OutRun: Dispatches from Coconut Beach
It’s oft-repeated that Yu Suzuki said that OutRun is not racing game, but a driving game*. I've caught the OutRun bug a few times over the past decade, and every time I get sucked in I think about Suzuki’s claim. And what I think, more specifically, is that it isn’t really true.
This has sort of become the accepted narrative of OutRun over the years. The game is a fantasy. It lets you pick the radio station. It’s about going on a road trip in a cool car with your hot girlfriend. There are no other racers on the track; only the open road ahead of you. If you were lucky enough to play at a sitdown cabinet, I’m sure that adds a lot to the fantasy too. And I don’t think those points are entirely wrong. But just as we romanticize a real road trip, I think we have romanticized what playing OutRun is. It’s not a chill road trip where you pick the tunes and take in the views with your partner. Like all good arcade games, it’s a game where you are so singularly locked in while playing it that you don’t even notice that stuff most of the time.
I understand the argument that this is a game about that imagined vision of driving a fast car down the highway, but to me a key part of what separates “driving” and “racing” is that “driving” is a casual, relaxing affair. OutRun is like this at the very start, but quickly transitions into heart-pounding action as you weave through traffic by the narrowest of margins, knowing even a few inches of error will send you into a catastrophic crash. And though there’s no real life danger (obviously), the time lost from one major crash pretty much ends your run. It’s a very tense experience.
That’s not to say OutRun is a super difficult game. If you play any racing games that require you to do anything more complicated than holding down the gas the entire time you’ll probably be able to handle yourself out there. But the fact that you are always one twitch away from disaster does not mesh with the concept of a “driving game” in my mind. A casual drive is fun but it isn't satisfying. Completing OutRun, on the other hand, gives you a real feeling of accomplishment; getting to the finish line is immensely satisfying. No human being has ever celebrated driving up I-95 the way I popped off the first time I finished OutRun.
Now I think to be fair to Suzuki, his quote made more sense in the context of when OutRun was first released. This was a time when the overwhelming majority of racing games were motorsports themed. Whether that was with Formula 1 style cars in a game like Pole Position or motorcycles like Suzuki’s own Hang-On, it is true that most racing games were about professional racing and not about highway driving. Games like Rad Racer, Victory Run, and Taito Grand Prix that would follow in OutRun’s footsteps would help to normalize the concept of racing on a public road, but it was still novel when OutRun first did it.
Speaking of Taito Grand Prix, I actually think that game is a better example of what I would consider to be an early driving game. A game where you drive from city to city and slowly upgrade your car(s) a la the Gran Turismo games seems like a much better fit for the description of a driving game. Taito Grand Prix has the frills of car management and the slow march of progress that make for both a good driving fantasy as well as a good console game. OutRun has no frills aside from the radio selection and is pure game, which makes it a good arcade game.
So I think OutRun makes a good effort to be that driving game, and I get why Suzuki said what he said, but the arcade is just not the right medium for it. They did the best they could have given the circumstances, but the driving game fantasy works better on console, apart from the deluxe cabinet, which admittedly most people playing OutRun today (myself included) are not experiencing.
My quibbles with Suzuki’s description aside, OutRun is a damn good game. It’s every bit as cool and fun as people say it is. If you haven’t played it, go change that right now! And if you have played it before, go play it again anyways. But a driving game? Something categorically different from a racing game? I remain unconvinced.
*Note: I have never really found a source for this quote, though I am pretty confident that it’s something he really said. Presumably it’s from a Japanese language interview somewhere.