The Best OutRunners: Who Made OutRun?

Video game publishers were secretive in the 1980s. In a highly competitive market they didn't want star developers poached by rivals. Whereas by the mid 90s, titles like Daytona USA included a full credits list, the 1980s saw developer credits constrained to Easter Eggs and cryptic initials on the high score table.

Unfortunately, as a result of this, many developers remain uncredited for their work. Nevertheless, it's a fun challenge to establish the development story of an influential title like OutRun! 

The seed of OutRun was planted in July 1985, when Sega produced a design document for a game codenamed Dead Heat. This was a response to the success of Hang-On and within Sega there was a business objective to better Namco's Pole Position, which arguably it did depending on which set of figures you believe. Some cite over 20,000 OutRun machines sold, whereas others over 30,000. 

The original design documentation, exhibited in full at the CEDEC 2019 conference, initially proposed an F1 based game, like Pole Position, but with the ability to race a rival player head to head. It also proposed road branching and road inclines, two features which made the final cut.

By December 1985, the design had gravitated from F1 to sports cars. The multiplayer feature had been dropped for budgetary reasons. Instead, focus shifted towards making the tracks as interesting and feature rich as possible. The game was now codenamed Spark Rally.

The final design documentation, dated 30th June 1986, is credited to Youji Ishii, I. Yutani and Motoshige Hokoyama (who later directed Shadow Dancer). By this time, the game was called OutRun.

Youji Ishii, who joined Sega in 1978, first worked with Yu Suzuki on Hang-On. He is notable for his hands-on role developing Flicky and Fantasy Zone. He project managed OutRun and handled other elements of the production. He was effectively Yu Suzuki's boss. His role would be equivalent to an Executive Producer or studio head in western development terminology. 

In Szczepaniak's interview in The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Vol 3, Ishii humbly credits much of the creative vision for OutRun to Yu Suzuki noting, "I mostly left things up to Suzuki. So it's actually correct to say Yu Suzuki was the one who deserves credit". Ishii doesn't receive a credit on the high score table despite managing the project and contributing to the design documentation.

Sega's development studio in Haneda, located next to Sega HQ. This is where OutRun was developed.

OutRun was developed by a small team over the course of eight to ten months. The team consisted of four programmers, five graphic designers and one sound creator. (The Making of OutRun). Space Harrier's code contains a hidden November 1985 date, and OutRun's September 1986. So presuming the core team moved straight from Space Harrier to OutRun, that confirms a 10 month development cycle. There are remnants of Space Harrier's assets in OutRun including the Space Harrier font, and a sound sample so this seems a reasonable assumption. 

VHS-C Tapes from the road trip. One tape is dated 30 April 1986, Monte Carlo. (Source)

In April 1986, approximately 5 months into production, Ishii and Suzuki embarked on a European roadtrip to scout locations for OutRun. The original plan had been to travel to New York and cross America, due to the influence of The CannonBall Run movie. But Ishii claims Hayao Nakayama, the head of Sega, thought this would be too dangerous. (Untold History Vol 3). Suzuki's recollection of events differs, "I realised, once I’d arranged everything, that the scenery along the [pan-America] course actually doesn’t change very much, so I revised my plan and decided to collect data in Europe instead." (The Making of OutRun). This change in focus mid-development perhaps explains why OutRun starts with the California influenced Coconut Beach, before becoming more European in nature. Both Ishii and Suzuki cite the Romantic Road in Germany as a particular influence. It's reasonable to assume that Coconut Beach was developed before the trip took place, as there's an early test variant of that level still present in the ROMs. 

So now we come to decipher the cryptic Best Outrunners list, which offers seven entries from the overall team size of ten. Like all good games, it starts easily enough, but soon gets tough!

1. First up, needing no introduction, is Yu Suzuki (YU.) Yu Suzuki acted as the creative lead and planner on OutRun, but was also a hands-on programmer. He mentions, "I wrote all of the important planning and programming parts myself; I don’t think anything was really influenced by the development staff." (The Making of OutRun).

However, the creative influence of the OutRun team was perhaps more prominent than Suzuki recalls, as we shall see. There's no doubt that Suzuki was the lead visionary from a technical and creative standpoint. It's his name that's present in the Easter egg, indicating his role in developing the program code. With such a small development team, it's clear that many of the individuals wore multiple hats as a result and Suzuki is no exception. It should also be noted that Suzuki composed a couple of the music tracks for Space Harrier including Ida and Valda. The Sega teams contained multi-talented individuals. 

