; WORLDS COLLIDE: (Opposite) Brody Condon drives
the OutRun vehicle at the Zer01 Biennial in San Jose, Calif.,
in September 2010. The OutRun project explores the over-
lap between the physical world and game environments by
combining a real-world vehicle and OutRun, an 8-bit arcade
driving game released by Sega in 1986.
; Fig. A: Disassembling the original OutRun arcade game
cabinet (background) and three-wheeled 1959 Turf Rider
Mark IV golf cart (foreground).
A
and placed it on a road scene.
In order for this project to move beyond an
extreme case mod, I’d need to display something more than the original arcade game on
the screen in front of the driver. Ideally, I envisioned that the screen would transform the
real world into an 8-bit video game: in other
words, I thought the system should make the
entire world as its playing field. I sketched out
the idea of making an 8-bit-looking “skin” for
a GPS navigation system.
I wasn’t sure how the system would work,
but I located a nonfunctioning OutRun cabinet
in Maine through an online discussion forum
and had it shipped to me in California.
Armed with my Photoshopped images and
a PayPal receipt from a stranger, I pitched
the idea on the last day of class before summer break to my first-year undergrad video
game development class at UC Irvine. I said
that if anybody wanted to help me out with
the project over the summer for free, I’d be
happy to exploit their energy and talent. To
my surprise, five students volunteered: Chris
Guevara, David Dinh, Matt Wong, Erik Olson,
and Richard Vu. We met and figured out tasks:
studying the original game, looking into GPS
software, locating a suitable drivetrain.
could actually roll down the street?”
In my mind, this would be something like
people driving while blindly following their
GPS vehicle navigation systems and getting
into accidents — or some form of an augmented reality video game concept car. Either
way, I liked the idea. It reminded me of the
type of dream cars that Ed “Big Daddy” Roth
had built: souped-up hearses, hot-rodded kids’
Radio Flyer wagons, and flying-saucer cars.
PUTTING MY CART BEFORE MY CART
The arcade cabinet arrived and only had minor
damage. I found and bought an inexpensive
three-wheeled Turf Rider golf cart from 1959
on Craigslist that looked like it came from The
Jetsons and had similar measurements to the
cabinet (Figure A).
After disassembling the cabinet and cart,
we came to the conclusion that our golf cart
wouldn’t work for a number of reasons: its
single front wheel wouldn’t provide enough
stability to prevent the car from tipping over,
and its treadle steering would be difficult to
mechanically couple to the faux-Ferrari arcade
steering wheel. In order to maintain a low
seat height and the original look of the arcade
game, we’d have to reposition all six batteries
from their original location under the golf cart
seat: three would fit behind the rear axle, while
three would need to be put in a top-heavy
SKETCHING IT OUT
I thought the idea over and decided to go
ahead with it in fall 2008. The design process
began with mocking up a general sketch in
Photoshop. Using some photos I’d taken of
the game in Santa Cruz, I put together an
orthographic view of a three-wheeled cabinet
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