WipEout is one of the most iconic racing games ever created. One of the few launch titles on the original PlayStation, Studio Liverpool’s hard-hitting rave racer was clearly a product of the time and place where it was developed. Every game draws references from developers’ lives and experiences to some degree, but WipEout was forged in raves at Liverpool’s infamous Cream nightclub, and some of his best ideas came to fruition over a pint session in a pub across the road. water.
People argue that this is exactly why the WipEout series didn’t survive and developer Studio Liverpool (formerly Psygnosis) was shut down. Even some of the game’s own developers think so. Neil Thompson, lead artist at the studio, said the same to Eurogamer in his extensive investigation into the studio’s closure.
“What I would have liked – and I don’t know if the company would have supported it – was that WipEout would evolve in its looks, its music and its fashion, because it still went back to [iconic ‘90s counterculture design label] The Designers Republic thing,” he says. “That’s the past. That was my childhood, not today’s youth. What are they up to? You want to write that game with the twenty-somethings who write games now and say, “Okay, you take it.” Call it WipEout. That’s the dynamic. But what is the aesthetic? What is the soundtrack? How does it look? What is the design ethics?”
It’s good reasoning. After the original game in 1995 and WipEout 2097 the following year, future installments couldn’t capture the same 90s club culture. They still had the same fast, brutal gameplay, but the tone just didn’t feel right. WipEout’s excitement was gone. It had been done before.
So why is now the right time for a reboot of the iconic series? And why, in my opinion, should it try to recapture that 90s counterculture rather than appeal to today’s kids?
For starters, the 90s is back in fashion. WipEout was more than an aesthetic — it summed up a lifestyle — but this club-age millennial writer thinks today’s youth would succumb to a WipEout revival in all its now retro glory. As far as I know, zoomer fashion is all about baggy jeans and small sunglasses, just look at Billie Eilish and Post Malone.
While a soundtrack and aesthetic directly recording these modern artists could also work, going back to the fashion and musical roots of ’90s culture would offer something different for a modern audience that wasn’t there to experience it.
By the way, Volition was just trying to bring Saints Row up to date with modern youth culture and missed the mark quite spectacularly. Older developers don’t get it. As Thompson told Eurogamer seven years ago, you need “twenties writing games now” to successfully target their own demographic. But on some level, I think the young people who get sweaty in their Cream equivalents these days – I assume the gentrified warehouses of the Baltic Triangle now house things like this – would love an authentic racer that embodies the aesthetic that they recycle, by the people who were there the first time.
Some people also believe that WipEout was just too hard to be successful, but that’s not true anymore. It relied in part on the intense difficulty as a way to differentiate itself from F-Zero, but some people believe that this tough approach deterred players and contributed to the series’ death. However, we are now in the era of Soulsbornes; Elden Ring almost wrapped up Game of the Year in February. A racing game with a cool aesthetic, banging soundtrack and intense difficulty would fit right into an unfilled niche in the modern gaming landscape. WipEout HD ran beautifully at 60fps, so imagine what it would feel like on the PS5’s 120.
It pains me to call the 90s retro — that’s the decade I was born in for God’s sake — but it’s time to face the music and race to death with those retro beats pumping in our ears and futuristic races fill our bloodstreams with adrenaline once again.
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