Suzuki's creative reference points included The CannonBall Run movie, his European roadtrip with Ishii and the art of Hiroshi Nagai. 

Suzuki in a BMW 520, the car used for the European roadtrip. Photo dated 1986.

2. The seconds entry reads BIN. This is Satoshi Mifune, who likes to be known as Bin-Chan. (4gamer). He joined Sega in April 1985, and would have been just 18 years old at the time. (AM2 Web Archive).

Satoshi Mifune testing OutRun. [Credit 4gamer]

His first project was a supporting role on Hang-On, where he first worked with Yu Suzuki. From there, Mifune programmed high profile projects including Space Harrier, OutRun, AfterBurner, Dynamite Dux, Turbo OutRun through to Virtua Striker and even Shenmue! 

As we've covered on this blog, he's credited in hidden debug text within the game relating to the colour palette.

3. KAG is possibly Takafumi Kagaya, an AM2 designer credited on Daytona USA, Virtua Cop and Virtua Figher amongst other titles. Entering KAG on the Daytona USA high score table plays a hidden jingle. It's not unreasonable to assume he could have worked on OutRun, but I've not seen concrete proof of this. 

4. MIY is Hiroshi Miyauchi, more commonly known as Hiroshi Kawaguchi. One of Sega's longstanding and prolific composers, if not one of the most famous video game composers of all time. Continuing the multi-talented trend of the team, Hiro originally joined Sega as a programmer, impressing Yu Suzuki with his assembly skills at interview. It was common for composers to manually transcribe their music into assembly macros and even write sound drivers at Sega during this period, so perhaps this isn't surprising. (The Rock Stars of Sega). 

In terms of creative decision making, there is light-hearted disagreement with regard to who suggested certain features, contradicting Suzuki's claims that he didn't rely on the development team for input.

During a revealing interview fellow Sega composer Takenobu Mitsuyoshi jokes that Suzuki usually liked to assume ownership of ideas. Hiro laughs when he recalls "Yu Suzuki used to say he came up with [the idea of OutRun's music select] himself." Before adding, "but I seem to remember the designer creating that radio screen and saying, 'hey, if this is a radio, you should be able to select your own songs!' I do remember, however, that the screen originally didn’t show the hand. The original design was just the car’s dashboard. But once you were able to select songs, I asked Yu Suzuki whether we should have a cursor or some indicator on-screen to show people they could choose their music. Ultimately I'm the one who decided we didn’t need to do that, though." (The Rock Stars of Sega).

Hiro references Naoya Matsuoka and Cassiopeia as direct influences on OutRun's soundtrack. "If I had not heard Mr. Naoya Matsuoka's songs, I don't think OutRun's music would have been born" (Sound Creator Interview).

The following image shows Sega's offices around the development of OutRun (Twitter). Hiro can be seen in the foreground playing the keyboard wearing casual clothes, unlike his colleagues. On the right is Mr. Yamamoto who was responsible for transcribing the sound data for OutRun.

5. MAT is programmer Tetsu Matsushima. Like many others on the team he worked across Space Harrier, OutRun and AfterBurner. (MegaDrive Collected Works) He went onto work for Rutubo games, which produced the arcade perfect Saturn ports of the aforementioned titles.

Whilst Suzuki claimed, "The [OutRun] game development team was made up of people who happened to be available at the time, so I wasn’t able to assemble the team according to my wishes", (The Making of OutRun), this must be taken with a grain of salt given Hiro, Mifune and Matsushima appear to be a close-knit unit migrating from Space Harrier onto OutRun, before decamping to their skunkworks Studio 128 office to develop AfterBurner. (AfterBurner II - Developer Interviews). The pixel art style of these three titles is also consistent, which would suggest many of the artists moved from one project to the next.

6. IKA and A.O

Sadly, I can't establish who these individuals are. Maybe they were members of the art team, of which I can find no information at all. Even when John Szczepaniak directly asked Youji Ishii, on my behalf, for the remaining developer credits during an interview in The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Vol 3, he was unable to recall all the names. For now, the road sadly ends here.

