Aluminum Christmas Trees: While the Testarossa's convertible appearance is assumed to be a case of Artistic License – Cars, since the real-life car is not a convertible, Ferrari did once produce a convertible version of the Testarossa named the "Testarossa Spider", which was originally commissioned and owned by then-Fiat chairman Gianni Agnelli and remains the only one of its kind.note Despite popular demand, Ferrari refused to mass-produce the car due to design issues that would be too costly and difficult to resolve. There are unofficial kits that allow you to modify the Testarossa to be a convertible, but these are not supported by Ferrari. Coincidentally, it was produced in 1986, the same year OutRun was released in arcades.
Awesome Music: The main thing OutRun is remembered for. Most subsequent sequels keep all four tracks, and some even featured in the soundtrack of Bayonetta. As noted on the main page, the game's sound card inspired its own musical subgenre.
The driving songs from original game perfectly cover different moods. "Passing Breeze" exudes the feeling of a relaxing summer drive, while "Splash Wave" has the opposite mood of an intense race to the finish. In-between the two is "Magical Sound Shower", an upbeat Latin tune. When the race is finished, "Last Wave" wraps things up with a romantic epilogue.
The 3DS port of the original game introduces two new songs, "Camino a Mi Amor" and "Cruising Line", both of which are absolutely wonderful and fit nicely with the other tunes. "Cruising Line" in particular sounds like a lost track from the arcade game.
After several questionable spinoffs, OutRunners reintroduced the multiple routes and lighthearted atmosphere of the original game, as well as adding selectable vehicles. It also ran on Sega's latest 32-bit hardware, creating some of the finest 3D effects without using real polygons.
OutRun 2 and its updated versionsOutRun 2006 and OutRun Online Arcade reimagine the classic gameplay with a full 3D graphics that look great for the era. It also features multiple cars, characters, scenarios, and soundtracks that tell its story.
First Installment Wins: Although OutRun has received several sequels, the original arcade game remains the most well-known and beloved of the games, with the rest being far more obscure. It helps that the original arcade game remains the most widely available out of the games, with the rest of the series falling into Keep Circulating the Tapes status for various reasons. Whenever OutRun gets referenced in any media, chances are they're gonna reference the first game only.
Hilarious in Hindsight: OutRun 2019, released in 1993, gives you a top speed of 692 mph in the US version. Four years later, the land speed world record exceeded that (713 mph, to be exact, with the current world record at 760 mph).
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: OutRun Online Arcade retains only the same car roster from 2006 with no new model additions, leaving certain ire to some players. Since Sega ran out the budget for the game, they had to reuse the source materials before the game got taken down due to contract expiration with Ferrari.
Older Than They Think: The 3DS port of the original OutRun is often hailed for running the original game at 60 FPS. However, the 1996 Sega Saturn port was the first to implement that feature, under the name "Smooth Mode". The developers of the 3DS version were openly inspired by the Saturn version, though they did all the work from scratch since they didn't have the Saturn source code available to them. 2003's Sega Arcade Gallery for Game Boy Advance also features a relatively accurate port of the original game at 60 FPS.
The 3DS port of the original game, which is not only arcade perfect, but has the option of being played in widescreen and at 60 frames per second. It also introduces several unlockable tune-up options, which also change the appearance of the car especially when combined. It also introduces two brand new songs. There's also two ways to customize difficulty: one for adjusting traffic levels and one for adjusting the amount of time you're given.
The Switch port, by the same development team as the 3DS port, keeps the same features while bumping the output to HD and including four additional songs (such as "Step on Beat" from the Genesis version, and a demake of "Radiation" from OutRun 2006).
The Xbox ports of OutRun 2 and OutRun 2 SP (the latter included in OutRun 2006). Despite the Xbox having less RAM than the Chihiro hardware that the original arcade versions ran on, Sumo Digital managed to get the ports to run with identical visual fidelity and performance, creating two of the most impressive arcade to home conversions ever!
The PlayStation 2 version of OutRun 2006 deserves a mention as well. Despite being less powerful than even the Xbox, Sumo digital managed to get the game running at a flawless 60 fps at nearly all times (only lagging for a brief moment in 2 SP's jungle stage) with very little noticeable graphics downgrades from the Xbox version and even having widescreen + 480p support! The 2007 Japanese release (renamedOutRun 2 SP for the whole package) improves this port even further by restoring the arcade goal animations that were missing even on the Xbox version of 2006 and adding new music tracks by none other than Jun Senoue!
Porting Disaster: The Genesis could not handle the 32-bit sprite scaling of OutRunners, resulting in graphics no better than the original OutRun's port. Furthermore, the game can only be played in horizontal split screen, even in single player.
Sequelitis: Turbo OutRun is decent on its own, but it's considered as an inferior sequel because of its gimmick focused nature that takes out the simplicity and the appeal OutRun had (like the removal of branching routes), turning into an unremarkable racing game. Spin-offs on Master System and Genesis are also looked down on for the same reason. It wasn't until OutRunnners and later OutRun 2 that players are finally won back.
Signature Song: "Magical Sound Shower" from the first game is by far the series' most iconic song; whenever OutRun content is crossed over into other games, this is usually the song that is brought over. Despite that, Yu Suzuki's favorite song is reportedly "Splash Wave", so it sometimes gets top billing instead (such as in Bayonetta and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed).
Sophomore Slump: While OutRun is an arcade classic and OutRunners and OutRun 2 are well-regarded Cult Classics, Turbo OutRun, the second arcade entry, is a Contested Sequel, that, while not hated, is considered to be the weak link of the series due to its gimmicky nature, Darker and Edgier tone, and the removal of the branching routes.
So Bad, It's Good: The intro music for the Amiga port. There's just something inexplicably hilarious about a game like OutRun opening with a loud, blaring fanfare.
Underused Game Mechanic: OutRun 2019 has detailed local leaderboards for each stage and each sub-stage route, as well as a player profile system that allows multiple players to each play under their own account and register record times with such. However, the only way this feature will get any mileage is if you never turn the console off (including doing so to change games), as there's no save feature and thus all of those profiles and records get deleted when you turn the system off, or play the game on an emulator and use savestates.
exudes the feeling of a relaxing summer drive, while "Splash Wave"