Outrun Interview

rich_chandler

Nice interview with one of the authors of the Outrun conversion to the Spectrum.


http://reassembler.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/interview-with-alan-laird.html

fog

and it confirms they recycled the game engine (hence the same cheat keys)

cole

Interesting read.
Here's the Crash review...

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=Crash/Issue49/Pages/Crash4900022.jpg

JuanF. Ramirez

Yes, interesting read.

I didn't know they were the same people who made Nightmare Rally, a game I played a lot back in the day.

Mark R. Jones

No I didn't know that either, interesting how 'Nightmare Rally' led to 'Enduro Race' (which impressed us downstairs at Ocean but none of us knew it was written by the same people) and then 'Out Run'.

Marko

Outrun was terrible on every home computer that it was released for. A classic case of "rip off the kids, they're too stupid to know better" - this tactic would be reused later for Thunderblade.

Alessandro Grussu

Marko wrote: »

Outrun was terrible on every home computer that it was released for. A classic case of "rip off the kids, they're too stupid to know better" - this tactic would be reused later for Thunderblade.

Out Run and Thunder Blade are two of my favourite Spectrum coin-op conversions ever. That only goes to show that one man's meat is another man's poison :-D

redballoon

Thunder blade did nothing for me at the time, though the Crash cover tape demo impressed me and I haven't been near it in a bazillion years, but there's something about Out Run that edges over the line to make me like it.

I'm in touch with Alan Grier, the artist who worked for ICE (Chase HQ 2, Turbo Out Run, etc) and spoke to him just after Christmas about his 8 and 16 bit days.

Muppetboy

I fondly recall the long ZX Spectrum (48k) loading times of Outrun but at the time this didn't faze me. The fact I could play one of my favourite arcade games ever (and completed in the Arcade!) was enough. I was in awe of the technical achievement that the Speccy could do anything like this. Didn't the Speccy version include an audio tape as well with the original tunes? Can't recall...

Great interview. I love reading how programmers from yesteryear had to make sacrifices leaving bits out/squishing bob's and sprites and the like as because of memory limitation unlike these days (depending on format).

fog

Marko wrote: »

Outrun was terrible on every home computer that it was released for. A classic case of "rip off the kids, they're too stupid to know better" - this tactic would be reused later for Thunderblade.

the c64 one was poor, turbo outrun and power drift/turbo charge (same engine I bet..) was far better.. was down to the coders...

thunderblade on c64 was nice enough... BUT it was far from the easiest machine to port.. much like the first screen in the arcade game typhoon.. or say some of the levels in salamander (c64 version again ;) )

weesam

fog wrote: »

the c64 one was poor, turbo outrun and power drift/turbo charge (same engine I bet..) was far better.. was down to the coders...

thunderblade on c64 was nice enough... BUT it was far from the easiest machine to port.. much like the first screen in the arcade game typhoon.. or say some of the levels in salamander (c64 version again ;) )

The C64 of salamander IS AWESOME;

I think I prefer the NES version to it; and the Japanese Famicom version is better still (I think the cartridge was beefed up compared to the NES version?)

Spectrum version sucked big time.

I'm amazed that Outrun was down to 3fps; what were they thinking?

On the whole, the spectrum was pretty poorly served by racing games, Enduro Racer and Chase HQ aside, there were not many fun racers out there.


(just youtubed the C64 of thunderblade - colour me impressed. That looks excellent considering the hardware)

Muppetboy

I consider Super Hang-On to be a relatively good arcade conversion which had a reasonable frame-rate. But yes, there were few decent racing games on the humble ZX Spectrum. :)

weesam

Muppetboy wrote: »

I consider Super Hang-On to be a relatively good arcade conversion which had a reasonable frame-rate. But yes, there were few decent racing games on the humble ZX Spectrum. :)

having played 1k race a few times, I can honestly say that pisses over 99% of the racing games released back in the day.
The programmer of that is a genius.

this looks quite interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M393dcn-KK4

at least it is fast!

thingley

I always thought the Wec le Mans engine was the best back in the day. Not sure if that's the same engine as Powerdrift but I think that is a pretty good racer too on the spectrum. If anything they move along in a more fluid way than Chase HQ does.

I also think Crazy Cars 2 (although monochrome) is a very overlooked driving game, maybe it just came out too late and the first game was poor -but that game engine rockets along!

Honourable mention to Chevy Chase (very good for a budget title). But I have to admit far more racing time was spent on those ridiculous rollercoaster tracks of Stunt Car Racer than in any of the more traditional racing games when I owned a spectrum.