Hopefully one day I'll uncover more information and update this article. If you have any further information, please let me know in the comments below.

Timeline

1978 - Youji Ishii joins Sega
Apr 1983 - Yu Suzuki joins Sega as a programmer

July 1983 - Yu Suzuki assigned to R&D department
1984 - Hiroshi Kawaguchi joins Sega as a programmer
Nov 1984 - Yu Suzuki transferred to Software Development Division 1
Apr 1985 - Satoshi Mifune joins Sega as a programmer to work on Hang-On
July 1985 - Hang-On Released
July 1985 - Space Harrier Development Starts
July 1985 - OutRun Design Revision 1 (Codename: Dead Heat)
Sep 1985 - Space Harrier concept with jet plane displayed at AM show
Sep 1985 - Development relocates to 'Office 2', next to their HQ. Used until Feb 9th 2019
Nov 1985 - Space Harrier Released
Dec 1985 - OutRun Design Revision 2 (Codename: Spark Rally)

Apr 1986 - Yu Suzuki transferred to Software Development Division 2
Apr 1986 - Yu Suzuki & Youji Ishii embark upon European Research Trip

June 1986 - OutRun Design Revision 3 (Rebranded OutRun)
Sep 1986 - OutRun Announced at Sega Tokyo press conference 22nd September
Oct 1986 - OutRun Exhibited at 24th AM Show (7th & 8th October)
Dec 1986 - AfterBurner Development Starts. Team relocates to Studio 128.
July 1987 - AfterBurner Released
Oct 1987 - AfterBurner 2 Released

Aug 1988 - Power Drift Released

Studio 128. The team decamped to this small premises to develop AfterBurner and Power Drift

Interview with Yu Suzuki & Ryu: The Making of After Burner

I'm delighted to bring you the first English translation of a piece of SEGA history from 1988. This interview with Yu Suzuki and Ryu presents a rare insight into the development of a number of classic AM2 titles.

I'd like to thank Fabrizio Bartoloni for translating the article. I tried to cajole a number of people into helping, and he was the first to agree. I've adjusted some of the wording slightly, but the original translation and Japanese text can be found here.

I'd politely request that other sites link to this article, rather than pasting the contents. This is a non-profit site with no advertising, so please be nice. :)

Interviewees:
Yu Suzuki. (Lead Developer)
Ryu. (Head of the consumer office)

YU: I'm the one responsible for "YU" as a name entry [on the high score table] when you power up After Burner. I've overseen the software coordination and planning of After Burner. I started my career with Hang On and then went on to create Space Harrier and Out Run.

RYU: I'm RYU and in charge of growing the consumer office. So far I've worked on the Out Run conversion [to the Master System]. This is the second time I've converted a body experience¹ game, but as the hardware is different, recreating the original experience is cumbersome in my opinion. Additionally, I've also created characters for the Anmitsu Hime² series and other titles.

¹ 体感ゲーム is a game genre when your body is used to control the game (and may or may not receive some bodily feedback from it).

² Anmitsu Hime is a Sega Master System game from the eponymous manga. Its Western market release has been adapted with heavy changes and it's better known as Alex Kidd: High-Tech World

RYU: The features of the forthcoming Mark III After Burner conversion are made possible by the new 4 Megabit cartridges. Until now 1-2 Mb cartridges were common; 4 Mb is not an industry first, but with so much more space the graphics and action can be closer to the original.

There aren't the 23 stages of the coin-op, but there are still 18 stages and the refuelling scene. The home version contents will be more or less the same. There will be differences, but I'm making the backgrounds and everything else to be as close as possible.

At first I thought converting After Burner would be easy. After Burner and Space Harrier use a similar system, but they should be better considered different challenges.

I'm sorry I can't show you anything yet; we're already at the stage where something works on screen. Please keep your expectations high as this is the risky phase where I need to be at my best. It's like performing a somersault. I asked Yu to show me source code to help with the conversion and he told me to look at the original (laughs).

The Master System version will feature FM sound and the graphics are also an improvement on Space Harrier.

YU: The After Burner arcade project started around December 1986. Our way of working during the project was quite different from common practice. Usually you start with a plan, but instead we went ahead without having defined one. We started with the things I wanted to do, those that were interesting and already feasible. This approach is like having three possible paths ahead and you have to try all three of them to find the best. 

