OutRun Arcade – A vastly superior version of a classic racer is coming to an Amiga near you via Reassembler

In 1986 Sega released one of the greatest racers of our time, it just had to be Out Run. An Arcade racer designed by Yu Suzuki, that was not only a commercial success, but became one of the best selling games of its time. A game that featured incredible graphics, fantastic music and fast paced track racing. Thankfully other people remember this Arcade classic, as we’ve recently found out, that reassembler is soon to finish his vastly superior version of Outrun for the Commodore Amiga. A version of the game which he hopes to put right “one of the nastiest Amiga arcade ports”.

Here’s the latest from the EAB post linked (HERE)  “A belated Happy New Year all! Things have been going very well with the project. The entire game is now ported and working. I’ve “just” got the audio to do next. Long story short, it’s running at about 15 fps on my 030 now – with very few sacrifices. And I think this will run full arcade speed on an 040 potentially”.

“Honestly, this project was more tricky than I ever expected but I don’t know what I was expecting. Despite OutRun’s 68k based heritage, and this technically being a port of the arcade code, almost every line has had to be scrutinized and reconsidered. The most complex aspects were overall performance, or lack of it, and the limitations of the AGA graphics hardware. Whilst AGA’s 256 simultaneous colours sounds like a substantial amount, the arcade hardware can handle many thousands. And perhaps more importantly, expects to be able to summon them at any time”.

“Regarding performance, the best analogy I can offer is pulling the Geforce card out of your PC and then realizing your games run at a fraction of the speed with it missing. Sega’s arcade grade hardware was spectacular, and well, Commodore’s was built with a home budget in mind to put it kindly. I put in 5 productive months of work at the start of 2024 and then I lost motivation. It’s best, for me at least, to tackle a project of this magnitude in a deep state of flow. Doing a few hours a week simply doesn’t cut it. But to keep plugging away with that intensity requires me to continue enjoying myself. And once summer arrived, there were other distractions”.

“Coming back to the project this year gave me a fresh perspective and I was able to substantially optimize the video rendering. In fact, I possibly sped up the engine by a factor of two, to the point where it actually felt playable on real 030 hardware. I’m pretty confident this will run at close to full arcade speed on an 040 at 30fps. Not only that, but this port contains plenty of small bug fixes to the original game, and is feature complete. This includes animated end sequences, translucent shadow effects, palette fades, the route map screen, best outrunners screen and almost every last detail lovingly recreated. Of course, it should play identically to the original, so the hardcore gameplay exploits like gear gacha and the turbo boost start will work”.

“I have had to make compromises in areas. But I hope you’ll agree that this looks, plays and most importantly feels the part when its released. The closest home version in terms of quality from the era would be the Sega Saturn release – which wasn’t available until 1996, on superior hardware. Despite being at a major milestone, I’m not finished yet. I have to work on the audio and music. Maybe I’ll compose the soundtrack myself, or perhaps I’ll look at what’s out there already. Once I can hear tyres screech and the overtures of Passing Breeze, the build will be freely available”.

“One valid question is why bother with any of this? Anyone can play OutRun perfectly on Mame, a Nintendo Switch or using Cannonball these days. Why spend countless hours on what is effectively a vanity project for my own amusement? For me, the interesting part of such projects is overcoming seemingly impossible technical challenges and devising crazy creative solutions – Some of them came to me in dreams, which is a little concerning! I guess it’s finishing something you never thought you could”.

“The problem solving is ultimately the addictive part and less so the end result, As such, I’m looking to delve into each aspect of the game with a series of YouTube documentaries accompanied by example source code. This will enable everyone to tell me how I’ve done it all wrong! Think of it as like the Doom black book, with less reading and code you can compile”.

“Feel free to subscribe to my channel as I’d like to kick that off towards the end of the year. Anyway, enough waffle. Posted above is a video containing footage from WinUAE running at full speed, along with some footage running on an 030. Apologies for the mic quality. I’ll buy a mic at some point. And recap my Amiga, which is making a funny smell!”