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Right,
well firstly i'm gonna expect a barrage of emails from people
proclaiming to own this game... and many of you will own Outrun
Europa, but not the first version which was created back in 1988/89.
And this version was under the name of Outrun
Europe and not Europa... It
was also a rather different game.
Outrun
Europe was originally drawn up for US Gold, and the game was started
by Neil Coxhead who had joined Probe
software. These were written in a proposal to US Gold, who accepted
it and allowed Probe to continue with their work on the project.
GTW actually has the proposals sent to US Gold and will be bringing
these here very soon.
Outrun
Europe was completed, but around the nearing of the game's completion,
Sega launched their own sequel to the popular racer, entitled
"Turbo Outrun". US Gold now had the problem of whether
to release the unofficial sequel, or to put that on hold and convert
the Turbo Outrun game. US Gold chose the later option, feeling
that this was the way to go, and so Probe were moved onto the
development of Turbo Outrun instead with Steve
Crow and Mark Kelly at the
helm this time. Outrun Europe was unfortunatly got a flying axe,
and apparently also because it was a bit naff according to the
programmer. Bits were apparently used from Outrun Europe to build
up Turbo Outrun.
When
Turbo Outrun had been released, attention could now be turned
back to the Outrun Europe game... It was felt that the first version
(Which was complete), was not good enough and much poorer compared
to Turbo Outrun. US Gold may have felt that the game would have
gone backwards instead of forwards.
Another
point to make is that although the game was initially penned as
Outrun Europe, there was a later name change to Outrun Europa,
which sounded better to the developers. Really this is Outrun
Europe, otherwise known as Outrun Europa
V1.
Anyway...
Neil Coxhead had obviously had more experience since the first
game, and redid the game from scratch. Creating a much more realistic
game, and even the element of spy's was added. The game was finally
released in 1991, recieving good grades. But... the first version
was never seen... Neil recently sold all his development disks
on Ebay, and now a Mr Fox owns all
the sources, including Outrun Europe.. a diferent game. Neil informed
GTW that the game was terrible, and no where near as good as the
final game that you all have.
Well,
we now get a chance to see what the game was like for the first
time, as Mr Fox has recorded some exclusive video clips of the
game running (passed over kindly by Joerg Droege, supplied by
The Overkiller). We are not sure what is happening, but it seems
that this game could well be on the way to release very soon after
some bug fixing possibly!
The
game is fully completed apart from a few bugs, and features music
by Jeroen Tel which can be found in HVSC and to download here.
There is also sound effects playing the game along with the music,
which is selectable as far as we can tell from the video clips.
It does look very good, though some parts of the game's movement
is a little jerky and plain. It will be of some great interest
for Outrun fans to check this missing version when it eventually
is released... no matter how good or bad the game may be.
The
interesting bit about the music is that Turbo Outrun's intro music
was infact meant for Outrun Europe. And the proof is in the Music
Demo download above, submitted thanks to Martin from Stadium 64.
Also it is documented in the HVSC STIL file that some tunes used
in Outrun Europa were actually intended for Outrun Europe. This
is all but confirmed now by the video clips as this intriguing
story draws to a close.
Now
we must wait and see what happens... It seems that something is
brewing, and we could be seeing something and playing something
rather significant in terms of a GTW...
For now... check out the official game proposal download above (Prod doc) which Probe sent to US Gold to get approved. You will find that it proposes a rather different game to Outrun Europa which was released!
Big
strides forward as this case is seemingly drawing to an end...
Frank
and Andrew.
(Additional
source credits - Mr Fox (Recording), The Overkiller (Supply),
Joerg (Nafcom) Droege, Neil Coxhead, Martin from Stadium 64)
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