Xbox Community Network ci ha fornito una intervista a Paul Tankard, Steve Lycett e Pat Phelan di Sumo Digital, che ci illustrano la storia di OutRun Online Arcade e ci spiegano alcuni dettagli del gioco. Ve la proponiamo di seguito, in inglese, ricordandovi che il titolo è già disponibile su Live Arcade.

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XCN: The history of OutRun is a long and proud one. Can you give us a bit of background on the series for those not familiar with its greatness?

Born in 1986, OutRun first took us on a beautiful journey. Whilst driving games to that point were fierce competitive races, OutRun showed it was pure pleasure just to take the open road with your best girl, sun beating down and the radio playing. It was followed by Turbo OutRun in 1989, introducing a new Ferrari and rivals to race, then by OutRunners in 1992, which added more choice of routes and new cars and drivers.

Fast forward to 2003, and the arcades are suffering from a lack of sunshine and blue skies. Sega’s AM2 division rush to the rescue and OutRun2 is born. Now with a whole stable of Ferraris, a choice of girls and those classic tunes back with new sparkle, the beautiful journey is reborn. It’s such a hit, that shortly after this is followed up with OutRun2SP, allowing you to drift your Ferrari’s right across the US of A.

We at Sumo do our small part of spreading the sunshine by bringing home OutRun2 and OutRun2006 (based on OutRun2SP) from the Arcade to the Xbox.

XCN: Sumo Digital won a lot of praise for their OutRun 2 port. Is that something we'll see a repeat of? Have you done the game justice?

There are few bigger fans of OutRun than us, and it’s been great to be given chance to spend some more time in its company. We also realize that we’ve got our past work to live up to! 

As a result, we’ve been out on the message boards, looked at previous reviews and looked to include everything that makes the game special. We also talked to hardcore fans who still play Time Attack to this day. For example they spotted some mistakes that we’d missed, like a scoring problem where passing certain vehicles differed from the arcade.

We hope everyone enjoys OutRun Online Arcade just as much as we enjoyed putting it together!

XCN: So is OutRun Online Arcade a a direct port of Outrun Coast to Coast? What's different about it?

We started with the Coast 2 Coast code, but also checked back to the original arcade code. What we’ve tried to do is bring a definitive home version of OutRun2SP to life. There’s also a few things in we couldn’t do before, like force feedback support for the 360 Wheel for example.

XCN: Lets talk about updates. What kind of HD next-gen goodness have you added?

The first thing is we’ve optimized the game for HD widescreen displays. This is the first true widescreen version of the game to make it into everyone’s homes (unless you own an OutRun2SP DX arcade cab of course!). We’ve done that right across the board with new interface, hud elements, so you’ll see more blue skies and sparkling seas then ever before.

We’ve also had chance to add all the 360 elements that everyone expects, so you’ve got full leaderboard support, online multiplayer, achievements and more. We’ve also had chance to put in new lighting, so there is nicer reflections on the cars, more natural bloom, but again only where it complements the original look of the game.

XCN: Which courses are there in the game that people will recognize? Are there any new tracks?

OutRun Online Arcade includes the 15 OutRun2SP tracks. All the tracks are based on US locations, so you’ll run through Sunny Beach which has a Miami feel, choose to pass through Bay Area, which is based on San Francisco, and then maybe Waterfalls, which has a Niagra Falls feel to it. There are also tracks based on the Grand Canyon, Alaska, New York, even tracks which resemble Machu Pichu and running along side the Amazon.

XCN: Tell us about the motors! How many and which ones?

We’ve got a whole garage of Ferrari’s to drive. These range from classics, like the Dino and Daytona, more recent ones like the Enzo, 360 Spider and F50, and OutRun wouldn’t be OutRun without the Testarossa. There’s 10 to choose from, and enough handling differences so you can see which ones you can get the top times with.

XCN: What game modes can we expect? All the classic ones? Any new ones?

Yes, all the classics are there, OutRun mode, where you can freely choose your course passing as many rivals as you can and gain as many points to top those leaderboards, Heart Attack mode, which sees you having to do crazy stuff to acquire points that I have no doubt would be illegal here on UK roads, and Time Attack mode which is a pure speed thrill which knowing the track and your car is crucial. There's of course the 15 stage variations of Heart Attack and Time Attack modes, but be warned, I've seen grown men cry when they were going for the time of the century on Time Attack 15 stage and then crash on the 14th stage, it wasn't pretty.

XCN: Clarissa. Is she in or out? Any new outfits? Can we have her number?

Clarissa is back, as is Jennifer. Holly is busy now in LA with her movie career, so wasn’t available this time.  We checked with Clarissa if we could pass on her phone number, but apparently she only dates people who get AAA scores when asked to ‘Drift More’

XCN: We assume the game will be using some classic Richard Jacques Any new tunes in there? Will the game include the almighty Magical Sound Shower? Please?

Right now there’s no tunes in from Richard Jacques, but we’re not ruling out some returning in the future

XCN: You've put achievements into the game. What sort of things did you go for? Are they hard to get? Anything really random?

Nothing random, actually all the achievements make a lot of sense. We wanted people to understand the depth of the scoring, so whilst there are some easier ones to get for new players, there are also some challenging ones in there that will need you to pick up some of the advanced play techniques. If you want more challenge, you can also compare your scores with the official Arcade scores by visiting the outrun.jp website. Trust me, it’ll take some time to top the best times on there

XCN: Thanks for your time!