Out Run 2019 is a fun depiction of a distant future

destructoid.com:

Remember in 2019, before the pandemic, when we cruised around in rocket cars? No. Well, Out Run 2019 is here to remind you of those good times.

In all seriousness, I love Out Run. It was a great arcade title with a terrific sense of speed and a relaxing atmosphere. In the Sega Ages release, you can even turn off traffic, which brings about an even better sense of stress relief. After all, Out Run was more about driving than it was about racing. Get behind the wheel of your Ferrari and hit the open road.

There were many spin-offs to Out Run. Some of them were pretty strange, such as Out Run Europa. Out Run 2019 is one game on Sega Genesis that took the concept to a strange new place: the unimaginably distant future! It’s also probably my favorite of the spin-offs, even if the Ferrari looks like it’s something more out of a dystopian cyberpunk pulp novel than a car porn magazine.

Out Run was the seminal raster racer, a type of 2D racing game that used the power of math to make the roads look 3D. I don’t know how it works. I once read an article on the graphical trickery and it lost me when it started talking about trigonometry.

Trigonometry. That’s not math, it’s how you argue with a calculator.

I still love raster racers, though. Even modern ones like Buck Up and Drive and Splitstream. They don’t have to use the actual graphical style, just as long as they have those gentle curves and rolling hills.

I’m making no exaggeration that Out Run 2019 is the most impressive use of the effect that I’ve seen. Note that I probably haven’t seen every raster racer, but I’ll tell you: Top Gear was cool for having tracks that actually looped back in on themselves. Out Run 2019 has bridges. Bridges. I’m not sure how else to get how cool