The leisurely driving - not racing - game that was OutRun finally got an arcade sequel in 2003 and that arcade sequel got an expanded remake in the form of OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast for home consoles a few years later.
Bringing the arcade experience into your living room, you're able to throw Ferrari's into vicious powerslides around stages that take you through a miniature road trip around the world, all to impress your girlfriend or a big guy known as Flagman. Or both, seeing as there is plenty of content to get stuck into here.
And just like the arcade games, getting stuck in is easy.
Fun Times
I'm emulating the PlayStation 2 release of OutRun 2006, and it's a slick presentation. It seems to have every conceivable kind of OutRun gameplay you can think of under one roof, and I start off in the Coast 2 Coast mode, which offers a string of challenges for you to work your way through, issued by Flagman or one of three women, which we'll get to later.
Flagman has a series of challenges for us to compete in, from traditional OutRun races to more specific events.
While the vast majority of cars are locked behind single-player progress, or are simply unavailable for this mode or stage, they're all fully licensed Ferrari's spanning the decades. They're a bit of an annoying brand, really. Their cars are regularly ripped out of other video games for expired licences, but in an arcade game where performance doesn't matter, they're more than happy to provide everything they've got to show off.
Anyway, at this point, I've got more choice in what music I can listen to than what car I can drive, but these songs are very repetitive, so do pick your favourite, or else hope to drown them out.
Your first challenge is to familiarise yourself with OutRun again. If you've not played the arcade games, don't worry. Press down the accelerator and point in the right direction. You can't really go wrong. You'll bump into traffic and walls, and that'll slow you down, but you'll still drive forward at great speed, which is all you want to be doing.
You'll pass through several locales, starting with the sunniest ones. The graphics aren't going to knock you out, but they do look nice, and the sun really does shine in some of them.
Get through the stage and you'll be scored by Flagman and, hopefully, will be able to progress through to the next part of the challenge.
Sadly, for me, some stages effects don't emulate correctly - or I hope they're not being emulated correctly because it looks awful otherwise. But OutRun 2006 is still very playable, even through small slowdowns. I'm not having the perfect experience, but I'm definitely having an enjoyable one because this game is just so easy to pick up and play.
In terms of controls, you have an accelerator and a brake for sure, and there's a view button that allows you to see your bonnet or the road, but both are rubbish. You want to see these cars. You want to play OutRun 2006 like you're playing OutRun. Changing cameras is unnecessary. Hell, braking is unnecessary too.
Or so I thought until I jabbed the brakes and send myself into an almighty powerslide, the likes of which I haven't been in since playing Ridge Racer on the PSP. These slides are awesome. Drifting usually fills me with fear, because it requires an understanding of how cars and physics work together, and even as a fan of racing games, I don't have time for details like that.
I like to feel my way around the track, I don't want to have to think about it, and in OutRun 2006, you really don't have to do. Hit the brakes, turn, keep the accelerator down and watch the smoke billow out from beneath you.
Hmm. Those times seem a little suspect. You can't turn around to see how far back your rivals are, but I get the feeling they're further back than that. Maybe I'm wrong, though. It's not exactly a game where you care too much about the times until the clock is ticking down and there's no checkpoint in sight.
Ok, no, that's ridiculous. Did we all slipstream each other until the end of the race or something? That's a new mechanic, by the way, and one that I believe replaces the high and low gears of the original OutRun. Slipstreaming traffic boosts your speed, and it's quite generous, though does risk crashing into someone, of course.
After you've got the hang of driving and sliding, Flagman challenges you to a drift event.
It actually took me a few corners to know what it is I was supposed to do, but once I learned he wanted as many drifts as possible, it wasn't too difficult to nab a few points on the straights in an attempt to make up for lost ground early on.
Mixing up the way OutRun is played feels good. It gives you a reason to come back and take up more challenges because it's not just about driving anymore - though you can equally ignore all this stuff and just play a simple game of OutRun instead.
As Flagman's first set of challenges wrapped up, I got around to finding out what on Earth was meant by fulfilling Clarissa's traffic requests.
That was unexpected. She'll shout out a mini object to complete between two points on the course, all while you're driving through a regular game of OutRun. Hitting the cars means bumping into the cars you see. The more hits, the more hearts, the more hearts the bigger the final score.
Each of these game modes slowly introduced me to new stages, based on all kinds of real-world locations, and it was a joy to see what's new. Even those that came with graphical issues and those that distracted me from the objective were great to see, and I wonder just how many there are that we can drive through. At least 15, right?
Rank B, I'll take it. There's your replay value, trying to beat your high score on each mode. I'm not a massive fan of grinding my way up the high score tables in any game, but at least OutRun 2006 is fun while you're at it.
But what else is there? Oh, just a remake of the entire OutRun 2 SP arcade game, with all the cool cars available from the start...
This is OutRun. Just put your foot down and enjoying the scenery whizz by. No amount of sliding is too much sliding. Don't think ahead, pick the fork in the road according to how much of a challenge you want and just see where it takes you.
Maybe there is such a thing as too much sliding. Four seconds left to make it down the road. This is the final straight of the finale stage of my five-minute blast through the impossible geometry of OutRun. It can't end on a whimper. Don't let it die.
With thousands of seconds to spare I'm sure, we cross the line to complete OutRun 2 SP, which must be a first for this 1001 list, me actually completing a game.
Final Word
Of course, this was but a tiny fraction of what OutRun 2006 has to offer. I joked before firing it up that I wouldn't be playing it for an hour. It was OutRun, I knew what the gameplay offered, and I've even played OutRun 2 in the arcade, somewhere. What could possibly keep me playing it for an hour?
The fact that it's just damn fun, that's what. Arcade games are meant to glue you to the screens, and OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast is an arcade game and then some. It's as full a package as any OutRun fan could want, save perhaps for the lack of a port of the original OutRun while we're at it. I guess we'll have to play some Yakuza for that...
If you like OutRun, Coast 2 Coast is a no brainer, but if you just like having fun and passing the time in a racing game that isn't really about racing, or if you want a pick-up and play experience that doesn't require a lot of thought, then this game is a stellar choice.
Always wear a seatbelt, though, and ignore your girlfriend if she ever challenges you to hit other cars.
Fun Facts
Back in the days when servers were still available, you could enjoy multiplayer races with up to six players, on the PS2, PSP or Xbox.
OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast, developed by Sumo Digital, first released in 2006.
Version played: PlayStation 2, 2006, via emulation.