Outrun 2 - Chihiro Beta Vs Xbox

Channel:

MrThunderwing

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22,800

Published on July 6, 2021 11:50:50 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5XLYtQA2dM

Game:

OutRun 2 (2003)

Duration: 7:22

2,075 views

32

I am an Outrun 2 super fan. I love to obsess over the minutiae regarding the various differences in all the different versions of Outrun 2 and it's sequels and ports. I find myself both fascinated, that there are so many little differences in the games, but also frustrated that there's STILL not a definitive version with all the best bits in (and owing to Sega no longer possessing the Ferrari license, there probably never will be. Boooooo!).

The original arcade version of Outrun 2 ran on the Sega Chihiro arcade board. The Sega Chihiro arcade hardware was, basically, an original Xbox with extra RAM. Although the superior Sega Lindbergh (the successor to the Chihiro board) version of Outrun 2 SPDX has been hacked to work on PCs now (using Teknoparrot), the original Chihiro version of Outrun 2 (or the beta version of it at any rate) has only fairly recently been emulated to a fairly decent standard, using original Xbox emulator CXBXR.

The original Xbox was the first ever home console to get a port of Outrun 2 (and technically it still is, as Outrun Coast 2 Coast and Outrun Online Arcade are actually different games, albeit, different games that are more of an expansion of the original). So, now that the Chihiro version's in a not too shabby state of emulation, I thought it'd be interesting to compare the two games side-by-side.

An interesting thing about the Chihiro game, is the fact the Ferrari Testarossa (the original 1986 Outrun car) had a different look 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), so I thought it'd be interesting to add some footage of that I'd previously recorded. 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. As well as the different design of the Testarossa, there's a FILA advertisement sign in the Chihiro game that's been changed to a SEGA one in the Xbox game. The look of the car on the course layout loading screen map is also different and the car select menus look a bit different in both too. I haven't noticed any other differences, but if any of you Eagle eyed peeps do, let me know.

The footage of the demo was something I recorded awhile back using an OG Xbox and composite video capture, so it's a bit blurry and capped at 30fps. I swapped out my composite cables for some component ones awhile back, but I've got no way to video capture using those, and physically getting to the consoles to swap back to composite for some video capture, would've been a major ballache that I couldn't be arsed to go through, so I've used my Xbox 360 to record the Xbox Outrun 2 gameplay. The benefit of this, is that it means the footage is HD and 60fps. The downside is that the Xbox 360 emulation of Outrun 2 has a few little gremlins, the most noticeable of which is that the frame rate gets a bit juddery sometimes. The other is that the transition between stages can get a bit messed up, with the course goal seemingly sprouting up from the ground as you get near it. Using the 360 means the game automatically defaults to it's widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio, whereas the Chihiro is in the arcade's native 4:3. The version of CXBXR I'm using to play the Chihiro game is CXBXR CI-494ef0b. I'm also using something called DKVX, a bunch of .dll files you stick in the same folder as your CXBXR EXE which significantly improve the graphics in the game.

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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