Out Run 2019 is a fun depiction of a distant future

I thought 2019 was awful. Little did I know …

Do you remember in 2019, before the pandemic, when we sailed around in rocket cars? No. Reach, Expires 2019 is here to remind you of the good times.

In all seriousness, I love Expired. It was a great arcade title with a great sense of speed and a relaxing atmosphere. In the Sega Ages release, you can even turn off the traffic, giving an even better feeling of stress relief. After all, Expired was more about driving than about racing. Get behind the wheel of your Ferrari and drive out onto the open road.

There were many spin-offs to Expired. Some of them were quite strange, such as Expired Europe. Expires 2019 is a game on Sega Genesis that took the concept to a strangely new place: the unimaginably distant future! It’s probably also my favorite among spin-offs, though Ferrari seems to be something more out of a dystopian cyberpunk pulp novel than a car porn magazine.

I can never decide if it’s a word or two

Expired was the groundbreaking raster racer, a type of 2D racing game that used the power of mathematics to make roads look 3D. I do not know how it works. I once read an article about graphic trickery and it lost me when it started talking about trigonometry.

Trigonometry. It’s not math, it’s how you argue with a calculator.

However, I still love raster racing. Even modern likes Buck Up and run and Splitstream. They do not have to use the actual graphic style, as long as they have those gentle curves and undulating hills.

I’m not exaggerating Expires 2019 is the most impressive use of the effect I have seen. Note that I may not have seen all raster racers, but I want to tell you: Top Gear was cool for having numbers that actually looped themselves back. Expires 2019 has brothers. Brother. I’m not sure how else to figure out how cool bridges are in a raster game without just repeating the word. Brother.

BROTHER!

It is true. Brother. You drive along and suddenly the road lifts up and you are raised. You can even fall over the edge and tumble to the terrain below. It gets better though! Sometimes the road splits and one can either walk up the bridge or below the bridge. Just like you can see it twisting over you and crossing the road. It’s magic what it is.

Aside from bridges, the gameplay looks predictable Expired. You are not really in a race except against the clock. Your goal is not to rank, but rather to reach the end of each segment before time runs out. The biggest difference that separated Expires 2019 from its timeless predecessor is that there are five paths to choose from, rather than just the unique branch.

The paths are of different lengths and have their own configuration of branches, but none of the size of Expired super-course. I’m not even sure why they did it this way, it makes the game easier because you have a shorter sprint to reach the end. Each route is unique, but none of the tracks really have a coherent theme, so I’m not sure why they were not just crammed into a single stage.

Highway to the danger zone

It’s a shame there is only one car in it Expires 2019, but it has manual and automatic transmission. There’s a red car on the cover that reminds me more of the original game’s Ferrari, but instead you’m stuck with an ugly gray. Everyone is driving in gray cars in the year 2019, it hides the dirt of the future.

An addition is the ability to boost after holding the top speed for a short period of time. Turning is virtually impossible while boosting, however Expires 2019 gives you smart right away so you can stretch your wings and melt your tires. At that point, it’s a matter of not bumping into other cars on the road, which is much more manageable.

The music is also quite excellent. I do not think any of it is going to be permanently glued to my ears like Splash Wave did, but it’s groovy little tunes in their own right. They are each attributed to different artists in the credits, but I do not know how true that is. The credits are set up to look like they are from a movie with lists like “location supervisor” and “director of photography.” Most likely they are all made by Shigeki Sako, but I am not familiar with other works of them.

A fun hour

Expires 2019 is perhaps not the most landmark game out there. In preparation for this article, I packed medium difficulty in under an hour. It was a fun less than hour, and certainly not the first time I have played the game through. I’m also a veteran of raster racing. What I’m saying is: it’s perhaps best as a weekend rental. Hah! Oh. I miss renting games.

Still, it’s probably a better use of your time than Expired Europe or Outrunners. I wish we had a reissue of it. There have been about a million Sega collections over the years, and not one of them has it? Why? I’d rather play it than Altered Beast. do Altered Beast have bridges? No. I’m resting my case.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!