Wipeout (video game)

Wipeout (stylised in promotional materials as wipE'out") is the first in a series of futuristic racing video games developed and published by Psygnosis. It was originally released in 1995 for PlayStation and PCs running MS-DOS, and in 1996 for Sega Saturn. In 2007, it was re-released for download on the PlayStation Store, first for PlayStation Portable on March, then for PlayStation 3 months later.

Gameplay[]

Set in the year 2052, players compete in the F3600 anti-gravity racing league, piloting one of a selection of craft in races on several different tracks. There are four different racing teams to choose from, each ship with its own distinct characteristics of acceleration, top speed, mass, and turning radius. By piloting their craft over power-up pads found on the tracks, the player can pick up shields, turbo boosts, mines, shockwaves, rockets or missiles, to protect the player's craft or disrupt the competitors' craft.

There are a total of seven racetracks in the game, six of which are located in futuristic versions of Canada, Japan, Germany, Russia, USA and Greenland. The seventh, hidden track, is set on Mars.

Introduction[]

“	It's 2052 AD. Anti-gravity racing has become the world's biggest sport. The F3600 Race League is where it's at. Tracks stretch across terrain in every corner of the world. Research goes on day and night in the quest to find the perfect race craft, the one that will travel further and faster than anything made before. It's big business... and you're on the start grid for the next race. Pick the team you want to race for, take control of your souped-up anti-gravity racer, then ride the six huge circuits leaving the rest to chew fog. The world's finest pilots are lining up to race for the biggest prize in sport. Will you make it? Get ready for wipEout. Ballistic racing.	„
	~ Wipeout instruction manual

Development and Release[]

Wipeout was developed and published by Psygnosis, designed in part by The Designers Republic. Aimed at a somewhat older audience than what were traditional gamers at the time, the game was designed with several marketing possibilities in mind to appeal to this fashionable, club-going, music-buying audience. The Designers Republic created art for the game's packaging, in-game branding, and other promotional materials. Music tracks were licensed from non-mainstream electronica acts to create an original soundtrack album to promote the game.

Wipeout was released alongside the Sony PlayStation in Europe in September 1995. It was the first non-Japanese game for the console. Two months later in November 1995, it was released in the U.S. The game went to number one in the all format charts, with over 1.5 million units of the franchise having been sold to date throughout Europe and North America.

Launch activities for the game included installation of PlayStation consoles running Wipeout in popular night clubs, the release of an accompanying soundtrack music CD, and the sale of a range of Wipeout club wear.

The Saturn version of the game, released in 1996, lacked some of the visual flair due to its difficulty to utilize multi-processor configuration. Particle effects were dropped in favour of simple sprites for weapon graphics, however, it ran slightly faster than its PlayStation counterpart.

In 1996, an OEM edition of Wipeout was bundled with new Sony Vaio PCs utilizing ATI's 3D Rage chipset. This 3D accelerated edition using the ATI3DCIF API provided additional resolutions of up to 640x480 pixels as well as bilinear filtering. This version also made use of the 3D Rage's MPEG acceleration.

In 2023, two fan made remasters of the original Wipeout appeared, featuring upscaled graphics, an unlocked framerate, improved collision physics and new visual and sound effects. More info can be found on the Modding page.

Tracks[]

Teams[]

There are only four teams in this game, but each team has two pilots. The teams and their pilots are as follows:

Weapons[]

Offensive[]

Missile
Rocket

Disruptive[]

Shockwave
REVCON (Multiplayer only)
ECM Pod (Multiplayer only)

Defensive[]

Mines
Shield

Assistive[]

Turbo

Music[]

The game's electronica soundtrack was composed by Tim Wright (under the alias CoLD SToRAGE). Additional soundtracks by Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, and Orbital were included in the PAL version of the PlayStation game, while the Saturn version included three soundtracks by Rob Lord & Mark Bandola.

CoLD SToRAGE - "Cairodrome"
CoLD SToRAGE - "Cardinal Dancer"
CoLD SToRAGE - "Cold Comfort"
CoLD SToRAGE - "Doh T"
CoLD SToRAGE - "Messij"
CoLD SToRAGE - "Operatique"
CoLD SToRAGE - "Tentative"
CoLD SToRAGE - "Transvaal"
CoLD SToRAGE - "WipEout Intro" (Intro only)
Rob Lord & Mark Bandola - "Brickbat" (Saturn exclusive)
Rob Lord & Mark Bandola - "Planet 9" (Saturn exclusive)
Rob Lord & Mark Bandola - "Poison" (Saturn exclusive)
Leftfield - "Afro-Ride" (PlayStation PAL exclusive)
The Chemical Brothers - "Chemical Beats" (PlayStation PAL exclusive)
Orbital - "P.E.T.R.O.L (Wipeout Mix)" (PlayStation PAL exclusive - simply titled "Wipeout" in-game)

A separately sold official soundtrack album was released to promote the game. It featured a very different tracklist, consisting mostly of songs that could have been included in-game, plus the three licensed songs from the PAL release.

