Outrun 2

Arcade games died out because there's no point going to arcades to play the best games – you can play the best games in your own home. We're completely spoiled in that respect. But that wasn't the case in the 1980s. When Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum ruled the home computing roost, going to the arcade to play games was a genuine, eye-widening treat. Nothing emphasised the quality gap like OutRun - Sega's beautiful journey that is, incredibly, 25 years old this year.

Today is a sad day for Sega fans, as news breaks that 50-year-old creative genius Yu Suzuki has stepped down from his post as R&D Creative Officer at Sega, taking up a much-diminished role as R&D manager at the AM Plus division.

So, as a tribute to one of the greatest visionaries the industry has seen (or is ever likely to see), and as a history lesson for anyone too young to remember, here are five of Yu Suzuki's greatest moments

Drifting. If there's one thing that OutRun 2 has got, it's drifting. While arcade-style car-'em-ups like the Ridge Racer series have always placed a premium on oversteering, nothing even begins to compare to the hugely exaggerated degree of powersliding available in the Xbox version of OutRun 2: you can barely turn a corner without finding yourself locked into a 15-second drift. It's a feature that was readily apparent in the coin-op version - which hit arcades earlier this year - but, based on

We are apprehensive. We've travelled 190 miles repeatedly asking ourselves 'why?' but it's now, during the short trip between Sheffield train station and Sumo Digital, the developer given the task of converting OutRun 2 to Xbox, that the anxiety is really mounting. (Traditionally, thirdparty translations of major coin-ops often prove bitter disappointments, let's not forget.) Eyes furiously scanning the moving scenery, any element, however absurdly tenuous, that potentially vindicates Sega's