Joe Hurst loves his legally-distinct Ferrari Testarossa, the "cleverly-named" Larborarri Teratuga, to the point he's willing to upgrade it at any cost. Thankfully, Joe happens to be a bounty hunter, taking it upon himself to travel the contiguous United States in order to catch the most wanted criminals. Whether it's San Francisco, the Grand Canyon, Florida, or New York, Joe will break speed limits to catch up to his prey for a payday.
With a title like Battle OutRun, several gameplay possibilities come to mind: does your slick, red vehicle shoot projectiles, or maybe you're chased by someone? The overall premise involves driving your car on long stretches of road that go forever into the horizon, dodging traffic, maneuvering tight turns, and doing so under a time limit. Though, according to the manual, these aren't your typical traffic encounters... they're all mobsters! While some vehicles simply stay in their lane, others violently swerve into yours the closer they get, forcing you to calculate within seconds.
Midway through each stage is a checkpoint and a pitstop, replenishing time as your car climbs into a tractor trailer. Inside, you're given the chance to upgrade portions of the Teratuga, like the tires, engine, and such, each making your vehicle more resistible to road conditions; there's also an option to obtain nitro for temporary speed boosts. This then leads to the second portion of each stage: m... more mobster dodging. But at the end is a boss battle! Battle OutRun! Here, you're tasked with bumping into the targeted car several times, slowly draining their health to zero before the timer ultimately runs out.
Credit: SEGA
Credit: SEGAIf you haven't picked up on it by now, Sega basically made their own version of Taito's Chase H.Q.
Considering Chase H.Q.'s predecessor, Full Throttle, was an OutRun copycat with a red car and split paths, this feels blatantly intentional on Sega's behalf.
Shame about the game's quality, though.
The greatest irony is, in an attempt to copy Chase H.Q., the devs abandon most of what made the first OutRun original and unique, and in turn created a linear sub-par checkpoint racer. The biggest red flag happens when you begin a race and stare at the visuals; the "scenic" view is regulated to a bunch of tiny mountains and city structures off in the distance. Any objects that materialize to the side of the road are simply turn signs... It's a far cry from the commendable SMS OutRun port that was released several years prior, where every stage featured a strikingly different landscape. In that 1987 release, your slick red car drives through scenery that includes windmills, forests, and ruins. Battle, which came out at the turn of the decade, looks like it was released at the beginning of the Master System's lifecycle with its lack of imagination.
As you play more of Battle, you realize how abysmal its gameplay truly is. Variety is... well, you'll be dodging the same orange and yellow car types for all nine bland stages. Ramps occasionally appear, which the manual claim are helpful, but you typically crash into other cars. As mentioned, vehicles also aggressively swerve into yours, and this is very irritating. Unlike in other racing titles that use this trick, where you have enough time to move away if you're paying attention, Battle's overall difficulty is based around cars suddenly gravitating toward you. It's not the good type of "hard" that feels good to overcome, but the type of hard that gets on your nerves, and it only worsens as you advance in numerical stage order.
Credit: SEGA
Credit: SEGAThat brings us to the next terrible flaw: stage select is a farce. The game allows the option of playing eight of the nine stages in any given order, and while that already sounds like a downgrade from OutRun's ambitious diverging path structure across 15 stages, that's not the terrible part. What makes this ability of "choice" ridiculous is that starting at any of the mid-to-latter stages makes them unwinnable. Because there's an upgrade system in place that has to gel with an escalating difficulty scale, selecting a random stage is pointless; later stages feature boss battles with larger health meters, too many vehicles that ram you constantly, and the lack of upgrades to resist the abuse within the time limit. You literally have to play the game in ascending numerical order to stand a chance.
When you slap a well-known name onto something, there are certain expectations to be had. You expect to see a fat plumber with mushrooms, turtles, and pipes in a game with Mario in its name. You expect middling gameplay and a solid soundtrack in a game with Sonic in its name. If you're going for something different with your IP, you should at least keep most of the loved core elements intact. Battle OutRun is puzzling because it not only fails to incorporate what made the original game what it is, but it also fails at making the new thing a fun experience. The game is a Sega Master System exclusive, meaning there weren't any arcade-to-console porting restraints... and yet this was the creative end result.
