Instead of, like before, playing it in secret with the curtains closed and the music down really low and a cushion in front of the *gaming device* we had to use to play it on:

Hopefully out on Xbox 360 before the end of the year, though they’d better not go pulling any of that ‘microtransaction shit’ on us. And don’t let the Americans be in charge of all the music, either.

What happened here is that Sony pasted a pretend energy bar and HUD onto a CG image, and some people sort of believed it for a while there:

This is the ‘BEFORE’ shot, from back when the entire internet didn’t make up 10,000 Photoshop jokes about PS3 every day (we’re very proud of you all).

And this is what it really looks like running on PS3. At least they got the Stamina gauge right, although they forgot what side they put it on when making the actual game.

HOW YOU CAN HELP:
Please vandalise the game’s Wikipedia entry accordingly.

Updates suspended for the foreseeable future as we struggle to marry two facts:

FACT A: It’s on PS3 therefore it MUST be shit.

FACT B: It’s by SEGA therefore it MUST be amazing.

ADDITIONAL FACT C: We’ll be sitting in the bathroom rocking backwards and forwards for a while pooing and weeing on ourselves trying to decide which editorial stance to take.

The only option is to pretend these are Xbox 360 or PC screenshots. Yes, that’s it. VF5 will be announced for Xbox 360 next week! That’s clearly what’s about to happen. That’s why they took all these new screenshots. Look, they’re in widescreen just like Xbox 360!

The truth is too horrible to consider.

We can’t go saying something on PS3 looks good.

All we can do is…

…maybe we could say that only SEGA is good enough to make PS3 games look good? Because SEGA’s better at programming and stuff.

That could work as an ‘angle’ to make this seem like a happier day.

Even then it feels wrong.

Maybe we should pretend VF5 doesn’t exist?

It’s just all too much. You know SEGA’s original 2001 masterplan had this down as a Dreamcast 2 launch game :(

Has it come out yet? Is it exactly like the PS2 version? Or is Polyphony Digital, the least-efficient development team in the world, struggling to make anything look half-decent on the obsolete handheld Lumines machine?

This lie was sent out to fool idiots into buying PSP back in May of 2004. It’s now August of 2006. August 30 in fact, so actually more like September.

Well done, Sony. You made a pretend disc. This actually fooled some people for about a year! Fortunately we now know you just make stuff up and lie about things all the time, so we (the internet and therefore everyone in the world) won’t be falling for it again. This isn’t 1996 any more. You can’t expect to lie to people and for no one to notice. Everything is recorded in Google.

And well done again for making a pretend box. Now you just need to make something interesting to put in it, as with PSP and PlayStation3 in general.

The amazing detail on the pretend box, where Sony cleverly preempted what everyone would say and then said it first. This, thinking about it, was the precise moment Sony started thinking that lying to people would work as its new strategy.

Where to begin?

Distributed with issue 2 of UK games mag Mean Machines, it’s the Sega Mastermix 90! Two kids, competition winners, who were allowed into a recording studio to record their rap record about Sega. A dream come true!

DOWNLOAD: MC’s Nick and Steve – Do Me A Favour (Master Mix ’90) [3.6MB MP3]

SAMPLE LYRICS:

“Master System costs from eighty pounds, 128 colours, three channel sound”

“Check out your local dealer, not for drugs, but for Sega”

“Yeah, we got the Sega Master System in the house, yeah boyee”

“3D glasses will blow your mind, Better peripherals you cannot find”

You cannot get better than this. How we’d like to travel back to the early 1990s, when enthusiasm was respected and encouraged rather than frowned upon.

STOLEN FROM HERE, WHERE THEY ALSO HAVE THE COMPLETE LYRICS:
Mean Machines Archive.

It’s out today! To buy! Instead of steal off the internet! At least, it is in the UK, where OR2006 Coast 2 Coast comes out on PSP, PS2, PC and Xbox. You wouldn’t believe us if we reviewed it. You’d think we were just saying it’s the best racing game ever because it’s by Sega, because we’re those Sega-loving spastics from off the internet who love everything that’s by Sega.

We’ve dug that hole for ourselves very well. So here are loads more screenshots of Xbox OutRun2006 we took for fun. Judge for yourselves.

The game uses the OutRun2 SP rules, which means (a) slipstreaming and (b) gentler impacts with the walls when you crash.

For world-renowned expert players like us, the less damaging collisions make the game loads easier, but, remember, the world is full of complete fucking morons who can’t play games. For them, this means they’ll be able to complete Coast 2 Coast.

