Which Version of Outrun 2 is the best? Video Discussion

[MrThunderwing]

Hey friends,

 

I've made a half hour discussion video all about Outrun 2 and it's variants (Coast 2 Coast, Online Arcade and SP) as well as some of the regional differences in the games between Eastern and Western releases. If you're a fan of the series please check it out. Thanks!

 

 

 

[ducon2016]

19 hours ago, MrThunderwing said:

Hey friends,

 

I've made a half hour discussion video all about Outrun 2 and it's variants (Coast 2 Coast, Online Arcade and SP) as well as some of the regional differences in the games between Eastern and Western releases. If you're a fan of the series please check it out. Thanks!

 

 

 

Great video. Could you recap the pros and cons here in text?

[soso92]

Il y a 22 heures, MrThunderwing a dit :

Hey friends,

 

I've made a half hour discussion video all about Outrun 2 and it's variants (Coast 2 Coast, Online Arcade and SP) as well as some of the regional differences in the games between Eastern and Western releases. If you're a fan of the series please check it out. Thanks!

 

 

 

Hi friend beautiful video i love your youtube arcade channel a lot of good videos.

For me the pc version is the best version with the steering wheel and the FFB and the bloom fix

more in the pc version I customized all the music by adding the music of wmmt5 and initial arcade and a music of the film wmmt and I also added the intro hd of the lindbergh arcade version.

level original music I keep my favorite music that is chany world

[MrThunderwing]

12 hours ago, ducon2016 said:

Great video. Could you recap the pros and cons here in text?

 

Sure. With the exception of the PSP all versions of the game ran at 60fps

 

-Xbox Outrun 2: Arguably the best looking 6th Generation console version of the game; can display in 480p anamorphic widescreen and upscales nicely into 720p when played on an Xbox 360 (although does suffer from some occasional frame rate judder and sometimes problems when transitioning from one course to another on 360). Contained the original 15 OR2 tracks and 12 cars (4 more than the arcade Chihiro game) and lots of original mission modes and challenges. It also contained two bonus courses that weren't subsequently included in Coast 2 Coast or Outrun Online Arcade, made up of tracks from the old Sega arcade racers Scud Race and Daytona USA 2. The Japanese Xbox version of the original Outrun 2 had some cosmetic and minor gameplay changes made to the bonus stages to make them look and play more accurately to the Scud Race and Daytona 2 arcade games, so the Japanese version is arguably the best version of Outrun 2. There's no force feedback ability if you're using a wheel, but outstanding controls with an Xbox Joypad, with incredibly intuitive rumble that lets you feel all the gear changes and bumps in the road. Easy to use system link (for I think a maximum of 6 players?) if you've got multiple Xboxs with a good stable game connection throughout. To me, feels like the hardest version of the game. The hard level cars actually feel hard to control, especially with manual transmission. Also contained a bonus unlockable version of the original 1986 Outrun.

 

