OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast (2006)

OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast is an excellent driving game, which added new single-player content in addition to everything from the enhanced arcade edition of OutRun 2. Those arcade roots and layers of iteration on the ideas of the first OutRun make this a simple and fun pick-up-and-play title that is definitely worth playing.

Unsurprisingly, the place to look for the core of this game’s appeal is in the OutRun mode. Here, like in the original OutRun, you simply drive through 5 of the game’s 15 branching zones, hitting checkpoints to refill the timer before it runs out. The branching paths are implemented smoothly and let your runs have a different feel and difficulty level. The gameplay is easy to pick up and very satisfying, particularly with some of the crazy drifting you can pull off.

It is a great core which is augmented nicely by the somewhat absurd Heart Attack mode. Here, your companion shouts out 1-3 quick missions for you to do in each zone. The missions build off of a core set of simple objectives—passing things, avoiding things, or hitting things—but they throw in creative themes like dribbling an enormous beach ball that blocks your view or even ramming into cartoony ghosts. It doesn’t replace the simpler original mode, but is a fun change of pace.

The game's career mode is part Heart Attack missions and part traditional competitive races, which both require you to average an A rank on a set of them before moving on to the next set. Like the Heart Attack missions, some races slightly remix the objective to keep things fresh—for example, the person in last place gets eliminated occasionally, or the person who’s in first place longest wins. I enjoy this career mode, how straightforwardly focused it is on just playing the game, and its flexibility in letting you do poorly at some events and still advance based on average performance.

All of this stuff plus time trials, multiplayer, and a classic OutRun 2 mode means there’s quite a bit to do to suit different moods. It’s glued together well by the simple but fun visual presentation, which looks great upscaled to 4K on an emulator. I wish there were more music tracks and maybe some visual variants of each area, but I think the game is one of the best driving games out there from its game design alone.

Outrun 2006 is an excellent game which modernises the Outrun experience, but keeps the original's arcade qualities intact. It's jam-packed with courses and challenges which will keep you busy for many hours. The music includes original and remixed versions of the famous Outrun themes as well as some memorable new additions, complete with vocals. The graphics engine runs at a silky smooth 60 frames (apart from some rare frame drops when the action gets very intense). Everything looks bright and colourful and the tracks contain a lot of small details and touches which are a delight to behold.

My biggest gripe with the game is some obvious rubberbanding going on between your car and your rivals. This gets particularly frustrating on some of the longer drives when you run a perfect race up until the final corner, make a small mistake and then proceed to see your rivals zoom past you.

I'm in love with this charming game and if you find it for a good price don't pass it up!