Such an approach is wasteful as you can find two of the choices prove useless. You often have to go back and fix problems and can't find the way forward. Therefore, in our case there was a written plan, albeit a hazy one. Planning continuously changes according to the situation you're facing. 

There was a movie called "Top Gun". I'd wanted to make a game with war planes before watching that movie. My initial inspiration was [the anime by Miyazaki] Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I'd thought about capturing that science fiction anime-like feeling.

Anyway, as Sega's 'body experience' game wasn't intended solely for the Japanese market but was due to be exported to Europe, US and the rest of the world, it would need to be understood by an international audience. So I switched my plan and gave it the shape of a F-14. Americans seem to have a preference for realistic graphics on screen rather than Japanese anime-like fantasy worlds. Now Americans are developing a better understanding of Japanese fantasy though.

Development costs are an extremely confidential matter, as might be expected. But if we were to make a comparison with ordinary game hardware which doesn't have to change that much, the costs are incomparably high. This is because there are few common components. You have to change the PCB, mask rom, chassis and so on - all of them. It's a totally new thing, despite using some of the same concepts. It's technological innovation stacking up. When Hang On was made, the background was almost empty, but since we've been using Out Run's new system we can say that games like Space Harrier and Hang On are totally different from a technical point of view.

At first I wanted the scenery to be set between the Mediterranean area and the Soviet Union... but it went wrong (laughs). Although I wanted it to be like that.

RYU: I wanted to say Persian Gulf! (laughs)

YU: You wouldn't have seen the Persian Gulf. Anyway, it would sell if America could beat the enemy side, just like Rocky¹ did.

¹ a reference to Rocky Balboa winning over Russian champion in Rocky IV 

It's real scenery, and would tie together well. I have the big picture in my head. It would be set in Europe, including Italy and the pyramids. When we created Out Run I went to see the real thing. We don't have spare time like that now. I'm browsing issues of the oversees travel information magazine AB-Road. It costs just 300 yen (laughs). I'd like to make the backgrounds look as close as possible to the real ones.

When it comes to the Soviet Union, it seems you have to abandon the idea of 16-bit machines. Apparently, it would be a violation of CoCom. [The embargo against Warsaw pact countries by US and some Western countries]. I wanted to depict the Kremlin building but in the end I gave up. This is due to the enormous variation and number of patterns which would be impossible to fit into memory. A spherical shape consists of merely one pattern, but here you must render a large number of cylinders. 

The landing scene is indeed big, but it exists on its own, so there is just one pattern in it. There were so many things I wanted to do, but they couldn't be done within the limits of development deadlines. For example, I wanted the pilot to be ejected from the aircraft with a parachute. For the end sequence, I also wanted the protagonist to carry the princess in his arms whilst flying the enemy plane. 

I think it's important to make the characters stand out. The protagonists of Space Harrier, Hang On and Out Run all stood out. I'd like the same to happen with After Burner.

RYU: Despite the continuous advancement of console hardware for domestic use, there is still a huge gap compared to professional coin-op hardware. In the future, much will be said about narrowing this gap. 

YU: I want to work on body experience games from now onwards. I've been working on Hang On, Space Harrier, Out Run and After Burner, but to say it emphatically, they were all left half done. After Burner is roughly 60% done. I wanted to include a dogfight. Right now it's many versus one, there is no one-on-one. A fight of one versus a few strong enemies represents the real world.

All of this is because of a lack of time and technical problems. The incomplete features will be implemented in upcoming games. Our goal is to make games, from the onset, as close to the real thing as possible. If you look at other driving games when an ordinary car bumps into another you sometimes see an explosion or big accident as a result. 

I've tried to make Out Run as close to the real world as possible. Although the game is not the real thing, I've added many ingenious solutions to make it work realistically. As much as you could expect from a game. My plan was to aim at what would have been probable in a realistic setting. I didn't want Out Run to feel ridiculous when compared with reality.

Even if After Burner and Outrun have some way to go before reaching their goals, trying to make them entirely flawless would result in enormous costs. It would be nice to be able to create a game without worrying about the cost though. For this reason, it's an exaggeration to call them simulations. But I'd like to get closer to reality.

(1988)

Check out more interviews here.