-Coast 2 Coast on consoles: Although C2C didn't include the bonus stages from Outrun 2, it did include all 15 stages from the original arcade version of Outrun 2 and the 15 new stages from Outrun 2 SP. It also included extra cars (bringing the total up to 15) and special souped up versions of all the regular cars. Whereas the original Outrun 2 had been an Xbox exclusive, the home ports of Outrun 2 SP were multi-system, with the original Xbox, PS2, PSP (and later PC) receiving a version of the game. Allegedly, this lead to a slight reduction in the quality of the graphics on the Xbox port, as the game was developed as a multi-platform title that had to account for the PS2 and PSP which weren’t as graphically powerful as the Xbox. I was always under the impression though that the slight quality drop was due to the fact that Coast 2 Coast just contained so much more content than the original Outrun 2, so some compromises had to be made. It's not super noticeable, but the anti-aliasing on the cars seems a tiny bit more jaggy and the draw distance on the road markings isn't quite so good. Not sure about the PSP, but both OG Xbox and PS2 support widescreen 480p with the OG Xbox version being once again backwards compatible with 360, and unlike the original OR2, running with no glitches that I could notice and looking nice upscaled to 720p. Original Xbox is the best looking console version with PS2 coming 2nd and PSP 3rd. The Japanese version of C2C on the PS2 had it's name changed back to Outrun 2 SP and had some end of stage animations from the arcade version of OR2SP added back in that are missing from all the other home versions and also some extra music too. It's also the only version of C2C that has working force feedback for steering wheels. I can't comment on the control on the 2 PlayStation games, but with a pad, Coast 2 Coast handles just as well as Outrun 2. The Xbox system link option is as equally easy to set-up as OR2 and offers an equally good stable connection. The game also had a load of challenge and mission modes, with the nice touch that some of them would feature courses that would mix and match stages from both SP and OR2. Coast 2 Coast also added in the ability to slipstream the CPU traffic and rivals and featured some new animations in the bunki sections of the game (where you transition from one stage to the next) that would differ depending on how well you did in the stage. Arguably easier than OR2. Collisions are punished far more severely in Outrun 2, with the player losing a lot of speed if you drift into traffic or a CPU opponent. Coast 2 Coast by comparison seems to allow you to pretty much plough through other cars, trucks and buses with only minimal speed loss. Hard level cars feel a fair bit easier to control in this version too. It also adds in a Marathon mode allowing you to race all 15 SP or OR2 tracks back-to-back. Also features a special dusk mode for the first Palm Beach course from OR2 and a night mode for the Sunny Beach stage from OR2SP when played in Time Attack.

 

-Coast 2 Coast on PC: Contains all the content of the console versions. The first true HD version of the game, supporting resolutions up to 1080p, however it didn’t include any bloom effects (the optical effect where light from a bright source, such as a the Sun, appears to leak into surrounding objects) The PC version of Coast 2 Coast featured no rumble functionality whatsoever for joypads and was not optimised for racing wheels. You could plug your wheel in and use it, but the game would treat it the same as a joypad, meaning there was a massive deadzone on the wheel’s X axis. You can set-up a wireless LAN using the PC version of C2C very easily, but the connection is very temperamental and prone to failing. The in game timers will get out of sync, cars will warp all over the screen, PCs will totally de-sync. Members of the gaming community were able to help fix these shortcomings though. The OR2 FXT hack (created by Howard Casto) added rumble for joypads, corrected the deadzone in racing wheels and also added force feedback to the game. The hack also allows you to swap out music in the game and change the appearance of parts of the in game menus to appear more arcade like as well as lots of other stuff. Sometime after this it was discovered that the bloom effects actually were in the PC version of Outrun Coast 2 Coast, but were contained in an incorrect folder when the game installed. By simply cutting and pasting a file called lens flare offset.bin from the game’s media folder into the games common folder, it enabled the effects! With all these fixes added to the game it is now arguably the best version of Coast 2 Coast.

 

-Outrun Online Arcade (PS3 & Xbox 360):  A digital only version of the game that contained only the 15 SP tracks, as well as a reduction in the number of cars back to 10 and a reduced selection of tunes. Displays in 720p HD, but looks significantly better than the PC version as it has superior bloom effects (it looks way better, even with the bloom effects in the correct folder and working on the PC). The bloom here looks a lot nicer than the Xbox versions of OR2 and Coast 2 Coast as well (It's been mentioned to me that the Xbox version of Coast also has issues with it's bloom - the sun is completely missing in the OG Xbox version for the OutRun 2 SP courses, most notably, in the opening Sunny Beach stage the Sun is suppose to be visible and shining when you climb the first hill). Despite being a highly stripped down version of Coast 2 Coast the game did feature the end of course animations that were missing in all the other versions of Coast 2 Coast, apart from the Japanese PS2, and it also featured force feedback for racing wheels too. It also lets you play the Heart attack mission modes and features the 15 stage Marathon mode. I've never played the 360 version, but playing on a PS3 with a pad, the rumble functions are extremely week, to the point I can barely feel it do anything with the settings at maximum (also I hate playing racing games using the R2 and L2 triggers on a Dualshock 3 pad, your fingers constantly feel like they want to slip off them). Despite the lack of rumble, the game handles really well and has the easier handling of C2C rather than OR2. Was playable online back in the day, but no local system link options. Has been de-listed now, so you can no longer purchase it from PSN or XBLA.

