OutRun, the coast-to-coast legend - Originally published on 1UP - April 13, 2009

OutRun is an arcade legend, on par with the biggest names I've featured yet on the blog, and possibly the biggest title I'll be naming in the series. It was an easily accessible racing game not built for the sim community. It was an arcade racer through and through, whose bright graphics, multiple tracks and questionable physics appealed to everyone. My favorite version of the game was not the original title, but it's spiritual successor Outrunners.

Both games more or less played the same. You were driving a supercar in a trans-global race. This was one of the first racers to use gradations in the game rather than have tracks be completely flat. Drivers would take hills and not be able to see the path ahead, that level of uncertainty was exhilarating especially while doing well over 100 MPH. The drifting was subtle in OutRun but full out in Outrunners. Cars were large and cartoonish and unlike the other racing games of the time were not hung up on realism. It was the fantasy aspect that I think pulled most gamers to this title. If you were traveling top speed in OutRun and ran into a wall then the driver and passenger would get launched out of the car as it tumbled and land back inside by unseen forces. Unlike Pole Position where the slightest bump would cause your car to explode the racing featured in OutRun was more about the experience of driving and having a good time. Cars could jostle for position and trade paint without fear of game-ending explosions.

The timed courses were laid out with multiple paths. At the end of each checkpoint you were presented with a fork in the road. This opened up the racing experience in all sorts of ways. Players were no longer limited to replay the same tracks over and over as they could experiment and go for bigger scores and new experiences on each play through. Given a choice was a rare commodity in racing. The driving experience had become an unspoken narrative. Even though there was never a break in the action visual clues let us know which part of the world the stage was set in. Caricatured parts of New York, Paris and Egypt all popped up. It was a celebration of the international racing brotherhood. Yu Suzuki designed the original experience around the Ferrari Testarossa. It was an exotic car that lent itself to this type of experience. The name Ferrari alone conjures up images of excess, luxury and horsepower, it was made downright mythological by Suzuki. However as much as I liked cars I was never fond of Suzuki's obsession with the Ferrari. I felt that the world of cars was too big to be hung up on only one ride.

Outrunners was very much a second-coming of OutRun. The graphics of the '92 release were far superior to the original from '86. This game even featured the familiar Testarossa and her driver and passenger. Joining them were all sorts of other drivers and cars in the competition, each designed for a certain type of car fan. From an exotic Shelby Cobra-like car to a Volkswagen Beetle and even a big pink Cadillac. This game simply expanded on all of the things that made the original OutRun so much fun. However Outrunners was developed by Sega's AM1, not Suzuki's AM2. To many it could not compare to the original. Say what they will but I loved it.

Outrunners was beautiful. The cars each handled slightly differently, as would be expected. Discovering the nuances of each ride was what kept me coming back. As was the breakneck speed of the title. Sliding the car completely sideway through a series of stone archways, "threading the needle" in the most awesome sense of the word or dipping past the checkpoint just ahead of my brothers and friends as we played this in the arcade. This game was responsible for plenty of great memories in the 90's. The more that played on the linked cabinets the better. The details of a radio built into each cabinet was nice. Each station played an updated version of the classic OutRun music and players were free to switch stations on the fly. The titles would scroll by the LCD of the dashboard. How many arcade games ever went that extra mile?

The official sequel wouldn't come out until 2003. By the time of OutRun 2 AM2 had grown by leaps and bounds, learning everything they could from their polygon legacy. It was a fun game that returned the series to its roots. All of the cars in the game were Ferraris and the graphics were stunning. I couldn't help but imagine that this was the type of experience that Suzuki had dreamed about giving arcade-goers a generation ago, now he finally had arcade machines and consoles with enough processing power to deliver it. As it turned out the Xbox title was not the last we would see of this classic racer. Sega is putting their finishing touches on OutRun Online Arcade. Fans around the world can't wait to relive all those great memories through the classic experience and even updated versions of their favorite OutRun songs.