This is a true story: Last time we were in an arcade, we watched three separate people play the OR2 arcade machine one after the other. None of them knew about doing the powersliding stuff. They all just bounced around the barriers on every hard corner. It was INFURIATING and made us SICK TO THE CORE! Sadly, those are the kind of people who buy games these days. So gentler, kinder Coast 2 Coast will suit their spazzy skills.

The slipstreaming is a brilliant new feature. The cars always felt like they were going at top speed – now, if you’re driving one of the new tuned, faster Ferraris AND slipstreaming it’s faster still. You may feel the car pulling away from you, like when you’re driving a real car too fast down a hill and not paying attention and start to panic. Coast 2 Coast is faster. And therefore better.

AN ACTUAL CRITICISM! But frankly, it’s all too easy. Even the Professional level of Flag Man missions can be A-ranked on your first attempt. At least, they can if you’re good at OutRun.

Please play us on Xbox Live. Everyone else on our Friends list is playing Elder fucking Scrolls :(

Why would you want to spend five hours looking through sepia menu screens about armour when you could be doing this? We’ll never understand.

Here’s another annoying thing that’s only annoying to us, but still. Everyone’s giving this good reviews – which is great! But is also means they’re being MASSIVE HYPOCRITES after slagging off OR2 on Xbox when it came out in 2004. Yeah, so there are new tracks and cars in Coast 2 Coast – but it’s still the same game. It plays the same, you do the same stuff in the same way while it all looks the same. You can’t say it’s shit, then suddenly decide you like it 18 months later. Unless you’re publicly admitting to “not getting” it first time round, of course, and are now making amends.

Look at that! Bloody beautiful! We’re crashing on purpose so you get a better view and can see the sparks. Seriously. So yes, Coast 2 Coast has all the OutRun2 tracks in it as well, only they’re ever-so-slightly better because that bit of slowdown you got in Tulip Garden has been eliminated.

Then you’ve got 15 new tracks, from OutRun2SP. They’re great. Like this one.

And this one.

And this one

Here’s our personal OR2 Coast 2 Coast journey. The first version we played was the PSP one. We thought it was amazing, and still do, although perhaps we were getting a bit carried away from not playing OutRun for a year and being excited about seeing it again. Then we played the PS2 one a few weeks later, which was even more impressive, naturally, and from memory looked identical to the Xbox one.

Then we played the Xbox one. It’s better, thanks to analogue triggers and the better analogue sticks, but even so, the PS2 one is pretty much identical looks wise.

The PS2 one also lets you select component output, if you’ve got your PS2 hooked up to a prog scan monitor or TV.

We haven’t seen it on PC, but might as well give it 9/10 to complete our giving-OutRun2-9/10 sequence.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Today is also European Animal Crossing Wild World Day. Which makes today the best ever day (apart from maybe Sonic 2’s Day) for games coming out in the UK. We’ll be playing that tonight as well, probably at the same time. We love games again! It’s like we’ve come out of retirement for one final year of hardcore gaming.

We haven’t done anything about Animal Crossing’s amazing and life-changing awesomeness because it’s impossible to talk about it without sounding pretentious by saying things like “life sim”. We wrote a review of it to go up here, but it sounded like Kieron fucking Gillen so we chucked it. Anyway, Animal Crossing’s amazing and features life-changing awesomeness, so if you’ve just bought it today you can get all the UKR players’ friend codes here.

That’s about it then. Happy OutRun2006 and Animal Crossing Day. We’ll probably be sitting on our own in a lobby of the Xbox version for a few hours tonight, waiting for someone to race with and inevitably beat. Please join us for an inevitable beating. Email if you want our Gamertag. Not putting it here due to safety issues.

OUR OUTRUN2006 COAST 2 COAST REVIEW SCORES:

Regular gamer score: 9/10.

Sega-fan UKR-reader special weighted score: 10/10.

OUR ANIMAL CROSSING WILD WORLD REVIEW SCORES:

Regular gamer score: 10/10.

Anti-Nintendo legacy special weighted score: 8/10.

It’s easy, really. If you’ve got a blog or web site or magazine and are planning on taking screenshots of OutRun 2006 in the coming days or weeks, follow this handy guide to avoid embarrassing yourself by taking shit grabs of the world’s prettiest driving game.

We’ve used the PSP version here, but these rules also apply to the Xbox, PS2 and PC versions of OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast. Have fun!

OUTRUN 2006 SCREENSHOT TIPS:

1. No one likes to see cars going in straight lines down empty tracks, so make sure there are lots of other cars/lorries on the screen.

