How Sega Got 3D Out Run To Run At 60 Frames-Per-Second

3D Out Run will be available for the Nintendo 3DS on March 12th, and Sega have translated another of their famous interviews with Japanese website Impress Watch, detailing the remaking process.

Part 1 of the interview can be found here, while part 2 can be found here. Finally, part 3 is here, and part 4 here. Here’s a fun fact from part 1: 3D Out Run actually runs at 60 frames-per-second, which is an improvement over the game’s original release. The original ran at 30fps in arcades, although the Sega Saturn version could run at 60 if you input a cheat code.

In part 1 of the interview, developers Yosuke Okunari and Naoki Horii talk about the process of upping everything from 30 to 60fps, and the challenges it presented. At first, M2 could only get the road to render at 60fps, while other objects ran at 30. Bit by bit, the development team continued to optimize the game until they managed to get everything running smoothly at 60. It’s a fascinating read.

“We didn’t have the Saturn source code available to us, so we weren’t able to thoroughly investigate how Rutubo went about handling it, but the Saturn version’s 60 Frame Mode had this aspect where everything ran really smoothly, but it also lost its sense of speed,” says Okunari. “3D Out Run does not suffer from that.”