Super Burnout

How it was made

What the press said at the time

The contemporary press could not agree on this one: comparable scores run from 26% to 87% across 23 publications. Scores are printed in their original scales.

Cartridge & preservation record

Cartridge ROM capacity 16 megabit (2 MB), measured from the preserved cartridge image.

Catalogue part number J9052E

Cartridge data from the No-Intro preservation database (metadata only — names, sizes and checksums, no game data).

Worth knowing

• Written in a bedroom, on a borrowed development kit. Constellations were a French demoscene group — Atari ST programmer Elysée Adé and artist Kheang Tan met in high school in 1989 and built demos to compete with other groups. For this they borrowed a Jaguar development kit from Virtual Xperience and worked weekends in Elysée's bedroom, Olivier Nallet putting in long hours before handing the kit back and returning to his college studies. The code was written on an Atari TT030, the art drawn on an Amiga 2000 in Deluxe Paint, and the soundtrack composed on an Atari STe, running at 32 KHz across ten channels.
• They made it because the Jaguar had no good racing game. The group were fans of Sega's Super Scaler cabinets — After Burner, Out Run, Super Hang-On — and picked a motorcycle racer modelled on the last of those specifically because, as Kheang put it, the Jaguar lacked a good racing game. Namco's Suzuka 8 Hours 2 and the first two Ridge Racers were the other reference points. Atari saw a demo, got involved, gave them a few months to finish, and paid them enough that the team incorporated as Shen Technologies on the strength of it.
• It was called Burn Out until marketing intervened. It was previewed as Burn Out in the September 1994 issue of the French magazine Joypad, in a completely different art style, and shown in that state on Atari's Do The Math promotional tape to retailers in November 1994. Olivier Nallet has said the rename to Super Burnout came from Atari's marketing department, who thought it would sell better.
• The advertised JagLink multiplayer was built out, not in. The French magazine CD Consoles told readers in its November and December 1994 issues that the game would support JagLink LAN multiplayer. Nallet later explained it was removed during development over stability problems and time pressure, despite Atari asking for it. That makes at least four Jaguar titles where link-cable play was promised or implemented and then cut — alongside Power Drive Rally, Iron Soldier 2 and the modem support Iron Soldier was demonstrated with. Only three games on the platform ever shipped with it working.