Before Turbo, there was plain old Out Run which dominated the arcades with excellent graphics and superb atmosphere. The bestselling coin-op of '86 boasted an open-top Ferrari, nagging girlfriend and five different finishing lines, allowing the player to choose his own route.

US Gold made it their big Xmas '87 game but refused to send out any review copies until after it hit the shelves. Out Run became synonymous with hefty hype and mediocre programming.

To avoid endless multiload hassle US Gold took out all the junctions; instead the game was divided up into five different routes. Each route is a completely separate game in the cassette.

Julian Rignall thought 'one of the best features of the arcade machine was in picking a route. With this lost Out Run becomes just another race game.' Daniel Gilbery was also disappointed, 'Although very fast, the graphics are a touch on the blocky side.' The overall mark was 68%, 'a brave attempt' but lacking playability.

Three years later the game is still fast, and there's four different stages packed into a single load, but the graphics are lacking. The cars are unimpressive, while the horizon and side graphics are minimalistic and crude.

The sonics are better, a choice of two tunes or FX, but the courses just aren't that big and graphic variety is low. As a consequence stage time limits are tight, so a mistake or two is fatal. Out Run is okay, but there doesn't seem much point to it with mini-stages, no junctions and basic graphics.