Outrun, but set in the distant future of 2019
I will say, Outrun is a game whose development I've been known to romanticize. Yet, one of Yu Suzuki's core design philosophies has always inspired me. I'm paraphrasing here, but he once said something akin to "good games have rough edges." Outrun, even the original, has rough edges. The controls have never been much more than your bog standard arcade racer, they've never had much more than a niche audience, and yet when you play an Outrun game, there is something uniquely identifiable there that you can't get from other racing games. To me, that something is that unique sense of freedom you get from driving through new and unseen places. It's something I've never really gotten from any other racer and I think a lot of that comes down to how Yu Suzuki saw driving as an experience. It's no secret that the man is a fan of cars, but it was his translation of that joy of driving that made Outrun the experience it is.
So, that's Outrun, but then what is this?
Outrun was a big hit in arcades and as a result it got ported to everything under the sun from the Speccy all the way up to the Saturn and back. With popularity also comes sequels such as OutRunners, an arcade follow up, but what about consoles? Well, allow me to bring, to you, Outrun 2019, a gritty futuristic take on the classic. It's, uh, an experience. Unless you're a big Outrun fan, you probably haven't even heard of this game. So let's break down how it differentiates itself from the classic.
The car is the most obvious initial change with it having a giant turbine engine coming out the trunk. The next observation is, this game is much darker and grittier than what you'd think of as an "Outrun" game. Yet, the rest of the experience is actually really solid. There is a manual shift if you enable it, but the game defaults to automatic and that's fine for what it is. You have your usual speedometer, but once your reach top speed, your speedometer will begin to charge yellow which at full charge will unleash the turbine! There's ramps in this game because, well, you can't have a futuristic racer without ramps. They allow you to hop over slower terrain, because this game has different terrains, and even skip to other parts of the track. While Outrun 2019 has the traditional left vs right paths, it also has alternate routes within those main routes themselves. Outrun 2019 is also different in that it has four unique stages with their own assortment of routes broken out in smaller sets. Each has its own set of routes to try with their own unique atmosphere. Really, there's a lot of fun to be had for a console racer of this era.
Best in arcades, worst on console
If you haven't ever had the displeasure of playing one of Outrun's many console ports, let me be the first to tell you to avoid them. It wasn't until the Saturn that we got a playable version of the original. What makes Outrun 2019 stand out for me is despite the awkwardly edgy atmosphere, this was actually the best way to play Outrun at home until the release of Outrun 2 a decade later which had the original as an unlockable. 2019 has some really cool technical effects that add variety to the environments like at the beginning of each race you start in a tunnel and in some places you drive underneath another section of highway. It's really neat to fly by these features, wondering, "Can I get up there with a ramp somewhere?" If you have not had the pleasure, I really implore you to give Outrun 2019 a try. It's a good console entry in the Outrun series, something that was otherwise sorely lacking for a long time. And while I wish 2019 had the upbeat cheery temper of the rest of the series, the futuristic, edgy nonsense actually fits the Genesis really well. Outrun 2019, not a great representation of 2019, but a really great representation of what makes Outrun games so enjoyable and a must-play for fans of the series.
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