There is a lot to do in Outrun 2. Beyond what you'd expect in an arcade based racing game. Outrun 2 was designed for SEGA's Chihiro board, their Xbox based arcade system. You'd really only expect the main game from the arcade. But even the main arcade game has depth beyond getting from point A to point B the fastest. The arcade game itself offered two modes. Outrun mode, where you do just that, get from point A to point B in the fastest time possible. Heart Attack mode, where the goal is to impress your lady friend by doing as she says. Heh, the game has a mode that replicates driving with a woman ... the comedy. They also added the standard time attack mode to the home game. Racing without cars on the track and creating a ghost car. Allowing you to race yourself and improve. For the home conversion, they added a few more modes. Out Run Xbox Live, which allows you numerous ways to play. You can post your Time Attack ghost files. People can download them and race against you offline. This allows you to watch the world's fastest on a particular course and learn from them. A very cool feature. You also have actual online racing. Up to eight players. Within that mode's options is the ability to adjust the "keep up" factor. Whether you hold your position with the leaders after a crash, or if you keep your actual position and have to actually catch up. This allows for great arcade intensity for the beginners. If turned off, it allows for the same intensity without penalizing the advanced players. So with one, it's always intense and up for grabs, or one crash and you're out. There is also the option to download content (nothing available as of yet). That's clearly more than enough for SEGA to have said, you're getting your money's worth, but they didn't stop there. They added Challenge Mode. Within Challenge Mode are three further modes. Outrun Mission, which has you completing 101 missions to unlock rewards. They've broken the course map of Outrun 2 into sixteen stages (0-15). Each stage has six missions. You're ranked from E to AAA on each mission. Earning an A rank on each mission gets you a Mission Card. Earn the six Mission Cards in each stage to earn a seventh card for the stage, which informs you of what you've unlocked. The missions vary from stage to stage. They are exceedingly creative. Some examples are Drift, where you have to maintain as many drifts as possible. Zone Runner, where you haveto drive in the specific colored zone your female passenger wishes of you. Knockout, where the last car to pass the line is knocked out of the race. Crazy Convoy, where you have to not bump anything in an overly crowded course filled with nothing but large trucks and busses. Cone Runner, where you have to knock over specific colored cones while avoiding the others. Max Speed, where you need to maintain a set speed to earn hearts. Love Courier, where you have to pick up hearts scattered over the course, and then drop them in the zones to earn extra time. Math Mayhem, where there are giant numbers over the course like +6, -2, +9, +5, - 7, +10 and when you reach the end of the specific course and you have a choice of paths you need to select the correct answer and continue on. This is actually much more interesting than it sounds. It's like your brain says you're not supposed to be doing simple math while speeding along trying to avoid cars and crashing. This mode really works well. Just when you thought you've seen the crest of their creativity, they hit you with another mode out of nowhere. Like Snap Happy, where you have to drift to get the best angle of a heart balloon on the side of the course, then snap its picture. Memory Test, where you have to memorize the sequence of the fruit floating over the course and then hit the correct gates. Laser Breaker, where the CPU cars are connected by lasers, and you earn hearts by breaking the connections. Race Sam, where you have to beat a specific CPU character. Heart Breaker, where the CPU cars have floating hearts around their cars, and you need to steal them away by tagging them with your car. They really went overboard with this mode when they didn't even have to. It's awesome. The second of the modes within Challenge Mode is Party Missions. Essentially taking turns in missions against some friends. The third mode is Outrun Race, which allows you to race the lot of CPU characters at once on any courses you've unlocked. Speaking of unlockable content, there are a plethora of things to be had. I am on stage four of Outrun Mission and I have unlocked 26 of 142 cards, the Euro Remixes of the original Outrun tracks, a couple of new cars to race with, and the reversed versions of a couple of the courses. I know there are more cars, more reverse courses, and the original arcade version of Outrun to be unlocked. They really went above and beyond the call with this one as far as padding the home version. Beyond a job well done.
Next time should be about course design.
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