Mar 29, 4:03 pm
Mondays. The rain. Soggy toast. Frizzy hair. Wrong side of the bed. Mother-in-Law. A hang-over. Too much work. Too little sunshine. Road-works. Traffic lights. A queue in the post-office. Loud neighbours. Income tax. Cold-callers. Queue-jumpers. A looming deadline. Spilling your tea. Bills. Breakages. Having something stuck in your teeth but you can’t quite get it out. Corrupted game saves. School. Dentists. Spam mail.
All of these things are BAD. All of these things make you feel like sick wombat with holes in your socks. All of these things shamefully litter out existences, seeking us out like a bad cold and leaving us staggering home, slumping into our sofas, and crying uncontrollably whenever the Andrex Puppy ad appears on TV.
But wait! Do not despair, for help is at hand. The forces of darkness shall not prevail, because for each ripped bin-liner, there is a warm fire. For each pimple right on the tip of your nose, there is a sunny day. For each dreaded Anthea Turner come-back, there is the beautiful escapism of a coma.
And for each triple heart bypass surgery performed by a blind donkey on the sauce, there is Outrun.
Click here to play audio (1.98mb, MP3 format, 8:15)
First of all, allow me to vent my spleen. When Outrun 2 hit our game shops back in 2004, I was saddened - no, appalled - at the lack of interest it generated, especially with regards to Xbox Live.
“But we like Burnout: Revenge!” you crazed-gypsies cried. “We like racing games where we blow stuff up!”
And to that I say, “for shame”.
For Outrun has not been, nor ever will be, a racing game. Indeed, to even compare the two would be like comparing Jim Davidson and Bruce Forsyth hosting The Generation Game - they are simply completely different creatures.
For me, ever since I was a little girl, praying to the mighty Amstrad CPC 464 God to load my games correctly, Outrun has always been about feeling GOOD. The sand, the sea, the red car, that deebee-doo deebee-doo music that, thank goodness, has stood the test of time. Ask anybody about their memories of the game, and I will be surprised if you do not discover a little smile creeping onto their face.
It doesn’t matter if it’s raining outside, or your dog’s been run over (it shouldn’t have been chasing the cat anyway.) Outrun purges all the shadows and all the darkness, lifts you up in its little Sega-sunshine arms, and makes everything simply beautiful.
So, when Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast is released this month, why not turn away from those nasty angry games and take a stroll on the beach for a while?
Or, alternatively, slip on some Nickleback and sob LIKE THE MISERABLE WEAKLINGS YOU ARE!
And, er, listen to my interview with Ben Gunstone (above), the senior producer at Sega Europe, eh? Might have a bit of the music featured. We likes the music, don’t we?
Deebee-doo deebee-doo deebee-doo...
