountered. The timer is super unforgiving and I typically find I have just a handful of seconds left when I reach the finish line. This is partially because of how bad the physics engine is. Whenever you bump into a car you lose too much speed. For some reason the car also veers off to the left no matter where you hit. If you make the mistake of hitting an obstacle on the side of the road you’re pretty much done for. The game takes its sweet time sliding your car back on to the road, and acceleration feels really slow here. I thought I was pretty good at OutRun, but this Game Gear version made me question my skills.

Then there’s the unfortunate issue with the hills in this game. Because of the weak hardware Sega had to make some concessions. You cannot see any slope both up or down in the distance. You’ll only know you’re gaining elevation because the camera changes perspectives. It zooms in a little on the road thus obscuring your view. I didn’t like this and found that it actually makes the game more difficult. You can’t see as far in front of your vehicle. This caused a lot of collisions. It feels like the other cars sneak up on you with the changed perspective, and you don’t have enough time to react. Clearly this graphical engine was only capable of handling flat terrain, and I would have preferred if they didn’t try to do so much with it.

The big issue however is that Sega cut quite a bit of content from the game. In the arcades, and pretty much every other port, you have a total of five different destinations. This means there were four instances in which you had to choose a route. Here there are only four stops at the end of the map. I feel like this makes the Game Gear version of OutRun too short. When I got the hang of things I could complete a full run in just a matter of minutes. Even for a handheld title that’s just too short. I will hand it to Sega though because the scenery and tracks are mostly original here. They incorporated some interesting themes based on real life places here. I just wish there was more of it.

OutRun is absolutely beautiful on the Game Gear. This is one of the more colorful home ports of this legendary title. The track animates surprisingly well and gives the player a real sense of speed. It’s the scenery however that makes the biggest impression. From the seaside highways to the deserts at sunset or even the Las Vegas skyline at night; it all looks really good. The sprite scaling isn’t particularly smooth but for the hardware it looks really nice. For my money OutRun is one of the best looking Game Gear titles I’ve seen. The soundtrack is also quite good. The music never changes, but you do at least get to choose the song that plays. There are three options and they all sound pretty good. What’s more is that they’re instantly recognizable from the arcade. I actually prefer this version’s music to that of the Sega Genesis port.