2. Slide a bit, so there’s smoke coming off the wheels and you can see more of the car. That’s immediately 50 percent more exciting! You slide by tapping ‘brake’ then releasing it and steering hard to one side, just in case you’ve only ever played Burnout and aren’t used to the concept of ‘steering’ to get round corners in driving games.

3. Get to the last section of track on the Hard route and take a screenshot of it, so people know you’ve played it enough to get really good at it. Catching it when it flashes text across the screen makes it even better, but that’s advanced stuff we’ll go into at a later date.

4. Take one of the car going up to the line. It’s always pretty, and doesn’t even require any gaming skill at all!

5. Get some from the in-car view. It’s hard to play like this, so you will earn the respect of your readers. And it lets geeks examine the road textures.

6. Take one of the crazy mini games and Heart Attack stuff. More stuff happens on screen, so it looks more exciting still!

7. Mini games. If you’re struggling with all this, send us an email and we’ll do it for you. We’re the world’s number one authority on taking amazing screenshots of OutRun, and we’ll happily do it for you for nothing.

8. Feel free to use these ones, even if you’re a web site or magazine we usually hate, like, say, Edge. Or… no, we were thinking of Edge again. The whole community needs to pull together in times of OutRun games coming out. We even saved these ones at JPEG compression quality 6, which is higher than usual, so they’ll come out OK.

9. Beautiful! We might do some Xbox and PS2 screenshots soon, just for fun.

10. Is this enough to get the message across?

11. This is the absolutely last one. Remember to take a grab of your car crashing.

12. That’s definitely it now. You MUST take one of the radio music select screen. Basic stuff, admittedly, but some people need to be told this shit.

13. The ‘SUBTEXT’ to all this is that the game looks really amazing on PSP. That’s the idea behind the update. It’s like a visual review.

14. Don’t make us have to tell you again.

And the answer is ‘not yet’ and ‘it’s down to Microsoft’. Scroll down for the question. This took ages to type up so we’re going to force you to bloody read it all.

SUMO DIGITAL, A.K.A. AM2-UK
The MIGHTY Sumo Digital of UK-based OutRun2-programming fame granted us — stupid, rubbish us! — an interview about OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast on PSP, Xbox, PS2 and PC. So we thought up some questions and sent them off, which is how proper web sites like IGN and Gamespot work.

Proper web sites also place grabs between large chunks of text so the feature looks nicer.

Here’s what we asked, followed immediately by what Sumo’s OutRun 2006 producer Steven Lycett (AKA “SOL off of the Internet”) said in reply.

How’s the PS2 version of Coast 2 Coast going to look compared to the arcade-perfect GENIUS MAJESTY of last year’s Xbox OutRun2? (Don’t lie and say it’s going to be awesome if it isn’t, because we’ll be able to tell and then you’ll look bad.)

Sol: If we hid the pads, and did some Pepsi challenge thing, then it would be split down the board I reckon. There are some subtle differences due to each consoles in-ability to do things the same way, but you’ve got to be some obsessed arcade fanatic with no social connections or a life to be able to really tell. Or work at Sumo – which is pretty much the same thing.

When we inevitably compare the PS2 version to the Xbox version, what are we going to say are the main differences? (Bear in mind we HATE SONY like an abusive step-dad, so will pick up any minor differences and say they’re really big and obvious.)

Sol: Reds are a bit redder. Something to do with bridge rectifiers. I was told about that by this American chap I spoke to on a forum once. Fog might be slightly less foggy – or foggier. Bloom (which is a fancy word for sunlight burning into the back of the retina) is slightly different – but shouldn’t make anyone weep over it. Biggest difference is the controllers, but we’ve tweaked them with the help of AM2 to keep the right feel and control.

How do you go about converting an Xbox-based arcade game to PS2? Keep this brief, as no one’s really interested in knowing about this apart from us.

Sol: It’s like re-packing your suitcase after two weeks on holiday. Although you should have the same amount of stuff, it doesn’t seem to want to go back in. Even if you’ve worn all the booze and drunk all the suntan. You just have to shut the lid and jump on it, or in our case, jump on the textures and models a bit. And music. And code. And other stuff. You’re not supposed to start a sentence with ‘And’ are you. But like that. Except it has to look the same, unlike a very squashed hat.

***THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF THEM ALL***

Will the Xbox version work on Xbox 360? This is the most important question of them all, so please answer it like this is a serious interview for somewhere proper like IGN or Edge.

Sol: Backwards compatibility is not something that works from our code – rather Microsoft has developed a software emulator that should make this happen at some point in the future. Should that be the case, it will be downloaded on Live or by visiting the Xbox.com website. I think at the moment the emulator doesn’t work with all games but Microsoft say they are going to fix it so everything works eventually. So we don’t know really; it’s out of our hands.

