The Sega fan community has been set ablaze in the past week. Seemingly out of nowhere, a little-known fan project emerged from Itch.io, and for good reason. We’re talking about Turbo Outrun Reimagined, a fan project by the anonymous solo-dev ‘Sk1ds’. It has been publicly in development for God knows how long, but due to some rightfully excited Youtubers the game started to gain some serious traction, lately.
Retro-inspired racers resurgence
We’ve been inundated with retro-like racing games in the last couple of years, and to be frank, many of these games are pretty good. New Star GP, 80’s Overdrive, Horizon Chase—all of these games have entertained the Retrolike.net team at various points in time. Although most of these are great games in their own right, they never managed or attempted to hit that distinct Sega Super Scaler nuance.
Turbo Outrun Reimagined
And out of nowhere comes this game that brushes aside any concerns about a Sega takedown or cease and desist and transforms the underappreciated Turbo Outrun into a retro-inspired remake master class. The essence of the game is precisely what I’ve always desired in a game of this kind but have never truly encountered. To be fair, all the other games have been commercially released, and none of them have dared to incorporate actual Sega assets into their gameplay. Infusing it with that unmistakable Sega magic while maintaining its solid gameplay fundamentals still is not a simple feat.
First and foremost, it completely keeps the spirit of the original Turbo Outrun visually intact. From the intro screen, with the (as suggested by user feedback) title track of the C64 version of Turbo Outrun, Sega blue skies, the iconic start-banner, to the huge Ferrari F40 car sprite—it’s all there.
Turbo Outrun up-ressed or Outrun 2 pixelalized?
And gameplay-wise? Boy, does it run well. The tracks roll by lightning fast, together with the meticulously recreated sprites spread throughout the environment. But the way the car controls on the road reminds me a lot of Outrun 2 and Outrun 2006. Except for the fact that the cars can’t drift, though. But he, this is a reimagining of Turbo Outrun, not Outrun 2. It just speaks volumes how Sk1ds has upped the potential for Turbo Outrun, in the way Outrun 2 did with original Outrun. I’m not sure this ever crossed Sk1ds mind, but it’s an observation I think is not far fetched at all.
Sk1ds did take some liberties to rearrange the gameplay to make it more engaging and give the game more lasting appeal. At this point, the game features one completed mode, allowing you to race through five levels, while highlighting the fact that racing takes a toll on your car. In order to reach the end, you need to repair or upgrade various parts of your car to ensure it doesn’t break down. Neglecting your spark plugs, for instance, will cause your car to stutter from time to time, while old tires will result in a loss of grip in the end, and so on. A part from wear and tear of parts, there went a lot of detail in the control of the car. Depending on what gearbox option you take ( 5-speed automatic, 2 speed manual or 5-speed manual) the cars ABS and TC get tuned up or down, asking the player to be more gentle with gas and brakes in order to not lose grip and not punish the materials too much.
So much dB
Another definite attention grabber is the extremely loud and visceral sound the three cars produce. Every gear change hits you, verbally speaking, in the face. The F40 (for obvious reasons called Dagger DX40 in the game) sounds ridiculously good. Speaking of the cars, next to the F40, you can run the exact Ferrari Testarossa from the original Outrun game or the gangster Lambo Countach from the first boss in Taito’s Chase HQ. I personally can’t wait for Chase HQ’s Porsche 928 to be included as well! In the dev blog SK1ds promised the option to create your own cars, which sounds like a wild but tantalizing idea.
Fundamentally, we’ll never see a commercial release of this game in its current ‘infringing’ state. Seeing the quality of the ‘adoption’ work here and the amount of detail that went into the detailed car physics, we would hate to see this game being ripped into the abyss as a result of an incoming lawsuit or cease and desist letter. Luckily, Sega has proven in the past it has a place in its heart for fan works like these. Sonic Mania is, without a doubt and conservatively, high up in the ranks of quality Sonic games. Its producer, Christian Whitehead, went through a similar process with a history in ROM hacks and fan reworks. Hopefully, Sega eventually will see where its opportunities lie in this case, embrace the game, and help Sk1ds polish up the presentation and add more content. I’ll ensure you, it will go down in history as another Sega franchise revitalized by the Sega fan community.
The game is available to download for free on the developer’s Itch.io page, with an option to send a tip to the developer for his efforts.