While OutRun wasn't my favorite Sega racer ever it was still pretty damn good. There was a studio out there to make an arcade game that was every bit as memorable as the best Sega racers, including OutRun. However their name wasn't Namco and this studio was never known for making racers at all. Come back next time to see what I'm talking about.

Were you a fan of OutRun? If so I'd like to hear about it. Let me know in the comments section please. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

My favorite Games of All-Time #13: Top Skater - Originally published on 1UP - May 26, 2006

When I think of Top Skater little beads of sweat build on my brow. So much went into that game that I honestly have no idea how Sega managed to pull it all together. In short I am humbled by the design.

I tip my hat, I bow my head... any analogy you can think of as a sign of respect. Top Skater is one of my most beloved games and also one of the most overlooked influential titles of all-time. Top Skater begat the Sega action sports legacy, just look to my desktop picture to see what's I'm talking about. My desktop picture is important to me for many reasons. Not the least of which was because it allowed some common ground to talk with Jim of Pennywise.

Before I start talking about Cookie, Ken-ta or Jill. Before the big-name sponsors that lent their names to the game. Even before I talk about the revolutionary control set-up I have to mention one thing. Atari's 1986 arcade smash hit 720 (degrees) was the original arcade skateboarding game. It pushed the genre through its dynamic control and punk-themed music by "Faceplant". 720 is partially responsible for almost every skateboarding game to date.

10 years after 720 Sega's Top Skater rewrote the book on skate games. True to the legacy of other titles in the Sega arcade amusement (AM) groups. AM1 (later renamed WOW Entertainment) created the only other Sega arcade game on my list, the Ocean Hunter. AM2, the most famous unit under the direction of Yu Suzuki was responsible for Outrun, Virtua Fighter, Daytona and scores of other instant classics. AM3 was renamed Hitmaker in 2000 and was responsible for Top Skater and Ollie King. AM 11 renamed AV created Ollie King. Sega's platform developers Smilebit created the Jet Set Radio series... now you are all caught up.

Hitmaker was on pace for something special when the control scheme was revealed. Top Skater used a skateboard for the arcade interface rather than a joystick. Players had to stand upright on the cabinet and not only turn the skateboard from side to side to change direction, but also tilt the board to carve a turn and even slap down the tail to "ollie" or the nose to "nollie" and catch air.

A skater gained points and speed by successfully performing ramp jumps and collecting time tokens. Okay, so the experience was not a 100% accurate representation of skateboarding but then again what is? Top Skater was a downhill racer that did feature a lot of tricks based from real life.

A skater could grind on ledges and rails. They could even ollie and perform wallrides on billboards. The physics for gaining speed were semi-realistic. A player had to find the fastest line down the level while at the same time looking for ramps and shortcuts that would reward them with speed. Players that carved hard angles onto ramps and ollied at the lip were rewarded with bigger and higher airs. Those that managed to carve a fullpipe with enough speed could actually go a complete 360 degrees upside down. Special moves, mind bending animations and massive points were the icing on the cake.

If I could pin down the one thing that made Top Skater memorable it would have to be catching air out of halfpipes. Gamers that knew how to carve the gigantic snake runs could keep going perpetually higher and faster on the halfipe. These airs became longer, trickier and more dynamic. Special animations accompanied these airs. Some of the tricks based on actual skateboarding and a few based on snowboarding. The question you may be asking is "so what?" We've seen tons of these moves in other skateboarding, inline and snowboarding games. Why would Top Skater hold a place in my top game list above them?

For the simple reason that Top Skater broke taboo. They animated the air out of a halfpipe by crossing the horizon line. As an aside; some people get motion sickness while playing FPS games. This is because their eyes tell their brain that they are moving, while their inner-ear tells the brain that they are not. This mix of information causes them to feel queasy. One of the things that most video editors, animators and game designers do not do is cross the horizon line. If the horizon line is tilted it can make mild motion sickness worse. Like watching the ocean pitch from side to side while on a boat causes you to get sea sick.