How’s it going to look on PSP? Surely it’s an IMPOSSIBLE TASK? It’s like signing a contract to get an elephant in a shoebox! It’s a poisoned chalice, surely?

Sol: It looks quite a lot like the screens on the web mostly. Runs at a fair lick of knots too. We’ve been squishing stuff into the PSP for a while (shameless plug for TOCA, Virtua Tennis and Go! Sudoku) so it’s like a comfortable chair. Not quite one of those lazy boy ones, something a bit smaller and a bit shiner perhaps. I will demand some eating of hats on a few forums when it’s out – from those non-believers.

This is OR2006 on PSP. We’ve played it, but aren’t allowed to ‘review it’ yet, especially not on the internet. They’d go MENTAL if we did that! We can probably get away with saying something vague like “what we’ve seen of it so far looks really fucking good and smooth and awesome” though.

Don’t people just use PSPs for watching porn on these days anyway?

Sol: Maybe if you’ve got strong wrists, I can’t hold it one handed.

Can you play Coast 2 Coast on PSP’s digital pad? Only the analogue stick thing’s a bit rubbish and isn’t placed very well. It’d probably work better on the d-pad. Just a thought. It’s not like you really need analogue for OutRun.

Sol: You can use the D-Pad – you won’t be getting top times on the online ranks as you can turn some mean times with the nub. Nub, there’s a good word.

Is Richard Jacques doing any new music for Coast 2 Coast?

Sol: His “Euro Remixes” from OutRun2 are included but unfortunately that’s it. We felt he couldn’t possibly top those aural sensations… Plus he is working on some other top secret Sega stuff. There is some new music provided by the original Japanese composer though.

Have you met Richard? If so WHAT IS HE LIKE?! He seems really nice!

Sol: Can’t really tell – we’re tried shouting to him through his letter box once but all we heard were muffled cries and sobs.

What did you talk about?

Sol: It was hard to tell, something about us going far away is about all we could work out.

What was he wearing? Go into as much detail as possible, especially about his trousers.

Sol: Damnit, you broke us. Can’t say really, last time the closest we got was downloading the files from Sega. I imagine he’s really smartly dressed but with pop star hair. I bet he hangs round with top models and smokes fags with a cigarette holder. In fact I think I hate him for that.

Going back to the game, can you tell us anything about your new content?

Sol: Err, it’s got some new Ferraris in it and there’s no rain. It would suck if you had enough money to own an open topped Ferrari and went on a road trip and all it did was rain, so we left that out. Also, no-one seems to grasp that every platform is online, PSP too. 6 players, you don’t even have to have that many friends; OutRun will go out and make them for you. If you’ve played the Arcade to death, then there is even new tuned up versions of the cars, done with the help of Ferrari. Open top Enzo sir? 4:18 on Route A without breaking a sweat. Now that’s fast. There is also a load of other stuff in there, but best not ruin it.

Xbox OutRun2’s Mission Mode was really, really good and we completed it all– what are you doing this time? You can definitely tell us, it’s out in a few weeks. Even if Sega says you’re not allowed to tell us, you can still tell us. It’s OK. Really.

Sol: We hope to divide opinion once again on the mission mode. We’ve split the missions into Heart Attack type stuff and Racing missions, as we know not everyone likes the same things as us. We’ve added kittens and lions as well as the obligatory fruit and there’s even a beach ball to dribble. We’ve also kept the maths, because we like watching people’s faces contort when we watch them play it in Dixons. Plus you get the Flag Man telling you what to do. You could imagine him there dancing whilst he does it.

Going back to Richard Jacques, did he mention UKR at all?

Sol: I’m sure if we ever have a conversation, that would be the thing to break the ice. Me saying ‘Is it fun being stalked by the internet’ and him laughing jovially whilst nodding at the models we imagine he hangs around with to go and warm up the getaway car.

Xbox OutRun2 got a bit jerky on Xbox Live sometimes. Is that something you can fix “your end” or is it a general Xbox Live issue that we’re going to be stuck with forever until they invent a better kind of internet?

Sol: We can’t really help it if some peasants with a steam powered internet connection log onto Live and host games. There is some stuff we’ve fettled with to make it better – we’ll find out about 5 minutes after it hits the shops if people on the forums start moaning that it’s lagging on their 56K modems.

What sort of PC will we need to make it look super-awesome? Our PC is a Dell from two years ago and we don’t know what the graphics card is — will it work on that?

