March 2020 Game Challenge: Out Run

Prof. Will Lestrange · March 1, 2020

Now that you have spent February trying to communicate with snakes on the Nibbler board, it's time to move towards a game that glamourizes the finest points of Muggle life. You're going to go back to the 1980s and get behind the wheel of a fancy Muggle car known as a "Ferrari Tessarosa Spider" in the Sega game known as Out Run!

In this game, your objective is to race the car behind the track, going as fast as possible (you can get to 200 kph with minimal effort... which sounds fast until you press the DOWN arrow to shift 'gear' and end up going significantly faster than even that!) At the end of each 'stage', you have the option of going left for an easier route or right for a harder route... and then pass a 'checkpoint'. This gives you more time for the next stage... but gameplay doesn't stop. You will see how far you went - and which routes you have and have not taken - at the very end of the game.

For this month's challenge, you want to go to THIS LINK to play Out Run. Screencap your best performance (and post it in this thread) by March 31 at 11:59 PM HOL!

SIDE NOTE: If you are having a hard time getting anywhere with this game, remember that the controls are Muggle-inspired and therefore challenging for those of us in the magical universe. The 'Enter' key serves as the start button, and the left and right arrows turn towards the left and right, but you press the "A" key (NOT the up arrow) to speed up and the "S" key (NOT the down arrow) to slow down. The down arrow will move you from low gear into "high gear" (which allows you to accelerate up to nearly 300 kph) and the up arrow will return you to "low gear" (which allows you to accelerate faster from rest, but caps at around 200 kph). I am told this resembles some type of Muggle driving procedure...

-Participation at all will earn you 5 scales.

-If you score 333333 points or higher - or beat the first stage, your screencap will earn you 10 scales instead of 5.

-The top three scores of the month will get extra scales (25, 20, and 15 respectively for the month instead of 5 or 10) as well as special awards!

PS: Feel free to edit your post throughout the month as you improve your score!