With the exception of air combat sims, most games never break, let alone slightly tilt the horizon line. Watch the video for Warhawk and then the one for Snoopy vs. the Red Baron. Do you notice that the Snoopy game allows the camera to pitch and roll with the plane? The camera crosses the horizon plane and gives the player a sense of vertigo. This is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to the Snoopy game more than Warhawk. Well, that and about a $560 price difference.

Back to the game on my list!

Top Skater doesn't just cross the horizon line, it wraps it up into a little ball and throws it right out the window. The skater will fly out of the ramp and contort themselves in various positions when performing "A" and "S" class tricks like the Alley McTwist. When the skater does this the camera will pan back and rotate with the animation. Often times leaving the player not knowing which end is up until they reenter the ramp. For those few moments we are with the skater, we get to see the world through their eyes.

No game before or since has ever done it as well. Not SSX, not 1080 and none of the Tony Hawk games. In fact Dave Stohl with Activision and Scott Pease with Neversoft Entertainment said that Top Skater was one of the biggest influences in the creation of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The downhill levels in THPS could attest to that. After eight years the Hawk franchise returns to its roots with Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. The game will be released almost 10 years after Top Skater and a full 20 years after 720.

But this isn't where my praise of Top Skater ends. I just said that the camera was the biggest highlight for me. It isn't the only reason Top Skater was a memorable game and earns a place on this list. Top Skater also features some unique characters, each with their own personality and trick library.

These characters not only represented the archetypical skaters, they also had names like Keith, Jake and Ash. The skaters were even sponsored by shoe companies like Vans, eS and etnies. The soundtrack was provided entirely by Pennywise, the Orange County punk band with tremendous street credit. These little details helped round out the world that the game was set in. The character models were detailed for their time and did resemble skaters from the mid to late 90's. Hitmaker made great use of the then new Model-2 Arcade board when designing the levels as well.

Both the normal and expert skate parks had their own look and feel. The levels resembled a big-time race in an exotic local that could have taken place, if 100 foot ramp jumps were normal for skaters. True to the design in other Sega games like Daytona 2, the levels in Top Skater made you wish that places like this really existed. Stadium length tracks where skaters could grind and wallride with reckless abandon while moving in and out of snake runs and jumping distances that would make Danny Way jealous.

As if the game wasn't already a fun experience Hitmaker hid a number of things in Top Skater. One of these things were hidden characters, Alex the surfer and P-Nut the bodyboarder. Wait, bodyboarder and surfer? That's right! These characters floated above the air, could paddle to gain speed and even featured their own special tricks.

Top Skater also had a level hidden within the Expert course. This level was filled with ramps and bowls and known better as the Freestyle course.

The characters could skate regular (lead with the left foot) or goofy (lead with the right) based on their statistics, players could put in a code to change their stance and thus performance in the game.

Top Skater even had a code that allowed skaters to appear "super-deformed," that is have large heads, hands and feet and look like giant kids. This style of character later appeared in another Sega game called Virtua Fighter Kids. The "Kid Code" even worked on Alex and P-Nut.

Every detail that went into Top Skater forever changed the face of action sports games. The game was just about as balanced and innovative as any game on my list. The control, animation, sound, music, level and character design were way ahead of their time. Many of the hidden features went on to be copied in future games not only by Sega, but by the rest of the industry.

Three years before Tony Hawk's Pro Skater featured a couple of downhill levels with rails to grind, giant halfpipes to air out of and ramps to jump, four years before kid mode appeared in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and five years before Kelly Slater the surfer appeared in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 there was Top Skater.

Top Skater began a legacy that not only carried over to every other Sega action sports game but also the rest of the industry. For every flying skateboard that you see from now on, for every Tony Hawk clone that has come out we can pay homage to the creator. Top Skater has earned its place on my list. It will remain as one of my favorite games of all-time.

