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A question about Outrun / Outrun 2 / C2C

dumpster

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Why do you like Outrun games?  

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Hideous Kojima

Hideous Kojima

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2 hours ago, Fletch said:

 

I have no room but how much do they want for it?

 

 

Oh, I've tried that, it seems that with all their arcade machines they're happy to let them be just knackered enough that people put their coins in, see it's broken and walk away. 

 

I mean they even closed off their entire second floor which was a soft play area and second arcade and just built a new play area downstairs because it was "cheaper and easier" than getting the original maintained or removed according to an employee. It's all just sat up there, disused. Machines like The Simpsons, Rolling Thunder and Virtua Fighter. I've offered money and to sort transport but I just get a "nah". Current consensus is they think any enquiries are competitors trying to get stuff off them. Dunno though.

 

Ah, that arcade. Back in the day it had all sorts. Sega rally, RoboCop, Shadow warriors, paperboy, Moonwalker, outrun, laser ghost, a full pinball section...

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S0L

S0L

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5 hours ago, Dirty Harry Potter said:

@S0L Would love to know - is the Ferrari license THAT expensive to make it profitable?  Sega/ Ferrari profit share? There must be more than one Outrun fan that works for the company...

 

Would LOVE a new Outrun  :wub:

 

1zs_OD.gif

 

Honestly, I'm not sure. I try and stay away from the money side of the licenses!

 

I think on the original OutRun2, Forza had the Ferrari license at the time, but as it was an Xbox exclusive and Microsoft were involved in fetching the game to home console, they somehow sub-licensed it. It was a long time ago!

 

SEGA would need to sign off on any updated version of C2C or indeed an OutRun3. It is their IP at the end of the day. Trust me there is no lack of OutRun fans in the Western side of the SEGA org, it's still something we discuss with them regularly. 

 

There was a debate about switching the car to a different brand. But to me, again, it starts eating away at what makes the game what it is. 

 

Let's say you switched to Lamborghini. Maybe? But we'd need an open topped one. Feels like the closest potential brand that might work.

Porsche might be weird, thanks to Turbo OutRun, I see the Porsche as the Ferrari's rival...

Aston Martin or Lotus, suddenly it'd feel a bit James Bond I think. 

Audi or BMW, even if the rest of the game stayed the same, I think it'd actively detract. There's nothing wrong with those cars, but you lose some of the aspiration.

 

If you look back over the history of OutRun, there are times where they did indeed move away from the Ferrari, OutRunners is one example someone upthread said, but they still had the classic almost Ferrari. 

 

OutRun2019, completely Ferrari-less, felt like a much lesser game. 

OutRun Europa, blasphemy of blasphemy you rode a BIKE and a speed boat.

 

And this is it. Each change you make, like let's say you went open world, would make it less OutRun. Every step dilutes it. 

 

Else if you don't care about the Ferrari's, go play something like Horizon Chase. It's a perfectly fine game, but...

 

I'm sure at some point we were discussing with the SEGA Europe Arcade guys (who did the All-Star Racing Arcade version) and one idea we'd had was to add a horn since who doesn't like to drive along beeping a horn, very Italian. From an arcade immediacy having a big fat button in the centre of the wheel made sense as you've got to appeal to a wide audience. It'd get the traffic patterns to change for example to do more advanced time trial runs. But was it very OutRun? Seems a bit strange to go on that fantasy drive and spend most of it honking away like a lunatic. 

 

Maybe we should just put the Goose in there instead :P OutGoose!

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dumpster

dumpster

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I think Sol is right that having Outrun without Ferraris dilutes things.... A little.   But for me, the industry faces a choice - use licenced cars and face a future where the licence expires and the game disappears, or don't use a licence and have a game that lives forever. In a world where the  new Xbox is backward compatible and future compatible with any new xbox model, not having real cars is a small price to pay. 

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spatular

spatular

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3 hours ago, S0L said:

Else if you don't care about the Ferrari's, go play something like Horizon Chase. It's a perfectly fine game, but...

 

does this get better if you get further in or something? i didn't give it much of a chance to be fair but the handling seemed a bit rubbish compared to outrun 2.

 

sure the ferraris and blue skies are cool, but racing games are all about the handling (and the tracks) and outrun 2 has some flipping brilliant arcade handling. i can't think of much to match it, maybe just ridge racer.

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S0L

S0L

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I'm not sure, I didn't play it for long either! 

