Inspired by another thread, I've decided to make this poll. Both games were conversions of succesfull arcades, both were coded by the same team people and both were (just my opinion) games that hasn't aged very well. But It's just my view!
I remember playing Enduro Racer a lot as a child and thinking it was great. Had a go on an emulator recently and thought it pretty playable and just how I remembered it.
Not sure about Out Run though, I definitely played Turbo Out Run as I owned that, but I’m not sure I ever played the original.
My preference in this case goes to Enduro Racer but that's not to say that Out Run is a bad title. Enduro Racer had a simpler, linear structure, 5 levels in line, versus a more articulated one for Out Run, which forced the choice of multi-load, although on 128K you hadn't to reload the levels you already ran through. Lucky +3 owners could whizz through the levels almost seamlessly.
It's true that in the "gallery" level Out Run slows down very much, but that's only one out of 15 levels, and in the others the pace is fast enough.
I think that, as Chris Jenkins wrote in his review for Sinclair User January 1988 issue, the expectations for Out Run were quite high but the game was far too large and complex to be entirely successfully ported on the Spectrum. Still a miracle of a conversion, and a respectable title in itself when all factors are weighted in.
On the other hand, Enduro Racer was more "reachable" by Spectrum standards, and the final result looks tighter and more cohesive to me: the pace is more uniform, and the controls feel smoother.
Enduro Racer is fast and playable. Outrun is slow, not only in some places as Alessandro says but generally too slow.
When it comes to graphics and sound they are equal. So Enduro Racer is the winner
For me is hard to choose, as they were two games I played and enjoyed a lot back in the day. As to Out Run, I played the arcade game first (amazing!) and later I found the Spectrum version good.
Similar graphics, difficulty, ... but the tie breaker is in little details in Enduro Racer like the obstacles, the possibility of making cool jumps, I feel it's more 'playable' so my vote for the game by Activision.
But as I said before, I think both hasn't aged very well.
Stefan wrote: ↑Fri Dec 21, 2018 7:37 am
I still remember my breath being taken away when going over the first hill in Enduro Racer - wow that "vertigo" effect.
The necessary tape multiload killed OutRun, but otherwise was a good port (and indeed the OST tape inclusion was awesome!)
Nevertheless, Enduro Racer was a very good port with AY music and just with one load we can play continuously a lot of time... so Enduro wins
