Outrun 2 Beta (Chihiro) CXBXR Reloaded CI-018a806 (Goal B)

Channel:

MrThunderwing

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22,800

Published on March 3, 2021 5:12:41 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ccDirJKiI

Game:

OutRun 2 (2003)

Duration: 7:54

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33

So, over the last couple of years I've been periodically uploading footage of the emulation progress of the actual arcade Chihiro (Beta) version of Outrun 2, using original Xbox emulator CXBXR. The Chihiro board was special arcade hardware that was based on the architecture of the original Xbox. In the earliest video I uploaded it would boot to the title and car select screens then crash. In a later one, it would get in game, but have incredibly messed up graphics and run at about 20fps and be highly prone to crashing.

In a slightly later video, the graphics were a tiny bit less messed up, but the game still ran incredibly slowly and a weird side effect of the emulation was that your car would seemingly hit some sort of invisible barrier when it got to the fork in the track at the end of each stage. This would bring the car to a complete stop and make it act like it was stuck in place. It would also make the camera totally spaz out as you tried to advance past thus invisible force. Sometimes I'd be able to get through it after awhile, sometimes I'd get stuck there until the timer ran out. Even if I managed to get the car moving again, because I'd lost so much speed from coming to a complete standstill, I couldn't progress farther than the 3rd stage. That last video I uploaded was back in June 2020.

Things have now improved a bit more! The graphics are still really messed up in places, and make you feel like you've just dropped a tab of Acid (The weird tracery effects on everything on the Palm Beach stage are crazy and playing the Deep Lake stage with an invisible bridge is just mental!), but the game now runs, mostly, at 60fps for me. Also, the invisible barrier thing now no longer happens, meaning it's possible to actually properly complete the game and reach the end of course goal! Awesome!

On top of this, having now got a bit further into the game, it's possible to see that not all of the stages are as badly affected as others. The Industrial Complex stage for example actually has far less graphical glitching going on and looks pretty good.

Another interesting thing about being able to play the actual Chihiro game, is the fact the Ferrari Testarossa (the original 1986 Outrun car) had a very different look in this version of the game compared to all the subsequent home ports and sequels. Apparently it was re-designed in the later games to appear more like the version from the 1986 super-scaler original, which has been the case from Outrun 2 on the Xbox and beyond. The only other place this original Chihiro Testrossa design featured was in the Xbox demo of Outrun 2, but only as a rival car (thanks once again to fellow Outrun 2 superfan Noobsaibot21 for making me aware of this in the first place). I'll be uploading some footage of this demo version of the game in the next day-or-two. Oddly, this version of the Testarossa was the one that featured on the back of the Xbox OR2 box. You can see it here on the back of my very own PAL copy of OR2: https://sta.sh/019w09shrhva

I had a go at running the Xbox home port of Outrun 2 using CXBXR (I've got a copy of the Japanese version on both of my softmodded Xboxs and I realised last month I still had a copy on my PC's HDD too) and the state of the emulation in that is pretty much identical to the Chihiro game (if anything the Chihiro version actually ran a bit faster). I had a go at trying to swap out the save file CXBXR had created with my own Outrun 2 save file I'd FTP'd across from my actual Xbox (and one created by Noobsaibot21), but unfortunately CXBXR kept saying the save was corrupt and needed to be deleted, even though structurally it looked identical. Odd. Anyway, hopefully as progress starts to improve on the actual Xbox game, this will also be reflected in the Chihiro game. The fact it's playable at all and has progressed so much is quite frankly astounding!

#OutRun2​ #OutRun2SP​ #OutRun2SPDX

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