Videogame Horrors #1 Out Run Amstrad CPC 464

[ChrisUKOne]

Oh dear. I remember this disaster. Loved the original, and this completely ruined it for me at the time. Only good memories I have of this, is blasting the soundtrack out in my friends car stereo whilst burning around town in his mini.

Complete waste of a good game licence :(

[MEGAMIGA]

I remember it for I had it too. Given the massive power of the arcade machine, it came to no surprise.

I had it later on my Amiga and it was not that better either.

On the other hand, hte Amiga version of Space Harrier, which used the same technology, if I remember correctly, was way, way better!

[mistervanderveer]

This reminds me of me playing the most recent PC games on my shitty old PC (10 years ago).

[JoseMiguel1900]

I share the pain, I had a 128k +2 at the time. The arcade version from 1986 had 2 68k CPU's, 1 was actually named "road CPU" and the other one handled the 2D accelerator chip, with hardware sprite zooming, by calling draw tree at 25% size, 50% size and so on. Finally the Z80 "sound cpu" handled the yamaha sound chip, the scores display and the control input. So what we have here is 2 Amigas, 1 Spectrum, and 1 very expensive 2D accelerator working together. 1xOutrun=10xStreeFighter2 costwise.

[twavis292]

Your lucky i had this with a green screen montor on my amstrad

[MrDalley]

I loved outrun! bought this for £9.99!! birthday money I think, one of the worst days of my childhood! I kept trying to convince myself it wasnt that bad, I had the same fear when I bought chase h.q, but thank god, that was everything I could of wished for, years later I bought a second hand saturn with outrun (arcade perfect), my wish had finally been granted! but a few years later it stopped working, when I win the lottery I will search for an outrun arcade cabinet :)

[OMA2k]

@MrDalley I suppose you already know by now, but just in case, you can play an "arcade perfect" version of OutRun (well, in fact, the very same software that ran on arcade cabinets) by using the MAME emulator. Just Google for "outrun mame".

[LarryBundyJr]

Was music exclusive tot he 128k versions?

I bought the tape version back in the day and it came with an audio tape of the arcade game's soundtrack. I assumed you played that while playing the game.

[noobsaibot73]

Ok, perhaps for you the CPC is the worse, it's not the best...neither the worse. About the music: With the original game, there was a music tape with the original arcade music, put it into a tape player and you will have it. Quite simple isn´t it? Have you ever seen the MSX version? It's closer to "Enduro Racer" than to "Out Run". And what about the "Green" Ferrari on the Spectrum version? Why don't comment a word about this????

[CoolDudeClem]

I think the main reason for the Amstrad ports of the games being so bad is because they ported it to the speccy first, then the Amstrad version is just a port of the speccy version, no real work goes into them and some of the Amstrad ports even used parts of the same Z80 code from the speccy versions. Lazy sods!

[sikhman100]

@UKRetroGames well the megadrive version was great imo the sound was spot on. Of course technology has moved on. Look at something like need for speed in 1994 and it came like a shock to the system even in the megadrive snes era. By 1996 you had a game like resident evil. The lightning speed of change in home gaming from 1986 to 1994-96 or i should say the difference is ASTONISHING. On the other hand the difference between say 1999 to 2010 is not that great. Just sequels no innovation.

[sikhman100]

were you even around in 1987 when this came out? Id say that to the fat four eyes in the main video. I thought it was a good conversion with of course the lack of music in the game.

You really have to review these things in their time and have to have been around. Reviewing them on you tube 20 years later is null and void.....of course it looks like shit now in this different world. Things have moved on.

[notanfningain]

is the speccy version even slower, i just took a look, think i saw one car

[RetroGamerDaz]

@notanfningain No, the Amstrad one is definitly the worse.

[notanfningain]

i felt us gold were never really up to conversions, felt they were half arsed about their releases.

[khisanth75]

Daz has mirrored my pain and sadness when i got this back in the day. Hmm an audio tape with it, was that them being nice giving you a freebie? No, no fecking sound and awful gameplay in silence apart from the skidding noise that sounds like a tortured spazmo sobbing. Not even Wizball disapointed me as much this on the Amstrad

[RetroGamerDaz]

@khisanth75 Yes it's atrocious and not helped because it's one of my favourite arcade racers.

[prussia23]

i agree, i bouhgt it off a friend for £5 i did not wonder why he sold it until i loaded it up . Utter crap.

[legogenius]

I share your pain - I felt exactly the same way at the time. I swore I would never work for US Gold or affiliates after this (and I never did) though I did work for some other game companies.

[MrAntagonism75]

The Amstrad CPC... A fine computer indeed but god there was some shite on it. And this is the very worst. I suppose Out Run was always going to be difficult to squeeze into an 8-bit machine but this was just a joke. And such an insult to a great arcade game.

[ash81b4u]

If only the guys who converted chase hq or wec le mans for the cpc did outrun eh? The car looked ok.

[Thatsnumberwang1]

Stop swearing Darran!

[RetroGamerDaz]

These rubbish games bring out my potty mouth. I'll keep an eye out for future profanities!!!

[thejoyofsticks]

I got stung by Outrun twice. I bought the Amstrad version and had my youthful dreams smashed along with yours. Later on, with my hopes built on a foundation of excellent Super Sprint and Rainbow Island conversions, I bought it for the ST. Imagine the horror upon loading that turd up for the first time. U.S. Gold owes me at least 30 quid.

[volkte37]

god thats terrible. The title screen was great!

[yethboth]

I wonder what scores the Amstrad Gaming Magszines gave this game on it's first release?

[ash81b4u]

Amstrad Action gave it 37 percent.

[qazimod]

Heh, I haven't had the pleasure of sampling the CPC game, but I've played the C64 version via an emulator before and it's pretty bad - not quite as bad as that though... :P

[Lorfarius]

This cant be right. You sure its not the emulator?

[RetroGamerDaz]

the few pauses were probably messages coming through, but the naff graphics, slow gameplay and shit sound are definately correct. Awful eh?

[Lorfarius]

Its pretty appalling. You would have thought there'd be some form of quality control back then as games like this didn't take too long to create.

[Klonricket]

128k was faster and had music throughout

[Allgoodnames]

At least the title music isn't half bad..

[TameFan]

lol green road,no sound and so slow

[XFile2708]

I don't remember this being so bad - at least it saves me rebuying it again I suppose :)

[gmintyfresh]

Oh man I remember this being quite good, ouch!!

[vipor29]

wow thats extremelly slow,the amstrad was not meant to play outrun i guess

[Gamerpigeon]

man that looks terrible !!