 

-Outrun 2 SPDX (Teknoparrot): The actual arcade version of Outrun 2 SP DX hacked to run on Windows 10 PCs. I own Windows 7 so haven't been able to play it (boo!) but from what I see it's just as nice looking as Outrun Online Arcade (in terms of bloom) and it's got  ALL 15 OR2 and SP stages in and you can play it in resolutions up to 4K. Also supports FFB and network play. Doesn't feature all the content from Coast 2 Coast, with some cars missing and none of the challenge modes. The graphics can apparently be problematic when played in Tekknoparrot without certain downloadable fixes.

 

Wow, wasn't planning on that turning into an essay, but there you go. PC version, played with all the fixes using a wheel is the best version for my money. If I ever upgrade to Windows 10, that may change...

Modifié le 27 janvier 2019 par MrThunderwing

[ducon2016]

Great comparison. I actually use the Coast 2 Coast PC edition on my machine so happy that it is a decent version. RPCS3 is still not fast enough for outrun, CBX and Xenia are not ready yet. And the flakky TP edition has unfortunately too many issues to be considered right now unfortunately: random crashes, black roads, shadows, and it does not seem like Reaver will ever fix it.

 

The only thing that annoys me is the low res UI textures in the PC version. Is there a hack for that?

Modifié le 27 janvier 2019 par ducon2016

[MrThunderwing]

I think Howard's looking at doing something about that, but I'm not 100% sure to be honest with you.

[tryphoxxx]

For me best version is RPCS3 (PS3) !!! The aspect ratio is perfect, the bloom looks very nice and 100% emulated with the newer version (After Burner Climax is perfect too). With Teknoparrot ratio 1080p/2K/4K don't respect the original game for me.

[ark216]

On 1/27/2019 at 6:37 PM, MrThunderwing said:

Members of the gaming community were able to help fix these shortcomings though

Can you link me to the fixes of the shortcomings of the LAN aspect of the game?

[nonosto]

Le 27/01/2019 à 14:37, MrThunderwing a dit :

There's no force feedback

I am pretty sure on XBOX it does, I had this wheel:

 

Il y a 11 heures, tryphoxxx a dit :

For me best version is RPCS3 (PS3)

on PS3 you have lot of down of framerarte (casino town for exemple) and outrun 2 track missing (like on online version xbox 360)

[tryphoxxx]

I know some stages and cars are missing, unfortunately, but the special stages of "Coast 2 Coast" that do not exist in the arcade version are present ! And it's good ! For the rest the bloom effect is very good (better than PC version) and no bad framerate for me with the latest RPCS3 build. What is your hardware, because you need a good PC (for me Ryzen 5 3600 + GTX 1070Ti) ? Well Teknoparrot version is probably the best, but the ratio/resolution is not good (image stretched in 1080p i think) but no graphic problems with all fixes like MrThunderwing says 

 

For me best versions are PS3 and Teknoparrot (PC version no bloom effects, for me it's bad even controls are good). bye

[MrThunderwing]

On 08/11/2020 at 10:36 PM, nonosto said:

I am pretty sure on XBOX it does, I had this wheel:

 

 

 

Nope, the Japanese PS2 version was the only console of that generation that had force feedback. The wheel works, but the Xbox game has no FFB.

 

On 08/11/2020 at 2:04 PM, ark216 said:

Can you link me to the fixes of the shortcomings of the LAN aspect of the game?

 

There isn't a fix for that, I think the way I worded it straight after talking about the LAN might've confused you. The shortcomings I was referring to were the things like the lack of rumble in pads, the massive deadzone in the wheel X-Axis and lack of force feedback.

[nonosto]

Il y a 7 heures, MrThunderwing a dit :

 

The wheel works, but the Xbox game has no FFB.

 

You are in right, it's seems "FFB emulator with rumble signal", but work very fine it's very closed with FFB, you have force feddback sensation.

[Cool Coyote]

Online Arcade 

is the cleanest looking and in 4k the ps3 version on rpcs3 is best looking. 

