Battle Out Run

Battle Out Run combines two of Sega's successful mid-1980s recipes in its gameplay — pseudo-3D racing in the Out Run style and Enduro Racer-like combat against enemies, this time with a weapon added directly aboard the racing car. The player drives a sports car across several branching routes and, besides fast rivals on the road, must also face enemy vehicles that shoot at them or try to aggressively force them off the track into a ditch or the surrounding scenery. The car is therefore equipped with its own weapon that can take out enemies before they cause serious damage or knock the player off the road into a ditch, costing them a valuable position in the field.

On the Master System, the game offers several forks along the route, leading to branching progression and different endings depending on the chosen path, similar to the original Out Run, only with a considerably higher level of action and danger right there on a road full of rivals. The graphics and speed match the console's capabilities, and since this is a title exclusive to the Master System with no direct arcade original, the developers could tailor the gameplay and difficulty directly to the target hardware without compromising to match an original. The music accompanying the ride follows the energetic, distinctly rhythmic style typical of Sega during this period, complementing well the feeling of constant combat on the road and the tension of an approaching rival.

Battle Out Run is interesting mainly because it shows how Sega could assemble an original title designed specifically for a home console out of its own successful concepts, rather than just producing a simplified port of an existing arcade game. Today the game is regarded as one of the solid action-racing pieces in the Master System library, prized especially by genre fans for its unusual combination of shooting and racing, which didn't appear often on 8-bit platforms at the time and still feels pleasantly refreshing and original.

Why play it: For racing game fans looking for an unusual combination of shooting and racing that was a rarity on 8-bit platforms and still feels refreshing today.