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By Michael Webb, Editor-in-Chief, MikeWebb@CompuServe.COM
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I must once again delay my next review of an older Amiga game. However, since the March issue, when I looked back at OutRun, I have received a letter from a reader, and I will publish it here.
Hi,
I wanted to comment on your article about the game OutRun.
Please don't take offense at this, I don't mean it to be hostile, or insulting, but...
You REALLY need to play more Amiga games if you think OutRun is a good game, even for the time it was released.
I'm sorry, but OutRun is one of the sorriest pieces of Amiga software I've ever seen. Super Cycle on the C64 was faster and had animation that was ten times smoother and that was on a 1 MHz, 8-bit machine with only 16 colors! The Amiga was designed as a game machine with special graphic processors and that was the best Sega could come up with? It wasn't even a faithful port of the arcade version.
Do you know why OutRun's animation is so choppy, and why the menus at the start are non-standard? It's because OutRun was ported directly from the Atari ST version. As far as I know, it wasn't altered to take advantage of any Amiga features at all.
Most of Sega's arcade ports stunk, including OutRun, Space Harrier, Afterburner, Thunderblade etc. Powerdrift is especially bad! In fact, the only Sega Amiga games I liked were Super Hangon and Alien Syndrome, and neither of those really used the Amiga's full potential either. Not to mention that Alien Syndrome omitted two levels!
If you want to see a real Amiga racing game, find a copy of the original Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge. The sequels are ok, but in my opinion, the first one is still the best. The animation is smooth as glass and it really feels like you're speeding down the road at 100+ mph. When you go over a hill you almost get that feeling in the pit of your stomach that you get from going over a real hill too fast.
John
In retrospect, I will admit that I was probably being too kind when I did my writeup of OutRun a few months back. Maybe I was in too good a mood at the time, but the scores I gave were probably somewhat overrated.
In addition, allow me to make it clear that I am not at all fond of crummy ports of any kind. I've seen a few bombs in my time, believe me. This is probably a matter of opinion, but I still don't think OutRun was all that bad. I consider the graphics and general gameplay to be a good bit better than you describe them, and the music, as I said before, is excellent.
I realized OutRun didn't take great advantage of the Amiga's capabilities, but such was not uncommon among games at the time (particularly in terms of the OS and user interface). Although I prefer to see OS-compliant software, and today would probably look disdainfully upon a new game with totally custom code, I don't consider it as much when looking at older games.
But you are probably right. Sega probably did almost nothing but the most basic port. Still, though, I believe OutRun turned out remarkably well despite that. Again, this is a matter of opinion, but I have always enjoyed playing it. And I've played my share of Amiga games, especially back in those days.
But let's look ahead to the next installment of The Amiga Gaming Retrospective. As I hinted before, OutRun was the first of two car-style games I was going to look at. The other one is probably far better-known on the Amiga. Anyway, I'll be getting to that as soon as I can. But that will be all for now. See you next time.
Michael Webb
Editor-in-Chief
Amiga Web Directory