I’d like to hear your personal top-10, top-20, top fighting games, top sports games, or top games in any genre. Let me know in the comments section please. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

My favorite Games of All-Time #16: The Ocean Hunter - Originally published on 1UP - April 28, 2006

Before we explore the Ocean Hunter we have to set the stage. I'm going to go back in time, seven years ago, the beginning of the end. Back to a time when Sega was the undisputed king of the arcade! In 1998 Sega had developed a slew of games for the Model 3 board. Daytona USA 2, Dirt Devils, Emergency Call Ambulance, L.A. Machineguns (sequel to N.Y. Gunblade), Magical Truck Adventure, Ocean Hunter, Spike Out, Star Wars Trilogy and Sega Bass Fishing. Many of these titles are classics in their own right and I have even made mention of Spike Out and Daytona 2 a few blogs back. By far 1998 was one of Sega's most creative years.

Sega had several arcade divisions back-in-the-day. The most famous being Yu Suzuki's AM2. Less known were Kazunori Tsukamoto and Rikiya Nakagawa of AM1. The team at AM1 crafted one of the most overlooked arcade gems ever, the Ocean Hunter! Ocean Hunter was a great game from a great company. It would even hold up well against the best of Yu Suzuki.

All arcade titles interest me, some more than others. The more creative and immersive the story behind the game the more likely I'll become a fan. I'm not fond of shooters like Virtua Cop or Gunblade N.Y. so it was odd that I would say Sega's best game in 98 was a shooter called the Ocean Hunter (OH).

There are two types of cabinets for the OH, try to find the sit down cabinet with the giant display. Read the Boss FAQ if you want to know what you're getting into. Have a seat, make yourself comfortable, become familiar with the controller. Appreciate the time and effort that AM1 went into the design of just the cabinet itself. The Japanese are industrious people. OH is testament to AM1's commitment to detail.

Many arcade games come with some backstory. "You are in a race" or "you are fighting for your life" or even "you are a pro wrestler." Like all forms of entertainment there is some suspension of disbelief, a chance for you to let yourself get caught up in the virtual world. The Ocean Hunter has one of the best plots I've ever read. Taken from the Japanese flyer for the game.

"In the Seven Seas of the planet, seven terrifying monsters lurk... a new civilization is flourishing, but in the oceans giant monsters attack both boats and harbors with increasing frequency. Frightened for their lives, people put a bounty for the monsters. This game is the story of two young people who head out to defeat the horrible creatures in the seven seas..."

Sounds straightforward right? At least it is a little more back story than is provided in the English flyer. Both flyers are at the Arcade Flyers Database. The story and art from the flyer are mirrored in the art and direction of the game itself.

Visually the game is impressive. Graphics aside the game has a unique design. The world created is highly-stylized, somewhat storybook, and almost Victorian. The names used in the game like Poseidon, Leviathan, the Kraken are mythological and biblical. The ships, science and clothing are fantastic... along the art and fiction of writers like Jules Verne and Alan Moore. Some of you might know it better as a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-type of world. I'd say OH is a watered-down (no pun intended) version of the LoEG world, scaled to focus on just the adventure.

What sucks for me is that the only images available online are rather grainy and dark. The closest arcade to me that had the game was about 38 miles away, I'm not sure if they even have it any more as I write this. Most of my experiences with the game are from memory. So please bear with me and try to use your imagination as I bring the Ocean Hunter back to life.

Most of the gameplay revolves around you shooting mini harpoons from your sea scooter. If you've ever played a shooter in the arcade then you know that you must face wave after wave of enemies. You are usually on an invisible rail dictating which direction you are going. In this case each level is filled with dangerous uniquely-named fish, shark, rays, jellyfish and eels. There is a mid-boss consisting of a larger fish and eventually an actual boss consisting of a massive creature. Most of the game is frenetic shooting but power-ups and health recharge items (hidden in the game) require a much more refined shot. The bosses can be defeated by finding and exploiting vital areas. None of that is new to arcade shooters. The total package is what sets the Ocean Hunter apart from the other shooters.

