CannonBall-SE

OutRun for your arcade cabinet or PC, with a real CRT arcade-monitor look. Add your MAME ROMs and play.

Works on Windows, Linux and Raspberry Pi, and is tuned for Pi-based cabinets. 60fps from a Pi 2 upwards (Pi 2 and Pi 3 need a mild overclock).

CannonBall-SE is a fork of Chris White's incredible OutRun engine, CannonBall.

Download for Windows · Raspberry Pi install · Report a bug

What you get

It looks like the arcade. On a modern screen OutRun's graphics end up as big, sharp blocks. SE softens the picture the way an old arcade monitor did, with curved glass, a slight glow and that warm colour you remember. Press F8 while playing to see the difference.

Easy to set up. Drop in your MAME outrun.zip and it finds it. Sound, steering wheel, pedals and gamepad are all set up from the in-game menu, with no config files to edit.

Turn your Pi into an OutRun machine. Choose appliance mode during install and the Pi boots straight into the game, with its own startup and shutdown screens. Quit the game and the Pi shuts down. Switch it on and you're at the start line.

Smooth on small hardware. SE has been heavily tuned for older Raspberry Pi boards, and adapts automatically to keep the game running at full speed.

Sounds right. Music and effects play at the original arcade pitch, without stutters, even on low-powered boards. You can add your own MP3 tracks to the radio too.

Plays like the original, with correct sprite scaling and a few bugs fixed.

Made for cabinets. Wheels with force feedback and gamepad rumble work on Windows, Linux and Pi. SE also counts plays and running hours, and uses the system watchdog to restart the machine if it ever freezes.

Which CannonBall should I use?

CannonBall DX, a fork of SE, is aimed at Windows PCs with modern racing wheels and adds ultrawide support.

SE also runs on Windows, and is the one to pick for Linux or Raspberry Pi cabinets, where it runs at a full 60fps from a Pi 2 upwards.

Getting started

You'll need your own copy of the OutRun revision B ROMs. They aren't included. A MAME outrun.zip is the easiest option; roms/roms.txt lists the individual files if you have those instead.

Windows

Download the latest release, unzip it, put outrun.zip in the same folder and run cannonball-se.exe.

Raspberry Pi

On Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm or newer), open a terminal and paste:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/J1mbo/cannonball-se/master/bootstrap.sh | bash

The installer asks a couple of questions, including whether you want appliance mode, then gets on with it. Reboot when it tells you to and copy your ROM zip into the roms folder. Installing takes a few minutes on a Pi 4, or around 40 minutes on a Pi Zero.

Linux and building from source

See docs/INSTALL.md.

Which Raspberry Pi?

Board	Runs at
Pi 4, Pi 5	60fps
Pi 2*, Pi 3*, Pi Zero 2 W*	60fps
Pi 1, Pi Zero, Pi Zero W	30fps

* Pi 2/3/Zero2W need a mild overclock for 60fps. See docs/PERFORMANCE-TUNING.md.

Playing

C adds a coin, S starts. Steer with the arrow keys, A to accelerate, Z to brake. You can change any of these from the menu. docs/PLAYING.md covers the full controls, wheel setup and adding your own music.

More help

Install	Windows, Linux and Raspberry Pi
Playing	Controls, wheels, custom music
Performance tuning	Getting the most from your board
Configuration	Every setting explained
Screen filters	How the arcade-monitor look works
Troubleshooting	Sound, controllers, video
Changelog	What's new in each release

Built a cabinet with it?

Share a photo in Discussions! And if SE is running your cabinet, a star helps other builders find the project.

Licence and credits

Free to use and share, but not to sell. See docs/license.txt, docs/CannonBall-SE-license.txt and docs/THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.

Based on CannonBall by Chris White. NTSC filter by Shay Green (Blargg). CannonBall-SE by James Pearce.

OutRun is a trademark of SEGA Corporation. This project is not affiliated with SEGA.