In 2012, CoLD SToRAGE released the double album Slipstream, which contained remasters of all original songs from Wipeout and Wipeout 2097, as well as several bonus tracks written for other projects of the time. In 2023, the complete remasters (except Tentative) were re-released on wipE'out" - The Zero Gravity Soundtrack on 3xLP vinyl, 2xCD, and digital, with eight additional remixes by contemporary artists.

Reception[]

The game received positive reviews upon release.

Official PlayStation Magazine UK: 8 out of 10 (80%)
IGN: 8.0 out of 10 (80%) (PlayStation version reviewed)
Edge (magazine): 8 out of 10 (PlayStation version reviewed)

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

Early development of the original Wipeout was said to be inspired by Mario Kart while the developers were drunk. The series' name may have also been derived from the song "Wipe Out" by The Surfaris.
The font of the logo for the game was first used on the cover of Joey Beltram's "The Caliber EP", which was also designed by The Designers Republic and released a year before the game.
Early promotional material for the game was subject to controversy as it depicted a man and a woman with bloody noses, likely depicting a drug overdose, which led to believe that the "E" in Wipeout stood for "ecstasy", and that the tagline for the material depicted the game as "a dangerous game".
Despite being the first game in the series, it is the second game in the series' timeline. Lore-wise, the game holds the following distinctions:
- This is the first game to feature racetracks in other countries all over the world, even to the point of extraterrestrial tracks outside of Earth.
- This is the only game in the series where elimination is not possible, as the weaponry of the F3600 League was insufficient and not powerful enough to destroy craft to such an extent, as per the standardization of regulations by Pierre Belmondo the year before the inaugural season in 2052.
- This is the first game with named speed classes, namely Venom and Rapier. It is highly possible that the speeds of the craft were made even slower than in the AGRC.
- Mag-Strips, barrel rolling, side-shifting and the absorption of weapons have all been abolished altogether due to concerns of safety and other undisclosed reasons from within the sport's regulations.
- Like in the previous league, the AGRC (with the exception of the Auricom Prototype, which was the only dual-hulled ship in that league, and also an experimental craft), all the ships in the game have a single-hulled chassis.
- Pir-hana, which originally competed in the AGRC, mysteriously withdrew from AG racing shortly after the end of the 2050 season. The only reference to them is in the in-game manual where they have provided airbrake products for AG Systems and Auricom's ships.
This is the only game in the series where the colors of the ships' liveries do not match the brand identity of their respective teams, and that the liveries on the ships had race numbers on them. The colors (and even the race number) change depending on the pilot selected.
This is one of the three games in the series (the others being 64 and 2048) whose speedometer on the HUD does not display the speed of the ships.
Upon completing the game on Rapier class, the ending screen will read "Look forward to Wipeout II coming soon".
Original PAL copies of the game (Rev 0) have a few small differences, which were fixed in later releases (NTSC and Platinum).
- The accent color for text is red instead of yellow-orange in menus and the HUD.
- Some trackside billboards feature PlayStation logos, which had to be changed after Sony changed their guidelines for the use of logos in-game.
- The game can crash when finishing Firestar during the Rapier Tournament.
The two PC ports of the game feature a number of differences.
- The MS-DOS port retains the red accent color from the original PAL copy of the game. The ATI Rage port changes to yellow, but the font is scaled incorrectly across the entire game.
- The track lighting was not present, due to performance reasons, causing the entire game to appear brighter than the original.
- The Turbo weapon was much more powerful, and it was possible to fly further off track without a rescue drone picking up your ship, allowing for minor shortcuts not possible in the PlayStation version.
- The ships had different liveries. It is unclear if this was intentional or a texturing glitch - the liveries are mostly a mashup of different livery sections from different ships in the game.
- There were a few hidden messages in the race time high scores, spelled within the initials:
  - Altima VII Venom Race: WIPEOUTPCNOTPSX
  - Terramax Venom Time Trial: PHOENIXRISING
  - Silverstream Venom Race: HANPERFECTPIZZA
  - Firestar Venom Race: CANWEHAVEABONUS
  - Karbonis V Rapier Race: BORINGHISCORES
  - Firestar Rapier Time Trial: THANKSFORPLAYIN

References[]

All Wipeout Games
1990s: WipEout • 2097/XL • 64 • Wip3out
PS2/PSP: Fusion • Pure • Pulse
PS3/Vita: HD (Fury) • 2048
PS4: Omega Collection
Mobile: Merge