[Saturnin]

Le 03/06/2021 à 12:55, Cool Coyote a dit :

Online Arcade 

is the cleanest looking and in 4k the ps3 version on rpcs3 is best looking. 

Sadly on PS3, no LAN mode & no OutRun 2 non-SP Stages so for me the best version is Outrun 2 SPDX with Teknoparrot 

Modifié le 5 juin 2021 par Saturnin

[Cool Coyote]

You mean the arcade version?  of course the arcade version is the best, I think ps3 version is cleaner and  no sunlight problem.

 

[Invité petje]

 

[Cool Coyote]

nah this 🤭

 

[Tathan]

Il y a 6 heures, Cool Coyote a dit :

nah this 🤭

 

Teknoparrot version looks really nice but stopped working with my new AMD GPU (even with AMD fix, don't know why)...

 

At the moment, the PS3 version is in my opinion the best, even if the HUD may look crispy in some moments. I hope to be able to run it in a racing cab one day! ^^ 

Modifié le 9 juin 2021 par Tathan

[Cool Coyote]

6 hours ago, Tathan said:

Teknoparrot version looks really nice but stopped working with my new AMD GPU (even with AMD fix, don't know why)...

 

At the moment, the PS3 version is in my opinion the best, even if the HUD may look crispy in some moments. I hope to be able to run it in a racing cab one day! ^^ 

the RPCS3 version is the best in terms of cleanest looking and u also get a proper sunlight value, but its not arcade spx standard. amd isnt great for most emulating.

[Cool Coyote]

 https://www.emucr.com/2021/06/project64-netplay-20210608.html

Project64 Netplay       ANYBODY TRIED THIS ?  we are all familiar with the normal n64 emu , but iv never tried this online thing.

Modifié le 13 juin 2021 par Cool Coyote

[tryphoxxx]

Big problem with Teknoparrot version: A 4/3 ratio (or 16/10 ?) would be required. I’ve asked the question a thousand times but no one seems to have the solution to the problem ? Image of the game is stretched i think. I played the Xbox version which I find much better, but unfortunately no emulator manages to run it correctly (the same with Chihiro). I hope a 4:3 patch to be better.

 

 

Modifié le 12 décembre 2021 par tryphoxxx

[Cool Coyote]

Le 12/13/2021 à 6:05 AM, tryphoxxx a dit :

Big problem with Teknoparrot version: A 4/3 ratio (or 16/10 ?) would be required. I’ve asked the question a thousand times but no one seems to have the solution to the problem ? Image of the game is stretched i think. I played the Xbox version which I find much better, but unfortunately no emulator manages to run it correctly (the same with Chihiro). I hope a 4:3 patch to be better.

 

 

so whats the difference about it to the arcade normal version ? i found the cleanest version is the ps3 version, best arcade experience is the or2 version

[braders1986]

On 12/12/2021 at 5:05 PM, tryphoxxx said:

Big problem with Teknoparrot version: A 4/3 ratio (or 16/10 ?) would be required. I’ve asked the question a thousand times but no one seems to have the solution to the problem ? Image of the game is stretched i think. I played the Xbox version which I find much better, but unfortunately no emulator manages to run it correctly (the same with Chihiro). I hope a 4:3 patch to be better.

 

 

 

There is no 4:3 option for the Lindbergh version. All previous assets were rescaled/adjusted for a 16:10 aspect ratio on a direct 640x480 canvas, with excess bars intended to be cut off by the LCD display with overscan. 
Lindberg had games in many aspect ratios and resolutions, but OR2SPDX is straight up 640x480 / 16:10.

You can get the correct aspect on TP as long as you have a 16:10 monitor, and run in default resolution.

 

The PS3/360 port was changed for 16:9, which resulted in squished 2D assets, making them narrow and incorrect.

Modifié le 23 juin 2023 par braders1986

[pcplayer12]

does the current version on TP not support the end credits fmv or video files or do I have a bad dump?

[braders1986]

On 7/12/2023 at 6:59 AM, pcplayer12 said:

does the current version on TP not support the end credits fmv or video files or do I have a bad dump?

 

It absolutely does, but the current sun brightness fix breaks the videos. Disable that fix and they work fine. Christ knows why that conflicts with them, but it does.