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OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast hasn't been for sale in 14 years, but a fan is still updating it

Faster loading and better UI among the tweaks

A yellow car power slides along a road shouldered by beaches in OutRun 2006.
Image credit: Sega

You can't purchase Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast digitally on PC anymore, because the Ferrari license expired and it was removed from sale back in 2010. We live in a cruel universe. The excellent, stylish racing game is still playable if you do own a copy, however, and it just received a fan update that'll make it run better on modern machines.

The update, created by developer emoose, is a "wrapper DLL" and a replacement executable that should work with either the Steam or disc versions of the game. The standout tweaks include improved reflections, borderless windowed mode, a UI that supports new aspect ratios, framerate fixes and improved loading times.

Here are the full change notes:

Graphics:
  • UI can now scale to different aspect ratios without stretching (requires UIScalingMode = 1 in INI)
  • Game scene & UI textures can be dumped/replaced
  • Allows disabling vehicle LODs, reducing the ugly pop-in as they get closer
  • Fixed Z-buffer precision issues that caused heavy Z-fighting and distant object pop-in
  • Lens flare effect now loads from correct path without needing to change game files
  • Stage objects such as traffic cones now only disappear once they're actually off-screen
  • Fixes certain effects like engine backfiring which failed to appear when using controllers
  • Anisotropic filtering & transparency supersampling can be forced, greatly reducing aliasing around the edges of the track
  • Reflection rendering resolution can be increased from the default 128x128
Gameplay:
  • Built-in framelimiter to prevent speedups, framerate can be partially unlocked with game running at 60FPS internally
  • Restored XInput rumble code from the Xbox release, allowing gear shifts/drifts/crashes/etc to give feedback
  • Xbox Series impulse triggers are supported and can be tweaked inside INI
Bugfixes:
  • Prevents save corruption bug when remapping controls with many input devices connected
  • Fixed C2C ranking scoreboards not updating on Steam and other releases due to faulty anti-piracy checks
  • Pegasus animation's clopping sound effect will now end correctly
  • Text related to the now-defunct online service can be hidden
  • Automatically disables DPI scaling on the game window to fix scaling issues
Enhancements:
  • Game can now run in borderless windowed mode; mouse cursor will now be hidden while game is active
  • Load times heavily reduced by disabling framelimiter/vsync during load screens
  • Music can now be loaded from uncompressed WAV or lossless FLAC files, if they exist with the same filename
  • Allows intro splash screens to be skipped
  • Music track can be changed mid-race via Q and E buttons, or Back/RS+Back on controller (CDSwitcher must be enabled in INI first)

If I could snap my fingers and bring a racing game back, it would be Coast 2 Coast. It is art. To my mind it's the best OutRun game, and it would be wonderful to play it on Steam Deck without needing to buy a physical copy or to ask an older boy for help first.

You'll find the latest release of OutRun2006Tweaks and install instructions over on GitHub.

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