The world is full of OutRun clones, but Ansdor’s debut has style and personality to spare. Plus a lot of drifting.
Who knows if Yu Suzuki had foreseen how things would turn out while working on OutRun. Who knows if he and his team in Sega AM2 could imagine how important that video game would have been for the history of the medium, and how much affection the fans and the industry itself would have given it after so long (of the importance of OutRun yes is already mentioned in the special dedicated to the 35 years of OutRun). Fast forward to 2022: 35 years after OutRun, a single Brazilian developer – Sandro Luiz de Paula, aka Ansdor – publishes on all platforms Slipstream spiritual heir to Suzuki’s masterpiece. He takes off the Ferraris and puts on the JDM racing cars but the spirit remains unchanged: Slipstream is a simple video game, in some ways even too crude, but which pushes players to drive with a smile and, above all, sideways.
Look mom, all sideways!
Why get your hands on Slipstream? The answer is simple: in life it happens to everyone to feel the need to give up everything, get in the car and escape. To leave behind responsibilities, problems, creditors, taxes and so on and so forth, sometimes all you need is an expanse of asphalt and a car powerful enough to run faster than everything else.
There is a problem, however, which is that unfortunately in the vast majority of cases this is an impractical and difficult solution, especially if a 3-cylinder small car is waiting for you in the garage that at most can take you to work or do the shopping. Slipstream is an alternative, economical and practical answer to the problem. One might wonder why to dedicate oneself to such a product when OutRun exists in the world, and it would be a legitimate question, but the answer is that in reality, pad in hand, Slipstream has its own personality and characteristics that make it recognizable beyond beyond the mountain of citations scattered within it.
To put it in a nutshell (actually doing it very little justice), Slipstream is an OutRun with drifting. The driving model, which – mind you – is exquisitely arcade, appears very similar to that of OutRun 2006, and is inserted in a gameplay that draws more than a few cues from the various videogame adaptations of Wangan Midnight and Initial D.
All you have to do is accelerate hard, put the car sideways on the curves and go through a selection of five different environments to get to the bottom, all while battling with a different opponent for each scenario, obviously being careful to dodge traffic. present in the street. It is useless to go around it: Slpistream does not invent anything new at all, yet his formula is one that will never get old. The execution is very successful despite some small edges to be filed, and the guide system manages to be perfectly satisfactory despite being reduced to the bone. Drifting around curves is great, especially if you rely on the automatic drift kindly offered by the options menu, and it gives great satisfaction even from an aesthetic point of view. In the same way, the environments crossed are also grandiose, simple in the idea but effective in the realization (in particular that wonder of Oil Ocean). Slipstream is a panacea, a video game that has already been seen in a thousand ways but which moves with great awareness within the stakes of its genre.
A 300ZX, the sea and the traffic
It has already been mentioned that Slipstream is a video game with its own specific personality. This is because to the OutRun model, as already mentioned, it adds elements from Wangan Midnight and some new ideas, such as for example the fundamental importance of the wake (hence the title), to be followed for a few seconds in order to activate a temporary boost, or the possibility of going back in time for a maximum of five seconds in the event of an error or accident.
What is surprising, however, is the number of modes present in the game: in addition to the classic tour in stages it is in fact possible to participate in races, championships to be faced with customizable cars, time trials and even an offline battle royale with 16 participants, where the last in the standings is eliminated at the end of each stage. The gameplay remains basically unchanged, but the offer is decidedly more substantial than expected, especially if you let yourself be fooled by the presentation so clearly “cheap” and retro taste. Slipstream proves to know in depth the works to which it is inspired, but at the same time it is a video game aware of existing in 2022 and rightly avoids ignoring some small details that can increase the “quality of life” of users.
There are three difficulty levels and each event can be tackled with one of five vehicles, each clearly inspired by Japanese motoring legends of the 90s such as the Nissan 300ZX, Mitsubishi 3000 GT or Honda NSX. The 90s that are also recalled both by a soundtrack that ranges from Synthwave to Lo-Fi pieces with some hints of techno, as well as by some aesthetic choices that wink at SEGA’s productions on Mega Drive, in particular as far as it’s about Sonic.
There is not much more to add, in the end Slipstream is a very simple game that for this reason speaks a language perfectly understandable by anyone. Retro, vintage, old, call it what you like, but it’s a video game that works and that responds to that need for escape that is felt from time to time, perfect for a five-minute game to disconnect the brain and immerse yourself in its dreamy atmospheres, distant both in time and in space. Sometimes, after all, it doesn’t take much.
