Super scaler games and their ilk are great! At the 1:03:00 mark of the Time Extend podcast episode 51 featuring John Linneman he talks about how super scaler games were pushed aside for polygonal games just as home hardware was able to do them justice. That is a true shame as I think there is a lot more to be explored in that vein.
Obviously the official Sega Super Scaler games are amazing but it can be difficult to find arcade accurate versions/ports. The 3DS has most of the big ones - Outrun, Thunder Blade, Galaxy Force, etc. - and there are a few arcade collections that feature some as well - Taito Legends has Continental Circus - but many games in this style by Sega, Namco and others are stuck on emulation. Newer games like this are also few and far between. So lets talk about 'em!'
There's an indie game that's emulating this exact style and it's name escapes me, but they do the same thing and represent the road as little sprite strips and they kind of render over each other. It's really good! Also there's drifting! Important.
Next up is my Favorite game of All Time: Tetrastar the Fighter for the Famicom. Something I would describe as a Super Scaler lite. It has Super Scaler gameplay, but I'm not sure how they pull off sprite scaling other than using a lot of sprites to simulate different sizes. This game does a lot of graphical tricks going on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss7KvlJ89yA
Outrun is Obviously my favorite of these. However my experiences with the game are mostly the Sega Genesis/Megadrive version, where it swaps out different sprites instead of scaling it, which looks really weird at speed. I've played it so much the arcade versions feel unnatural! How messed up is that.
The M2 Sega Ages 3D Classics collection on 3DS has lots of these and they all hold up very well for being designed around custom arcade controls 30 years ago.
_Galaxy Force_ and _Thunder Blade_ are the favorites in my family.
I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm thinking about super scaler stuff thanks. I remembered the Afterburner cabinet being elaborate too with a motion seat and screen. These games are all about moving at frantic speeds and inspired some wild full motion cabinets.
https://youtu.be/VVMmFD9mzCI
This one for g-loc seems to have full range of rotation.
I just learned about this Super Scalar-esque PC-98 game Polestar from a tweet yesterday…I just can't get over how smooooooth it looks. I also love the dorky simplistic car model…looks like something the protagonist from 10000000 for iOS would drive