The Year is 1986. The place? Any arcade on the planet. Right then, if you’ll just take a look at the crowd over there… Ok see them? Good. You’ll no doubt be noticing that these people are gathering around what seems to be a very popular machine. Do you see it? It’s the one with the Ferrari, the Blonde and the palm trees. It’s called Outrun, it’s all the rage, and it’s made by this upstart gaming company calling themselves Sega. Haven’t heard of them? You soon will.

OK so 1986 is where it all started, Sega’s AM2 released Outrun in the arcades and gathered a huge worldwide following for several years. The game, practically the first of its type, was all about racing your nice Ferrari across several themed stages to reach your final destination before the strict timer runs out. Lose and your cute blonde girlfriend in the passenger seat will be furious, and we wouldn’t want that, right? Fast-Forward to the present, 18 years have passed and the wonderful AM2 have decided to finally bless us with a sequel to what is perhaps their greatest arcade legacy. Fresh for the modern gamer, yet keeping that classic feel, Outrun 2 is a very well executed game. It keeps all of those things that made the original so addictive and then updates the visuals and gameplay to the current standard expected of modern racing games. Make no mistake, this is definitely an Outrun game, AM2 have been very careful to make sure that every part of this game feels like the original and it has paid off.



There are several gameplay modes available for the console gamer; Outrun Arcade, Heart Attack, Time Attack, Challenge Mode and more. We have to thank AM2 for including so many extra ways to enjoy the game, otherwise the experience would all be over in a matter of hours. The Arcade mode is a direct rip of the arcade version of the game. You’ll start off on the Palm Beach course racing against the timer to get to the next to you’re next route. You get the choice at the end of each course to go left onto an easier stage or right onto a harder stage. After beating the timer across 5 stages you’ll reach the goal with a very happy girlfriend in the car. Sweet. Lose however, and she’ll batter you into a pulp for the bad ride. To top it off she’ll also have a go at you for not driving fast enough, drifting enough or for hitting traffic. Jeez, I mean as if the timer weren’t bad enough! As with the previous game, the arcade mode will offer you several routes depending on which branch you take which gives a total of 15 tracks to race across. This doesn’t seem like much and to be honest it isn’t. Each track will be roughly one minute in length meaning that to finish this mode it could only take 25 minutes of actual play to cover all five main routes. Obviously, you’ll need to put in some play to get good enough to actually finish each route within the time limit but even still there’s not much to be had in this mode even though it plays like a dream.

Thankfully, AM2 did add some extra modes to the mix. The Heart Attack mode is pretty much the same as the Arcade mode, however, you need to drive with some serious style to earn hearts from the nice lady passenger all adding to your total rank. You’ll be graded at the end of each stage of the race and then given an overall rating when you reach the goal. You still have the timer present so you’ll need to drift like crazy, avoid and overtake insane amounts of traffic and do this with speed. It makes for some addictive fun trying to get that AAA rank. We also have the Challenge mode. This for me was the best area of the game and was extremely good fun. There are 101 missions to undertake testing your driving skills to the limit in a variety of fun and challenging mini races. Some will have you staying over a certain speed on tight corners, others will have you drift constantly around an entire track and others will have 6 car knockout races. There are so many different play styles and it is mostly great fun with only the occasional mission becoming frustrating. The problem I found was that on every mission Sega keep the timer up. So this means you could be in first position for the whole race but if you make a single mistake you’ll still fail. It’s not a major problem and can be overlooked but it still pisses me off from time to time. You will get rewarded for your hard work in the challenge mode. By completing each mission you’ll receive unlockable bonus content such as mirrored tracks, soundtrack remixes and better Ferrari’s. This really is the key area that will keep gamers coming back for more and if this mode weren’t included I’d have easily knocked the overall score down by a hefty amount. You see, other than this mode there is very little to keep you replaying this game the arcade mode will last most gamers a couple of days tops.



Outrun 2 looks beautiful, there’s no denying that. Loaded with stunning background scenery, extremely detailed car models and slick environmental effects, Outrun really packs a meaty AAA visual punch. It looks as nice as any other racer out there and feels new whilst retaining the feel and atmosphere of the original 80’s classic, which is quite a feat by anyone’s book. All of the cars look as they should do and come in a variety of swanky colours. I’d say that the game probably features the most detailed Ferrari car models around, certainly better than the ones found in PGR2 for example. The different stages in the game are all gorgeous and distinctive, each having a particular theme. Real time lighting is used throughout the game giving realistic lens flares, reflections on the cars and as usual AM2 have supplied us with some gorgeous skies. The only real fault graphically is that there are several areas that are so complex that they cause huge amounts of slowdown that really does impact on the gameplay. Overall however, Outrun 2 is a visual pleasure and certainly one of the top tier games on the Xbox.

The game features some decidedly average sound however. The soundtrack is very reminiscent of the original game. Most of the music is remixed from the 80’s version and to be honest doesn’t sound much better than say an old MegaDrive (Genesis for you guys in the USA) soundtrack. This really is a game where the ability to create your own sound track is essential, however this isn’t an option Sega have decided to grant us. For those that do remember the old tunes and actually like them the soundtrack is great nostalgia, for everybody else it is merely a small collection of average quality 80’s style gaming tunes. The sound effects are for the most part great with most of the cars sounding how you would expect them to. Outrun 2, like many AM2 games really does sound very ‘arcadey’ with the usual louder than normal attention grabbing sound samples. There are a few annoying moments to be had with the voices of the girls which aren’t bad, just annoying, and there is one sound that is hideous beyond measure that you’ll hear every single time you hit a barrier and spin the car. This sound is just like something you would expect from a dodgy Scooby Doo or Flintstones cartoon. It staggers me that AM2 chose to actually use this atrocious mess of a sound.

With most games released on the Xbox, we look forward to a decent online experience and given how well Project Gotham 2 works online, I would have expected a similar quality experience in Outrun. Unfortunately, Outrun 2 simply doesn’t deliver the goods as well as it should do online. With several annoying glitches and the worst lag I’ve seen in an online game to date, Outrun’s online modes come across as being very sloppy to say the least. The actual experience would be really enjoyable if not for the serious lag. You race up to 5 other cars across several stages competing to be first across the finish line. Its actually really good fun when there is no lag, however, that will last only for a short amount of time each race. You’ll literally see cars skipping around the track, floating in mid-air, driving through walls and much more. You’ll glide straight through opponents’ cars only to find them appear behind you then reappear in front of you. This is very annoying; add to that some serious leader-board and ghost car glitches and you have a very shoddy online experience. One instance I recorded a new record and ghost. I went to watch the ghost only to find it had recorded it over a different route and my car was driving in and out of traffic, water, walls, and over the edge of a bridge. I’m hoping you guys can see the problems with that. There is no excuse for this lag other than a lack of effort on AM2’s part. Had this been glitch and lag free, it would have been one of the must-have Live enabled games as it stands I can’t stand to play it online.

So what do I like and dislike about this game? I love the way it plays and how smooth the cars are to control. I love the extra challenge modes, which can for the most part, be more fun than the main game. I love the graphics and the overall presentation and I love being able to slide my car around several corners in a row with little effort. I don’t however like the dodgy frame-rate in places and the awful lag online. I’m not keen on the music and I despise the spinout sound effect. The good definitely outweighs the bad, that’s for sure, however, the overall experience is spoiled by a few niggling details that could have been solved with a short delay and a little more testing.




Article By: Phil Haymes