Sega’s arcade racer Out Run redefined the genre with its impossibly colourful depiction of speeding along the open road and the unbridled joy it gave players. Yu Suzuki’s hit employed 2D sprite scaling to achieve its 3D effect, but a few years later, 3D shaded vector graphics became possible, and designer Eugene Jarvis saw an opportunity to build on the coin-op’s basic concept while adding cutting-edge visuals. “Out Run was a big deal, so I wanted to capture some of that,” Eugene remembers. “The cool thing was the spirit of just having fun and going out for a drive. It wasn’t like a hardcore race. So my idea was to have a really good 3D simulation that was responsive to the driver, and by using 3D texture mapping we could have realistic digitised backgrounds.”
Like , Eugene’s project began as one road trip but was changed to another, but where was relocated to Europe, Eugene expanded his initial remit to the wider USA. “Originally we were going to do , but we decided that we wanted a broader theme of cruising the States,” Eugene notes. “It was kind of a free licence. We could put Hollywood in there, and The White House and the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we could have virtual tourism, with the passenger saying
