Platform: Super Nintendo

Developer: Mindscape Int. Ltd.

Publisher: Nintendo?

Release Date (NA): 1993

Genre: Action

Nerd Rating: 4 out of 10

Reviewed by Nerdberry

Your first reaction is, “Outlander? Never heard of it.” So you glance over the Mad Max 2: Road Warrior themed image gracing the front of your cartridge and you think, “I like the looks of this. Bring it on.” You then proceed to blow into the cartridge – out of perpetual disappointment from playing endless cartridge based games that freeze up after an hour of playing – and insert it into your musty fading time machine known as the Super Nintendo. You power on your system and then… what… the… fuuu……..

Some really anxiety-ridden music blankets your ears as awful 16-bit graphics rape your eyes on the title screen. Just what kind of game is this? I see bikers flying down a long road. But I’m not a biker, I don’t think, because the cartridge picture shows me standing next to a car facing a group of bikers in what appears to be an upcoming battle. It’s a really gnarly look and image, but let’s see if the game delivers that same edge, excitement, and mystery as the sticker on my cartridge.

As it turns out, Outlander is a post-apocalyptic game in which a leather and jean-clad feller is simply trying to survive. The game kicks off instantly with you in a car and that’s it. There are no instructions, no descriptions, no details, nothing whatsoever. After some button-fiddling, I get my car moving forward and not long after I’m being attacked by murderous violent biker gangs. They waste no time in throwing grenades at me or firing weapons at me. Why they won’t let me join their crew I’ll never understand. I’m a pretty cool dude. I wear shades, tight jeans, and a leather jacket. But anyway, they’re out to get me and I have to defend myself.

There are a two ways to defend yourself, including the machine gun mounted on the front of your car or a shotgun out the side windows. These methods are difficult to master and you will find yourself mashing buttons in hopes of getting it right. When a biker is in front of you the machine gun is the best way to shut them up and get them to explode into awesome pieces. When a biker pulls up next to you, a small screen will pop up that shows you pointing a shotgun at the biker as he passes. This is possibly the coolest feature of the game.

After a good deal of driving, your car will eventually run out of gas (if you haven’t already died from hitting too many road blocks, cacti, or bikers) and you’ll have to pull over and get out of the vehicle. This caught me by surprise entirely! I didn’t know WTF was going on! This driving game just turned into a side scrolling game! Not too shabby Mindscape… not too shabby at all. So I take a few steps forward, get shot in the face and BAM! Game over! Seriously?! Okay. I start again and make my way back to the same spot. This time I learn the buttons and discover that I can shoot, punch, crouch, or run. I decide not to shoot so I can save my ammunition. Instead I crouch to avoid the bullets and decide to ovary-punch this broad until she’s dying from infertility and shame. I make my way around and collect body armor, gasoline, food, and a rocket. Survive the on-foot scene, make your way back to the car with your gasoline, and start driving again. Aaaaaand… Outlander.

Flat out, Outlander is a really crappy game. The driving scenarios are by far the best, but there is no variety in them whatsoever. In an attempt to make things more badass, they gave us the option to fire your shotgun out of the side windows, and we have full gauges in the top left and right of the screen, but the roads are far too windy and littered with too many obstacles to look at anything else. It is nearly impossible to take my eyes off the road for fear of destroying my car and getting a game over. If the driving wasn’t awful enough, they force you out of the vehicle to do something worse… walk. While walking around trying to scavenge what you can to survive, numerous enemies appear out of the woodwork and take many a cheap shot at you.

When a biker approaches you from the side, the picture-in-picture screen pops up automatically. PLOW! SHOTGUN TO THE DOME! The thunder dome?

The controls in both the driving and the walking parts are pretty clunky, but they work well enough to make the game playable. The graphics, however, are on the low-end for a Super Nintendo game. Better than some others but definitely worse than most. The best thing about the graphics and animation is the full-video rear-view mirror and the backgrounds. The landscape is beautiful, but still not richly detailed by any means. The music is just okay but is nothing to write home about, and the sound effects are just as bad, if not worse.

Overall, Outlander is an utter disappointment for its owners and to the Mad Max franchise. Granted, they never claimed to be a game about Mad Max (because it’s cheaper than buying the rights), but it is an obvious (overly?) attempt at being a Mad Max game. The concept of fighting on foot and fighting while driving is something I haven’t personally seen on the Super Nintendo before, but the developers failed to live up to their own dreams. With graphics, music, sound, control, and enjoyment falling far below the line of quality, I cannot recommend Outlander to anybody. Unfortunately for Outlander, the game is playable, so it’s not even one of those games that is laughingly bad and that’s how you enjoy it. It’s better than that, which actually works against it. Odd? Yes. But that’s how the story goes. Considering that not too many people have ever heard of this game, I only recommend it to the collectors out there, and you can find it for less than $5.

Nerd Rating: 4 out of 10

Reviewed by Nerdberry