 

My point is that OutRun relies on a specific set of ingredients that makes it what it is. You've got...

 

The aspiration. You, the car, the girl and the journey. You'll notice they're all ideals, even the weather conditions are right based on the course design. It's a feel good experience.

 

The gameplay. Short tightly controlled courses matched to handling that's designed specifically for them. The option to make a choice at the end of each one to take an easier or harder route. Usually tied to visual reward.

 

Simplicity but with depth. It's easy to pick up and relatively easy to complete. It's takes just 5 minutes to finish. But as you go back to improve your run and time you discover how precise you've got to be and accurate to claw seconds off an overall run.

 

Presentation matters. Bright, colourful, clear, perfect music for driving, essentially a bottled holiday.

 

Many games have some of these, but rarely do you get them all. It's what makes OutRun what it is VS Horizon Chase which wants to emulate OutRun, but doesn't quite get there.

 

It's totally born of arcades too. You need to have that quick and easy to grasp gameplay and the looks and presentation to pull people in. Then you want them out of the seat for the next player to insert coins.

 

Compare it to something like Forza Horizon 4 which is the closest modern arcade racer and you can see that DNA there, just Forza has such a wealth of content and a diverse set of cars that you can't really ever get the same purity of track design and handling, but then you have offer people a lot of game for £40.

 

I think that's why it'd be tricky to do something like OutRun3 as unless you do it for more of £10 download title where you can constrain the content and really deep dive and replicate the purity that it needs to have, else you'd be pushed to try and compete with Forza Horizon purely on perceived value.

 

Can you see yet why it's tricky to get off the ground? Convincing a publisher to do a triple A quality game with a limited amount of content with a major vehicle license for a low price release against large and developed franchises isn't an easy ask :)

 

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Nick R

Nick R

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I don't particularly care about car brands, so it doesn't matter to me whether they are officially Ferraris or Generic Red Sports Cars. If it's a choice between having a great racing game with made-up manufacturer names, or never getting that game released because its creators insisted that the official licence was a deal-breaker, I'd go for the former.

 

 

But I admit Outrun would still lose something, knowing that the licensed brand used to be there but isn't any more. It'd be an ever-present mild irritation in the back of my mind whenever I played the game.

 

For me, official brand licences work a bit like flavour text, because they can enhance a game despite not having any effect at all on the gameplay. Imagine if for some obscure legal reason a Halo remake couldn't use the level name "The Silent Cartographer", so instead the mission had to be called "Find the Map Room" or "Level Four". Or if Dark Souls had called one of its bosses "Lava Monster" instead of "Ceaseless Discharge". It wouldn't change the game mechanics in any way at all, but changing from an evocative name to a mundane one would lose some of the atmosphere.

 

 

 

Of course there are examples of games benefitting from developers being forced to invent their own brand names. For example, the made-up vehicle names suit GTA's world a lot better than licensed car models would. And GoldenEye's "RC-P90" rolls off the tongue much better than the real gun name "FN-P90", doesn't it? :P

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spatular

spatular

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1 hour ago, S0L said:

Can you see yet why it's tricky to get off the ground? Convincing a publisher to do a triple A quality game with a limited amount of content with a major vehicle license for a low price release against large and developed franchises isn't an easy ask :)

 

 

yeah racing games, especially arcade ones seem like a hard sell in the first place :(

 

i'm just sad there aren't really any games with great arcade handling like outrun 2/ridge racer (or are there and i'm missing them?) i'm less bothered about the other stuff but i can see how it all contributes to make outrun what it is. dangerous driving had decent slidy handling but all the other cars and crashing stuff is not really what i'm looking for. forza horizon is ace but it's more pgr style handling not all out arcade - which is great but in a different way. 

 

 

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peeveen

peeveen

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When you're playing Gran Turismo or Forza, with the photo modes, garages, customization and endless car-porn loading screens, sure, the makes and models of cars might matter if you're into that sort of thing.

When you're playing Outrun, you get about a second to think about it before you're hurtling down the road. It's a sporty-looking box with wheels after that. Somebody please make Outrun 3.

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Qazimod

Qazimod

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Damnit guys.

 

PjVbekh.jpg

 

Dug out my 2006 disc again and actually got it running without the compatibility errors I was dreading. (It's windowed here as I wanted to get out of potential crashes easily. :P )

 

I know there's stuff I probably need to do with FTX et al, but right now it's just nice to have on my desktop again...

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