Outrun in 3D!!!

I was always hopeless at Outrun...and I still am. Nevertheless I was looking forward to this 3DS remake of Sega's classic arcade racer and it finally rode in last week, so what does Outrun 3D have to offer under the hood?

Outrun 3D has two control options; the conventional buttons/joystick combo or ... a touch screen option? The touch screen is very weird and I'm not certain of how to change the gears when using it, but if touch screen is your thing then it's there (I'm just old fashioned as I like my buttons). Browsing through the options you'll find the controls are entirely customisable, which is great as accelerate has been defaulted to Y and I find it really unnatural (I prefer B).

For those who struggle at Outrun (like me), Outrun 3D has you covered with 5 difficulty levels and an option to extend the time limit between checkpoints. You can also start the game from any checkpoint if you want to master a particular track.

There's also an option for Old and New versions of Outrun? I don't understand this fully but they seem to offer different tracks, perhaps an Outrun aficionado might be able to explain this better (if there's any around please comment and let us know), but either way you're getting a huge variety of tracks with Outrun 3D. ^_^

There's 6 fantastic audio tracks available to cruise along to, plus a 5-band equaliser in the options menu with 5 programmable presets which is a nice touch. You can also tweak the environmental sound effects as well as the volume of your engine.

Any races you happen to be proud of can be recorded and saved however, you can only save one at a time and there's no option to upload them to a community site to perhaps show off your high-scores and best times, a missed opportunity.

And of course it wouldn't be Outrun 3D if it didn't have any 3D, right? While the 3D effect in Outrun looks great it can make you feel incredibly sick when there's more objects on the screen, especially as the game runs at 60fps which is twice the speed of the original game. I had to shut off the effect when driving through a level made up rows of pillars as I started to feel really dizzy.

Despite the dizzying 3D effects Outrun 3D is a great addition your 3DS collection. Thanks to its wide variety tracks, customisable options and its appeal to both the casual gamer, and the players competing for the highest score, it's certainly worth the £4.49 asking price.