4 Ages of Outrun (Sega)
16Wow, so I've really got into the whole split-screen retro-computer game comparison thing at the moment. Next up is another one of my favourite game series, the Outrun games by Sega. This is a comparison between the Sega Master System version, the Sega Saturn Version (using SSX emulator), the Playstation 2 remake version (using Pcsx2 PS2 emulator) and the sequel, Outrun 2 (in this case the Coast to Coast version) on PC.
Although I'm using a Saturn emulator, it's running my original version of Sega Ages that I bought back in the 90's. The Saturn version is regarded as possibly the best home conversion of Outrun around, as it is, it's more-or-less indistinguishable from the arcade original. However, this being the PAL version I'm using, it does have some rather unfortunate fugly black borders at the top and bottom of the screen (which is why it's got a sort of widescreen, wrong aspect-ratio kinda look to it here). I could've captured the original arcade version (using MAME), which would've been border-less, but I wanted to concentrate on 'actual' home versions. The colour scheme is a bit messed up in the emulated version of Outrun 2500 I'm playing on Pcsx2, which I think is an emulation issue. The Sega Master system version looks ok for an 8-bit machine, but is not a patch on it's big arcade brother. In my opinion the best 8-bit version around is the PC Engine one.