95 MB
Pick a fork, hold the gear, and let the radio do the rest.
OutRun is a free arcade game released under Open Source (GPL-3.0). It runs on Windows, Linux, needs about 95 MB of disk space, and requires no account, payment or trial. On a computer, the fastest route is the PlayBound Launcher. On a phone or tablet, use the official store or site instead.
One-click install
PlayBound fetches the official release — no third-party mirrors.
Windows
Install through PlayBound. The 89 MB archive extracts to a portable folder containing Outrun.exe, openal32.dll and Resources — nothing is written to the registry.
Linux
Install SFML from your package manager first, then run the extracted binary.
sudo apt-get install libsfml-dev && ./OutrunOpen Options and set your resolution. The default window is small, and the road renderer scales cleanly to 1080p and above.
Visit the Gears menu to choose automatic or manual transmission, then remap the keys if Left Ctrl to accelerate and Left Alt to brake does not suit you.
Start in Original mode for the arcade run with its five forks, then try Survival once you can hold a line.
Recommended first-time setup and configuration steps when launching OutRun.
Install through PlayBound and run Outrun.exe. There is no installer and nothing is written outside the folder.
Install SFML first (sudo apt-get install libsfml-dev), then run ./Outrun from the extracted folder.
Open Options first: set your resolution, pick automatic or manual gears, and remap the keys — the defaults put acceleration on Left Ctrl and braking on Left Alt.
Minimum
Windows 7 64-bit or Linux · 1.5 GHz CPU · 1 GB RAM · OpenGL 2.1 GPU · 150 MB storage
Recommended
Any modern PC · 2 GB RAM · dedicated GPU for 1080p+ at a locked frame rate
Neither. It is an original C++ and SFML program that reimplements the game's behaviour — the pseudo-3D road, traffic, forks, gears and radio — from scratch. There is no arcade ROM in the download and nothing to emulate. The source is GPL-3.0 on GitHub.
No. It is keyboard-only. We searched every source and documentation file in the repository for joystick, gamepad, XInput and DirectInput and found nothing, and the shipped settings file binds only keyboard keys. The README's mention of customisable controls means key remapping.
Original is the arcade run: five stages, each ending in a left-or-right fork, with a checkpoint clock. Continuous strings stages together without branching. Survival drops you into an endurance run. Difficulty and traffic density are separate settings, so you can tune the challenge independently.
Yes to both. The game is free and the source is licensed GPL-3.0. Because it contains no SEGA code or ROM data, it is a clean-room fan remake rather than a redistribution.
Version 5.0, the latest release, published 7 June 2023. Earlier 4.0 builds are still on GitHub; PlayBound pins 5.0 for both Windows and Linux because the two platforms are published under separate release tags.
No. The last release was 5.0 in June 2023 and the repository has had no commits since. It is a finished game rather than a broken one — everything works — but nobody is shipping fixes, so treat the GPL-3.0 source as your recourse if you hit a bug.
Yes, there is an official Linux x64 build. It links against system SFML, so install libsfml-dev (or your distribution's equivalent) before running it.