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Note: The following Yu Suzuki quotations were taken from Issue 54 of the UK magazine Retro Gamer. This particular issue included a fabulous 6 page article Titled “The Making of OutRun” in an exclusive interview with Yu Suzuki himself. I highly recommend you buy the issue and read the article in its entirety. This is the first time to my knowledge that Yu Suzuki has talked about the making of his game in English. Click here to buy the issue. You won’t regret it
OutRun was created in 1986 by Yu Suzuki. Yu Suzuki was (at the time) an employee of Sega for only 2 years before he decided to make this arcade classic. But where does one find the inspiration for such a care-free, beautifully crafted, eardrum massaging masterpiece? Why American Cinema of course. He got the idea for OutRun while watching the 1981 Burt Reynolds movie The Cannonball Run:
“The main impetus behind OutRun’s creation was my love of a film called ‘The Cannonball Run’. I thought it would be good to make a game like that. The film crosses America, so I made a plan to follow the same course and collect data as I went.”
So why doesn’t every stage look like somewhere from the United States? (For example The Alps)
“I realized, once I’d arranged everything, that the scenery along the course actually doesn’t change very much, so I revised my plan and decided to collect data in Europe instead.”
From there Yu Suzuki went on a road trip all across Europe, taking pictures of everything he saw. This was extremely unheard of at the time, but Yu Suzuki felt he needed to experience it first hand before he even wrote a line of code:
“I started out from Frankfurt, where I hired a rent a car, and I installed a video camera on the car. I drove around Monaco and Monte Carlo, along the mountain roads of Switzerland, stopping in hotels in Milan, Venice, and Rome, collecting data for a fortnight.”
He also spoke with local people of the region:
“The next step was to talk with local people in the places I visited, and to make those discussions and other episodes reflected in the game.”
All these things were taken into consideration for development of OutRun, and he had so much more in mind.
“I was only able to put about half of the things I wanted to do into OutRun, because of budget and development time limitations, some of the contents I’d planned had to be sequeezed or cut. I’d made preparations for 8 individual characters and I wanted to include various events at each checkpoint, which would have made the player experience a story; something like The Cannonball Run film. I also wanted to give the players a choice of supercars to drive so that they could enjoy differences in car performance.”
Oh Yu, if only you could tell the future. But I guess for now he had to settle on one car, and he chose the Ferrari TestaRossa. Suzuki recalls:
“..the most talked about car of the time was the 12 cylinder Ferrari Testarossa. The first time I saw the car was in Monaco, and I was really moved by its beauty – I thought, ‘there is no choice; this is the only one’. There are many other charming Ferraris, but memory problems made it impossible to include them in the game…So we decided that the player’s car should be the 12 cylinder Testarossa.”
But when he came back to Japan to get started on the in game graphics, he had a little trouble finding a locally owned Ferrari Testarossa to use as a model. Suzuki Explains:
“Only a tiny number of Testarossas had been brought into Japan, so we had some trouble finding an owner to help us with collecting car data. Eventually, five of us squeezed into a cmall car and frove for three hours to see a [privately owned] Testarossa.”
Once they found it however, they needed to record every detail. Who would be willing to make that trip twice?
“We took photos of it from every side, at five degree intervals, and we also recorded the sound of the engine.”
Even with a picture perfect Testarossa, Suzuki needed to make the game fast, fun, and realistic as possible:
“At the time of OutRun’s development, driving games were made whereby a collision with another car would automatically result in an explosion, and they had many things that would be impossible with real cars. Even if you were good at driving actual cars, the skills needed in those games were completely different. I wanted to make a driving game where people who were skillful drivers of cars could also achieve good results in the game. For that reason, where at all possible, we simulated features such as horsepower, torque, gear ratios and tire engineering close to those of real cars.”
There was no doubt that OutRun was quite an advancement in the racing genre. The steering was unique in that it wasn’t constant. You would have better handling when it was slower, and it would make a slight drifting motion as you got faster on a curve: Intelligent steering. This was a first for racing games.
Also impeccable was Yu Suzuki’s design of the scenery:
“I wanted to make a game where you could enjoy magnificent changing scenery and landscapes while driving, and really get a nice sensation from playing it… I wanted to make stages where you could smell the fresh fragerance of new leaves and flowers, like in the green meadows of Switzerland”
But along with his attention to detail graphically, he was also dedicated to perfection in music:
“I couldn’t think of thew game and music as detached, sperate things...During the planning stage I explained in detail to the sound engineer what type of tunes were needed. I told him basically I wanted eight beat rock rythyms at a tempo of 150 bpm….I remember wanting some guitars and voices in the soundtrack, buit it was impossible to achieve with the technology of the time, so I ultimately has to give up.”
And what is Yu Suzuki’s favorite OutRun tune you ask?
“Magical Sound Shower”
In the end, Yu Suzuki was proud of his final product, and his take on the game is very much what we were at OutRun.Org think:
“OutRun’s concept was not about frantically racing to just barely take first place. IT’s about giving a ride to a beautiful woman, who sits at your side, and driving around in a luxurios car with just one hand on the steering, taking first place ion the race byu a wide margin – and with time to spare”
As stated at the beginning of the article, the preceeding Yu Suzuki quotations were taken from Issue 54 of the UK magazine Retro Gamer. This particular issue included a great 6 page article Titled “The Making of OutRun” in an exclusive interview with Yu Suzuki himself. Click here to buy the issue. You won’t regret it
rogelio
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