"Wipeout 64 had an even shorter production time than 2097, so its courses were all mirror versions of Wipeout and 2097 tracks," Rob remembers. Neither game was ported to the N64, but it did get a system exclusive. Like Wipeout before it, Wipeout 2097 was a hit on the PlayStation and was converted to other systems. So, as long as you were going forward and as long as you didn't get mined or missiled too much you were going to hit them." So it was an extra moment-to-moment pressure for the player, but I balanced them fairly generously. "More generally, the reason the checkpoints were introduced was really just to add urgency to the races, where you were always pushing forwards. "The AI couldn't miss a checkpoint because of their system, so basically they were always going to hit them," Rob explains. Credit also goes to him for 2097's ship trails you could actually see ships in the distance because of those."įurther enhancements over the original game came in the form of checkpoints that had to be reached before a countdown hit zero, although AI ships were exempt. You couldn't really escape it, because it was so long. He got a lot of attention in the studio for that. "He was tinkering around one day, and realised that because of the simple geometry of the main track he could get a nice effect going that would kind of ripple down it. "The Quake wasn't in the original design - glory for that goes to Chris," Rob points out. I have fond memories of linking up two PlayStations, so myself and coder Chris Roberts could go one-on-one with those!"Īs well as being fun, playtesting of the Wipeout follow-up - Wipeout 2097 - also produced one of gaming's most memorable weapons and a useful visual effect. "We had a lot of fun with the AG Systems ships, which had the weakest shields. "Wipeout had weapons that slowed down the ships when they were hit, and so the natural extension to explore in order to make it a more exciting race was to actually take out enemy ships - and also to have the risk of being taken out yourself," Rob reasons. One positive side effect of Wipeout's hurried creation was that a refined sequel was an obvious move, and as former Psygnosis designer Rob Francis points out there were elements of the original game's combat that could be quite easily built-on. I remember us all standing around looking and thinking, 'Wow!' Because Wipeout was one of just six games, or whatever it was, and we couldn't believe we had managed to do it. "People were queuing up to buy it, so we just went over to see it in the store. "I remember we went over to Manchester on the launch day to a big HMV, and it was a big thing," Nicky says with a smile. Given the buzz around Wipeout, its developers would have been aware of its success even if they hadn’t left their Liverpool office, but they made a point of marking the occasion. Gaming had been quite niche, then the PlayStation - and Wipeout - were instrumental in making it really big." A lot of people absolutely loved Wipeout because of its music that really hit a nerve. "It was bringing in that fusion of graphic elements, gameplay and music.
"The styling wasn't that far removed from the stuff that we had done before, the Psygnosis output was very sci-fi/futuristic, but then Wipeout was a real shift," Nicky reviews. The race to model courses was driven by the European PlayStation launch, which came nine months after work on Wipeout had started, at which point it became the system's killer app. We could do elements of that when you got a very close view, but where you got a wide view we needed something big that wasn't going to take us forever to model." "Whereas if we had made a big city there would have been a lot of detail we'd have had to put in there to make that believable. "There were questions about how we could make big things quickly, and I think Nick suggested that a track might be heading inside a mountain," Nicky ponders. This leaning toward rural locations was driven by expediency as much as design, so much so that all but one of Wipeout's tracks was set in a natural environment.
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