Take A Test Drive In This Promising OutRun Port For The Atari 8-Bits

Sega's 1986 arcade release OutRun has been ported to almost everything under the sun, but recently (thanks to IndieRetroNews) we came across something we've never seen before: a work-in-progress version of the game for the Atari XL and Atari XE.

Back in 1988, Sega released a successful port of the game for the Atari ST, which became the first ST title to top the UK all-formats chart. But sadly, the Atari 8-bit family of computers never received their own port. Now decades later, the homebrew developer Kjmann has revealed a WIP progress port of the game, and it's pretty promising given some of the limitations at play.

Sure, it's not as colorful or as detailed as the ST version, but it still manages to hint toward the escapist fantasy that's at the heart of Yu Suzuki's original vision. The graphics, for example, are fairly decent and the renditions of Splash Wave and Magical Sound Shower are surprisingly listenable given some of the audio restrictions.

We dug a little bit deeper into the origins of the port, and it seems like the project might actually be an old one that was previously abandoned.

In the Atari Age forums, Kjmann didn't make a note of this but suggested that he is currently unable to finish the port because he doesn't have a coder to work with him on it. Nevertheless, he did express an interest in finally finishing it and wants to release it for free when it's done. You can currently download the WIP version from the forum if you want to take it for a test spin yourself.

Have you tried the port yet? What do you make of it?