When you start the game you are given a cinematic featuring the same story on the flyer. You could skip the cinemas in the game by pressing the triggers on the controller. That would be taking away one of the most important components to the game. If you get a chance try and go through all the cinematics and enjoy the story.

 

As one of the bounty hunters it is your job to stop the monsters of the ocean bent on destroying ships and sailors alike. The characters are unnamed, the one with the long hair is Player 1, the one with short blue hair is Player 2. I'm certain somebody at AM1 (eventually renamed Overworks and then Sega WOW) knows their true names. Your vehicle and weapon is a nifty, repeat-action harpoon gun and underwater scooter. You don't actually get to steer the scooter, only aim the harpoon.

The "Seven Seas" in question are not based on our oceans. In this game the seas and the fish within are unique to each level. There is the Baroque Sea, the Luna Sea, the Tartarus Deep, Texcoco Great Lake, the North Sea, West Sea and Panthalassa: the Sea of Evil. Each environment is special. In one stage you fight within a great sunken ship. In tight spaces shooting quickly advancing eels and avoiding falling debris. In another level you will be taken to the arctic and end up fighting underneath icebergs where deep sea divers are pinned in by sharks.

 

The level designs are great and the detail is all there. Ahuizotl is the monster harassing the waters off Texcoco Great Lake. The lake has a sunken city, designed after Mayan or Aztec ruins. It is easy to get lost in the scenery. If you spend too much time looking at the details in the game you'll end up surrounded by piranha and other underwater nasties.

Your transportation between levels is pretty neat. Your base of operations is a mobile semi-submersible. A large bathysphere (Google it) attached to a balloon and driven by a propeller. A cable drops you into the ocean when you go deep sea diving (on later levels). One can assume it also pulls you up between levels. Still it's one hell of an invention that would make Da Vinci proud.

 

The bosses themselves are a sight to behold. Many of the creatures are based on myth and legend, a few of them are based on dinosaurs like the Plesiosaur and Megalodon.

It isn't enough that you have to fight giant bosses for money. A dinosaur would fight on instinct and run away when shot with a harpoon machine gun. The bosses in the Ocean Hunter are relentless. They chase you, cut you off and corner you. They are tougher than hell and require hundreds of shots to fell. You quickly learn why the bounties on each monster are so high.

 

The last boss in the game is no joke. He, (it?) has several transformations. You know this wouldn't be any type of shooter if at least one boss didn't transform multiple times. The "Sea of Evil" is not as ominous as it sounds. Sure every monster that you have faced turns up there, but the water is not boiling blood (that would have been truly evil!). The boss Dagon is a giant frog-humanoid that hops around the ruins of what looks like Atlantis. After taking enough hits he transforms (rather stands up) into Poseidon. If you dish out enough damage to Poseidon he transforms a third time, his legs fuze into a tail (and even grows a third eye on his forehead) and is renamed Rahab, a gigantic merman.

Shoot with everything you have and make sure you have plenty of credits. This game, like all great shooters, can be a quarter cruncher. When you defeat Rahab you hit the big payday but you are also left with the final cinema before the credits.

Rahab was angry at humanity for polluting his waters. It was then that he sent out his bosses (represented as the fingers on his hand) to reclaim the ocean. Although you started out protecting the ships in the end you have claimed the bounty for creatures, and gods that existed millennia before man. You have destroyed the only ones trying to protect the oceans.

The moral is a heavy pill but the adventure was well worth it. AM1 should be proud of their work and the fact that years later I am still thinking about the game. If only I had an arcade cabinet to call my own... If only Sega had taken that extra step with the IP they created... can you imagine?

The Ocean Hunter could have come out on consoles. It could have been a sister title to a game like Panzer Dragoon or perhaps it could have been like Phantasy Star.

