Oooooooookay then! So remember how for these past couple days, I've had all this talk of doing some writeups to shill SEGA stuff to the people of Smashboards dot com? Well, today, I'm pushing out the first writeup. I thought that hey, with all this complaining I do about a lot of people in this community only giving a damn about scrimblos and super surface-level stuff when it comes to SEGA, I might as well try to alleviate that ever so slightly! (Now, that doesn't mean I won't ever cover scrimblos in the future, but they'll be cool scrimblos). So come with me, on this journey of indeterminate length through SEGA history, for the inaugural installment of
Speed Weed Shills SEGA ****!
And I think it's important that I make sure to choose a good game to start off on. And it just so happens that there is a SEGA game out there that isn't too overwhelming of a first game to cover, helps us dive right into aspects of SEGA as a developer that will continue to be relevant as we go on, and is a very iconic and important game to their history while still being a bit far out of the apparent frame of reference a lot of people here seem to have. So basically the perfect first game for me to cover. That's right - if you're doing some writeups meant to shill non-Sonic SEGA stuff, then I sincerely believe that there is no better game to start off on.....than
OutRun.
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Now then, I'm not going to act like I'm the only person here who's familiar with OutRun. I'm sure there are plenty of people here who are familiar with this lovely game, but I'm sure there are also some people here who, well, aren't. This is for them! Hey you, standing there, if you consider yourself to know jack**** about SEGA,
this is for you!
OutRun is a "driving game" released by SEGA for arcades in 1986. First things first, ya can't talk about OutRun without mentioning the fact that this game was the work of Yu Suzuki and his team at Studio 128, which can basically be seen as a predecessor of sorts to the AM2 division at SEGA. Now, it's important to note that both Yu Suzuki and AM2 (especially if we're to include their previous incarnations as Studio 128 and R&D 8 in here) are absolute
legends of SEGA history. Quite possibly the most important developer and dev team in the company's history respectively, and we'll be seeing them plenty of times if this goes on long enough, because they have a ton of other games that are either iconic to SEGA as well or would be just plain fun to talk about - from Hang-On to After Burner to Power Drift to Space Harrier to Virtua Racing to Virtua Fighter to Virtua Cop to DAYTONAAAAAAAAA to Fighting Vipers to Shenmue to even **** like Rent A Hero and Border Break. So yeah. We'll be seeing them a lot if this goes on.
And Yu's involvement really is important to discuss here because I want to delve into this game's development. So it was the mid-80s, and Yu Suzuki was already pumping out banger after banger at SEGA, helping them usher in their arcade golden age with iconic classics like Hang-On and Space Harrier, which had two big things going for them:
A. They didn't just have any old arcade cabinets, but rather, they made use of what SEGA themselves came to dub as "taikan" cabinets: a special kind of sit-down arcade cabinets that moved around a lot and focused on being big bombastic experiences that immersed the player in the game. For example, Hang-On's cabinet was shaped like a motorbike and made it so that people playing it had to control the game as if they were actually riding one. Another rather famous example is the R360 cabinet for G-LOC, which is hilariously over-the-top - as the name implies, it's a spherical cabinet that's designed to actually spin people around on 360 degrees as they're playing the game
B. These games made use of a very special little thing called Super Scaler technology, which used sprite scaling to give the games a sense of speed and a 3D look and feel
OutRun also employs both of these things, and is perhaps the most iconic SEGA game to use taikans and super scalers and what have you. This one in particular has a cabinet designed to make it feel like you're actually driving a car.
Yu intitially got the idea for this game from the 1981 movie
The Cannonball Run, which focuses on a cross-country car race through the USA. He planned on having the game follow the same course as the movie - only to realize that it didn't quite have the variety in scenery that he was hoping for. So what did he do? He got himself a camera and travelled to Europe, driving all around the continent and filming the local scenery. After going back to Japan, he used that scenery as inspiration for the game's settings. Worth noting that Yu was a big fan of Ferrari supercars, and OutRun does feature a car that's strikingly similar to a Ferrari Testarossa, to the point that the general public have accepted it as being just that. Now, this led to a whole bunch of licensing mumbo-jumbo that I don't really feel like delving into right now.
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So the premise of OutRun itself is simply that you're a Cool 80s Dude who has a Ferrari, and with your girlfriend by your side, you drive through all kinds of locations, while having to reach the goal before the timer runs out. You'll go through 5 "stages" in one playthrough, but the game has split paths at the end of each "stage", making it so there is a grand total of 15 sections in the game, along with 5 possible endings.
Yu Suzuki has always insisted on OutRun being more of a "driving game" than a racing game, and that's an apt way of describing what made the game so unique - compared to other racing games at the time, OutRun was a more laid-back experience. Despite the timer and all that, I think the main point of the game was always just "haha you drive the car!" And let me stress that there's nothing wrong with that, again, it made OutRun stand out as a unique experience at the time.
Another very very important part of OutRun is its music. Composed by legendary SEGA composer Hiroshi Kawaguchi, the game stood out for being perhaps the clearest example of SEGA's overall style when it came to the music of their big arcade games of the time, in that they didn't just make simple melodies to go along with the gameplay, they wrote tracks as if they were, like, actual songs. The music in this game was a lot longer and more varied and complex than what most other games had at the time, and has gone on to be extremely popular and a core part of the game's identity. As such, here's the game's legendary soundtrack:
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Magical Sound Shower
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Splash Wave
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Passing Breeze
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Last Wave (the results screen theme)
So again, OutRun is a very very iconic SEGA game. It's a legitimate contender for the title of most iconic arcade game they've ever made IMO. It's a super duper popular game that was a huge hit in arcades and a pioneer in video game graphics, audio, and arcade cabinet design. The soundtrack in particular is so iconic that it went on to inspire a whole-ass genre of music called synthwave, which has also been referred to as "outrun music". Yeah.
The game's available on, like, everything under the sun so go give it a try if you haven't, it's an all-time classic!
Now then....what about Smash?
Yeah I feel like I gotta still connect this to Smash somehow, so how do I feel about OutRun content in Smash? Although a playable character probably wouldn't happen for pretty obvious reasons, I will say that I do believe OutRun is absolutely deserving of
some form of content in Smash, considering how iconic it is to SEGA and arcade game history. If we ever get misc. third-party stages, then tbh, an OutRun stage would be at the top of my list of things I'd like to see. But considering how iconic the music in particular is, I really feel like the best way of representing OutRun in Smash would just be to include its soundtrack. Honestly, Bayo got to come with her game's remix of After Burner, throw the Climax Mix of Splash Wave in there too while you're at it!
So there we go! That's my first big SEGA writeup, and we'll see if I get to do more. I really did feel like OutRun was the perfect game to start off on, and if you weren't that knowledgeable about this game, then I hope you've learned something of value!
As for the next game I'll cover, I'd actually like to turn to my fellow SEGAchads on this thread for suggestions. I have some things in mind, but I'm not quite sure about which way to go. I'm mainly looking for a game that also makes for a good one to cover early on, while being different enough from OutRun to really allow us to explore a whole nother part of SEGA's history.
Bye, nerds!
Better than having outright stupid logic.
His Sakurai Presents would be 1/2 trying to explain Kingdom Hearts lore alone.
Everything's gotta be American. Post the One Piece 4Kids intro.
