#10: Out Run (U.S. Gold, Commodore 64, 1988)

One of the big appeals of the original Out Run, you see, was its graphics. The rolling hills, the luscious scenery, the beautiful blonde in the passenger seat, all lovingly rendered in glorious full colour. It was, for the time, genuinely impressive, and not something that the C64 was technologically capable of reproducing. Your car and its occupants are reduced to a monochromatic red, the rest of the cars on the road become similarly single-colour, the luscious scenery becomes rather barren, and the smooth movement becomes rather jittery, as if the machine is straining under the weight of trying to display everything that it needs to all at once.

And yet, even in this reduced version, Out Run remains a fundamentally enjoyable experience. This stands in marked contrast to our previous game, Predator, which achieved some genuinely impressive graphical feats on the C64, but with nothing else to back them up, became a tiresome slog. Stripped of its bells and whistles, Out Run reveals that its true heart lies in its gameplay, which doesn’t need fancy graphics to capture the thrill of the open road.