Turbo Outrun

Turbo OutRun is a arcade racing game released by Sega. It was released as a dedicated game, as well as an upgradable kit that could be installed on the original Out Run board.

Overview
Turbo Outrun the player in control of a male driver sitting alongside his girlfriend in a Ferrari F40, racing against the clock and a computer-controlled opponent in a Porsche 959 in a race across the United States. The goal is to reach Los Angeles from a starting point of New York City. Unlike the original Out Run, however, there are no branch roads to choose from. Instead, there is only one way from the start to the end of the road.

The most notable feature of this game, which most players remember it for, is the fact that the player can increase speed by using turbo boost by pressing a button on the side of the console-mounted shifter and the engine temperature will increase in kind on the on-screen gauge. When the gauge reaches "OVERHEAT!" turbo boost cannot be used until the temperature decreases.

At every sub-goal (reached after passing through about four cities), a power-up can be chosen, the three being: Hi-Power Engine, Special Turbo, and Super Grip Tires. If the CPU opponent reaches the sub-goal before the player, at the next race, the driver's girlfriend will move to the opponent's car. He can still win the girl back if he beats the CPU opponent to the next sub-goal. If the player beats the opponent with the girl in hand, a 1,000,000 point bonus is given. Also, the girl kisses the driver in front of his CPU opponent. If the player reaches the final checkpoint, in the process, the player will pass the CPU opponent and the ending scene is played.

It was available in a stand-up cabinet, and a sit-down cabinet with decals giving it an appearance of a Ferrari F40, the car featured in the game. There were also conversion kits available to convert original Out Run machines to Turbo OutRun.

Computer ports of the game were received with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Commodore 64 version was widely seen as a good game but 16-bit conversions got very negative reviews.

Stage Order


These courses are raced straightforward in 4 sections consisting of 4 stages each.
 * Stage 1: New York
 * Stage 2: Washington D.C.
 * Stage 3: Pittsburgh
 * Stage 4: Indianapolis (End of section 1)
 * Stage 5: Chicago
 * Stage 6: St. Louis
 * Stage 7: Memphis
 * Stage 8: Atlanta (End of section 2)
 * Stage 9: Miami
 * Stage 10: New Orleans
 * Stage 11: San Antonio
 * Stage 12: Dallas (End of section 3)
 * Stage 13: Oklahoma City
 * Stage 14: Denver
 * Stage 15: Grand Canyon (Runs along Route 66)
 * Stage 16: Los Angeles (End of game)

Some of the stages are not accurately portrayed to their real life counterparts. For example: Atlanta is nothing more than a field covered in snow and Dallas looks like the Gobi Desert (See picture above).

Music
Unlike the original Out Run, the music cannot be selected, rather the games background music play in each section of the game in this order:


 * Rush A Difficulty (Stages 1–4)
 * Keep Your Heart (Stages 5–8)
 * Shake The Street (Stages 9–12)
 * Who Are You? (Stages 13–16)

Commodore 64 soundtrack
The Commodore 64 home version soundtrack, composed and arranged by Jeroen Tel, was well received. The soundtrack won the "Best music on 8-bit computer 1989" award on European Computer Trade Show. The title track is a remix of "Magical Sound Shower" from Out Run, featuring sound samples from Jeroen Tel himself; due to sampling quality, he was actually saying "One, two, tree... Out Run" while recording, instead of "three", to avoid it making sound like "free".

Trivia
In the 1994 arcade game Daytona USA, a song from Turbo Outrun can be played on the name entry screen by entering the initials TOR. The result is a short version of "Rush A Difficulty".

Releases

 * Arcade (1989)
 * Amstrad CPC (1989)
 * ZX Spectrum (1990)
 * Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (1992)
 * Sega Master System
 * Commodore 64
 * Commodore Amiga (1990)
 * PC-DOS
 * FM Towns (1990)