Sol: We’re waiting for someone to send us some really good PCs – like Alienware or someone, so we can say that those are the ones you’ll need, hopefully seeing a cut of the profits. In the meantime we’re making do with trying to keep the spec to something sensible – couple of Gig processor, half a gig of ram and recent video card. If it runs DirectX 9 stuff there is a good chance it will work. You could try running it on a 486 if it’s got AGP, but it would be like receiving a series of postcards of someone driving into walls.

This is what PC games usually look like. Imagine how excited PC gamers will be when they get OutRun 2006! It’ll be like when we first got a Mega Drive.

Have you got any quotes you’d like us to slip into a review? We could easily sort that out for a few quid or some boxed copies we can sell on eBay.

Sol: I think ‘What’s with the vest top’ should make an appearance somewhere. Preferably as one of those really funny comments under a screenshot. Can you get to Edge write something like ‘It’s reyt good’? Just to lighten the tone a bit.

Would you like to “big up” or make any “shout outs” to your team members, or end by saying something needlessly controversial that will get you in trouble at work?

Sol: I’ll leave it with asking Sega if we can have our passports back, we’ve almost finished it now and promise not to run away.

Thanks very much to internet spokesdeveloper ‘Sol’. The best arcade game ever will be out for a machine you actually own at the end of March or thereabouts.

We’ve been sent this photograph:

…along with an email that claims he is the real-life face of the OutRun 2006 “Flag Man”. We’re assured it’s not true, but you have to respect the man for trying.

This is the email:

We really hope there is a man called Javier Sanchez out there, and that he really is a shopping mall security guard, and that he really has been lying to his friends about being in OutRun 2006.

Javier, if you are reading this, it’s very important you email us. It’s to do with us being BEST FRIENDS.

Virtua Tennis 3 — powered by Sega’s Lindbergh board — will be on show this week at the ATEI show held in the heart of London’s fashionable ‘London’. We’ll probably go just because of this, and also because there might be an OutRun2 on freeplay and girls playing DDR.

As you can see, the game is about ‘tennis’. The rules of tennis are that you hit the ball over the net, trying to keep it between the lines. You score 15 points each time your opponent fails to keep it in, although sometimes you only score ten points — that’s because the scoring system was created by the French who were just being difficult.

The most important rule of tennis is to be a pretty blond girl. Then it doesn’t matter if you win, as you will win in life anyway.

Sega didn’t send out any screenshots of the blond girls, so all you get is loads of men’s arses :(

It’s the grass one set in London! Obviously it’ll be called the “London Open” or the “England Cup” or the “Jolly Tournament” rather than “Wimbledon”.

Looks really quite amazingly nice, really, doesn’t it? Even though it’ll just be “more Virtua Tennis”.

We even bother uploading the logo. That’s how much we love Sega. Come back next week and we might do a little review based on playing it at ATEI, if we go.

THE FULL AND QUITE POORLY WRITTEN PRESS RELEASE:
Sunday, 22 January 2006

Sega Brings Centre Court to Earls Court!!

Some of the most realistic graphics to come out of Sega’s world leading R&D teams will be on display at Earls Court this week. Taking a look at the latest version of Virtua Tennis 3 on the new Lindbergh universal cabinet and you will think you are at home in July watching Centre Court on your brand new widescreen plasma. All that is missing is the strawberries and cream!

The game boasts the top players in the world including Henman, Roddick, Hewitt and World No.1 Roger Federer. The format of the game takes players on a world tour of some of the most famous courts in the world across France, the US, Australia, Germany and of course the famous halloed turf from SW16.

To increase the player’s involvement this version features IC Smart card technology. With the card the player can participate in a virtual ‘World Ranking’, starting at 999th in the world with the aim of becoming World Champ. The progression up the ranks depends on how well matches are won and who against. Equally any matches lost will affect the ranking. Also as a feature to stimulate regular repeat play if a player does not use his card for a period of time his ranking will decrease.

It is also possible to manipulate the play style of the tennis player; whether you want to ‘play base’ line, ‘serve and volley’ or ‘offensive’ amongst a choice of 8 styles you can. With the IC Card the player can change outfits and build up a collection of tournament medals.

For the novice player the game features a series of training sessions. This will strengthen various techniques by setting the player a mission – such as performing 6 forehands followed by 6 backhands followed by a smash volley.
Sega’s Justin Burke commented, “Aside from all the great names, famous courts and games features perhaps the ‘wow’ factor is the amazing graphics that are recreated on the screen. This in a location is going to stand out by a long way. The first two games in this series have both been massive hits and there is every reason that this will be another smash!”