THE EVOLUTION OF wipeout
Even among a strong line-up of European PlayStation launch titles, WipEout stood out from the crowd. The Psygnosis game’s techno soundtrack, futuristic polygon visuals and breakneck speed were such a novel combination that it seemed like an immaculate conception. This was far from the case, however, as its designer Nick Burcombe had borrowed the game’s mechanics from a SNES racer, and its concept artist Jim Bowers’ gravity-defying ships had made their debut on the silver screen, as former Psygnosis creative Nicky Place points out.
“Nick Burcombe used to play Mario Kart while listening to really loud dance music, and he thought how ace it would be to develop a game that put those two things together,” Nicky recollects. “Around that time, Jim Bowers was doing a sequence for the film Hackers, where the characters played a game with anti-grav racing ships, and that brought him and Nick together. Jim had also been instrumental in the look of the shoot-’em-ups Microcosm and Novastorm, but the shooting in WipEout was because of Mario Kart.”
“NICK BURCOMBE USED TO PLAY MARIO KART WHILE LISTENING TO LOUD DANCE MUSIC, AND HE THOUGHT HOW ACE IT WOULD BE TO DEVELOP A GAME THAT PUT THOSE TOGETHER”
NICKY PLACE
In fact, WipEout had near-identical power-up mechanics to the popular SNES title. It even depicted its power-ups as icons painted onto its courses, which led to greater involvement in the project by its renowned cover artists. “That was a key element in Mario Kart – driving over speed boosts or whatever,” Nicky acknowledges. “It was that thing of trying to force players to be on a particular part of the track. The icons were all developed by The Designers Republic, which was originally just going to be doing the packaging, but we wanted to make its designs a really key part of the game’s aesthetics. So first and foremost it was about mechanics, and secondly we needed to think about what things were going to look like.”
But while the collectible single-use weapons imprinted on ’s tracks were down to Nintendo’s racer, the Psygnosis title’s ships were a product of the firm’s earlier work. “Jim was developing lots of really cool concepts,” Nicky enthuses. “He was driving a lot of the visual output and conceptual art at Psygnosis, as well as some of the tech he was using. He was the concept artist for the anti-grav ships, which he had built this amazing ‘scratch’ model for. I think the ships lent themselves so well to the gameplay. The idea was that you could actually a lapped track, which meant we didn’t have to create the dynamics of a car stuck to a