Space may be the last great adventure but it means very little in a videogame. In terms of mechanics not much separates Final Fantasy from Phantasy Star. A turn-based fighting system, an epic plot, players can customize their character... none of that is new. Break that third dimension though. To be able to quest (with direct control) into the sky and underground as well as on land and we have something special. GTA is not a fantasy title but being able to steal and use cars and fighter jets is about a fantastic premise as I've ever heard.

For an RPG, riding, fighting and adventuring on horseback bends some of that reality. Riding on a dragon in all three dimensions opens up the possibilities of the game-playing experience. Fall off that dragon and gravity does us in. Water allows us to experience the same things and more. We can float, we can sink and we can swim in all three dimensions. We can glide on the surface of water or power through it. Very few people have ever seen the bottom of the ocean, who needs outer space when the most exotic and unique forms of life can be found in the big blue? The game also reminds me of an important part of gaming history that is lost for many people.

Arcades were the place for gamers to hang out and socialize. The best players became mini-celebs at the arcade, the social order from school did not apply there. There was no internet to hide behind, people could not be anonymous posters on a message board. If a player showed up to an arcade, and talked shit about the other visitors then they had two options, prove they were something amazing, or leave before they got a beat-down. The rule was the bigger the city the bigger the arcade. The best players drove, or took the bus. Going from arcade to arcade looking for competition. This competition caused beefs to build up between some audiences, with some rivalries stretching coast-to-coast. New visitors were however always welcome at the arcade. That sense of community among active gamers is not as strong today despite chat programs within MMORPG, Playstation, and Xbox Live games.

Before 60" HD Plasma Displays and 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound were in home entertainment centers there was only one place to enjoy games on an epic scale. The arcade was always the home to the biggest displays, flashiest marquees and even custom built cabinets. For 25 cents a gamer did not only play a game, they were treated to an experience. The arcade experience was akin to watching a movie in a theater, the home console just couldn't compete.

Arcade cabinets were a unique beast. Some cabinets were shaped like cars or motorcycles. Some surrounded the player and could flip and rotate a full 360 degrees. The control was not a pad but an actual joystick or steering wheel, the buttons firmer and more responsive than anything the console makers could invent. Some cabinets had players sitting, pedaling a bike, rowing a boat, firing a shotgun or balancing on skis. Can you imagine a God of War game that required you to actually swing blades of chaos at the screen? These were the experiences missing when arcade treasures were translated to the consoles. Many did a good job but none could ever capture the magic of the arcade.

Not many gamers today know or remember the golden era of arcades. The era when arcade games meant more to the game industry than consoles or PC titles. When the arcade crowd was a genuine community, gamers shared common experiences, competed, strategized and had fun all in the same place. The internet and booming console market soon took gamers out of circulation, took away that sense of community and just about destroyed the arcade. At least for today we will raise a glass to one of the last great arcade games.

The Ocean Hunter, like the best arcade games, was bigger than life. By sitting down at a deluxe cabinet players got a sense of scale, a sense of awe. This game was anything but ordinary. By watching the story unfold, reacting at every bump and turn in the game, studying the detail that went into every level, we could tell that the game was much deeper than the display showed. Sega had managed to capture a grand scale adventure, something meant for a movie screen, and compressed it into a few levels. It was something that we could enjoy in one sitting. On paper it all looked so simple. It was about hunting mythological sea creatures with a harpoon machine gun. The actual game transcended all of that. It became a symbol for one of the best experiences that I will ever have the honor to play.

The Ocean Hunter reminds us of what arcade greatness was. It was, and remains the game that I consider one of the best titles ever. It is a game that is long overdue for a second chance. I hope someone at Sega still remembers the legacy of AM1. Track it down if you can, or watch a long play on YouTube so you can get a glimpse of this fantastic experience. I’d like to hear your personal top-10, top-20, top fighting games, top sports games, or top games in any genre. Let me know in the comments section please. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!