OutRun

The Good
Outrun is a very special game to me for it marked the beginning of high speed racing games, but for the Atari ST version like the Amiga version, since they are identical I don't have anything positive to say about this most appalling piece of programming in the history of software.

The Bad
This is just not outrun, all the fond memories u may have had playing the father of racing games in the arcades will be shattered and lost for ever if u ever play this version. First of all you are greeted with an impressive title screen, makes u think wow this is going to be good, apart from the amiga version where it plays the most appalling rendition of bolted together samples of the orchestra of doom which has nothing to do with outrun anyway, after the title screen you are presented with the game, WITH PULL DOWN MENUS, I have never played a racing game with pull down menus, it really makes the game look cheap and nasty, then you have the main graphics, at first glance I really thought this was the commodore 64 version for the graphics are as blocky as hell, the frame rate is just useless, you jump at like 10 feet at a time, with probably an average of about 5 frames per second, then you have the passengers swapping seats, yes swapping seats, when u turn the car the man and the woman swap sides, the sound is comparable to a zx spectrum 48k with no thought of taking advantage of the sound capabilities. This type of shoddy workmanship just proves it was just another rushed crappy conversion to grab a quick buck on a new format yet again. It is such a shame, the ST and especially the amiga version could have been so much better, considering the Amiga actually used the same 68000 processor that the ORIGINAL arcade had as well, there was no excuse for this mess.

The Bottom Line
Look elsewhere, avoid like the plague.