Out Run was released in September 1986 by Sega, designed by Yu Suzuki within the AM2 team. It is not a race: there are no opponents to beat, only a countdown to push back by passing checkpoints. You drive a convertible Ferrari Testarossa, a passenger at your side, along postcard roads — cliffs, deserts, vineyards, beaches. At every fork you choose left or right: five possible routes, five different endings.
Two things made this game a landmark. The first is the cabinet: Sega produced a "deluxe" moving version, mounted on hydraulic rams, which tilts through the corners. The second is the in-car radio: before starting, the player picks the music from three tracks composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi — Magical Sound Shower, Passing Breeze, Splash Wave — a completely unheard-of gesture in the arcades, and one that has stayed in collective memory ever since.
Technically, Out Run runs on Sega hardware built for sprite scaling: the road and the scenery are drawn by hardware resizing, which produces that sense of speed and depth without any 3D at all. Recalbox does not emulate that cabinet but uses Cannonball, the engine rewritten in C++ by Chris White from a complete reverse engineering of the original code. The upside: free resolution, stable framerate, widescreen display and native controller support.
| Studio | Sega AM2 |
| Design | Yu Suzuki |
| Year of release | 1986 |
| Engine | Original arcade engine, reimplemented by Cannonball |
| Game type | Arcade racing / driving |
| Port licence | Custom licence, non-commercial use |
| Controller | Mandatory |
Recalbox provides the engine, not the game. Cannonball needs the roms of the original arcade board, which are not shipped with Recalbox.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro cannonball | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Libretro cannonball is the only emulator for this system and is available on every machine, including the Raspberry Pi Zero 2. Netplay is not available on this system and RetroAchievements are not supported. CRT output is handled by the core.
Place your files in:
/recalbox/share/roms/ports/Out Run/
Recognised files: outrun.88 outrun.game
Recalbox only ships the port's own resources — a res/ folder holding tilemap.bin and tilepatch.bin, the reworked backgrounds that make widescreen display possible — and a roms_needed.txt file listing exactly which roms are expected. No game rom is provided, and the system menu offers no download.
Cannonball expects the Out Run Revision B romset, uncompressed, with its original file names, in the same folder as the game entry:
/recalbox/share/roms/ports/Out Run/
├── res/
│ ├── tilemap.bin
│ └── tilepatch.bin
├── roms_needed.txt
├── epr-10187.88 ← the 31 epr-* / mpr-* / opr-* files
├── epr-10327a.76
├── …
└── opr-10268.99
The 31 required files are listed in the roms_needed.txt file found in the folder:
epr-10187.88 epr-10327a.76 epr-10328a.75 epr-10329a.58
epr-10330a.57 epr-10380b.133 epr-10381a.132 epr-10382b.118
epr-10383b.117 mpr-10371.9 mpr-10372.13 mpr-10373.10
mpr-10374.14 mpr-10375.11 mpr-10376.15 mpr-10377.12
mpr-10378.16 opr-10185.11 opr-10186.47 opr-10188.71
opr-10189.70 opr-10190.69 opr-10191.68 opr-10192.67
opr-10193.66 opr-10230.104 opr-10231.103 opr-10232.102
opr-10266.101 opr-10267.100 opr-10268.99
The names must be respected to the letter: Cannonball loads every file by name, and accepts neither a .zip archive nor renaming.
Two optional additions are also recognised, again according to roms_needed.txt: the eight files of the Japanese version (epr-10327.76, epr-10328.75, epr-10329.58, epr-10330.57, epr-10380.133, epr-10381.132, epr-10382.118, epr-10383.117), which unlock the tracks and course ordering of the Japanese release, and the fixed audio rom opr-10188.71f, which repairs a sound defect present on the original board.
The game only appears in the list if the folder contains a file named
outrun.88oroutrun.game. If your romset has nooutrun.88file, create an empty file namedoutrun.gamenext to the roms: that is what will carry the game entry.