Wiped Out

It has just come to my attention via Twitter (thanks @AmiNakajima) that it has been a year since the closure of Studio Liverpool and the hopefully impermanent death of WipeOut. I personally think that ending the WipeOut franchise and laying off the staff of Studio Liverpool was one of the worst decisions Sony ever made. However, this post is an excuse for me to get misty eyed, not lambast Sony on a corporate decision.

Wipeout 2097 is, for me at least, the game that started it all. The moment where games ceased to be just toys and became something more. It was January 1997 I was in year 8 at school. I was over at a friend's house for the first time since Christmas. He'd got a  PlayStation and told me that it had arrived with something amazing. It was exciting. We both had MegaDrives and we initially connected over a love of Sonic 2.

I had a MegaCD too. Dad got it just after the PlayStation was first released because he thought it was pretty much the same thing. Up until that point, the most technically advanced game I'd ever played was Thunderhawk, which was and still is awesome and you should play it.

Anyway, back to WipeOut. My friend fired up his new PlayStation and I heard that famous Bwoaaaarr-tinkle for the very first time, then the swoosh-ting of the PlayStation logo. All of a sudden, there was FMV. Full screen FMV! Not in a tiny window like on my MegaCD. There was a weird cat thing, a sweep over a racetrack then BOOM. Two racing ships flew though an explosion and an utterly banging song dropped in. I still remember the size of my grin and how wide my eyes were. This was like nothing I'd seen or heard before. Hitherto unknown synapses were firing in my brain.

That song... It did strange things to my twelve year old mind.

The main menu slammed into the screen to the sound of another explosion. Loops of Fury by the Chemical Brothers played in the background. My friend wasted no time, before I knew it there was a strangely shaped pad in my hands, I was on the startline of Talon's Reach and I could hear the distinctive wailing guitar line of Firestarter by the Prodigy. I was struck by how effortlessly cool this all was, and by how I shouldn't really be listening to what I was listening to. There was a bit of a moral panic surrounding the Prodigy at the time. They were a dangerous band, my mom was up in arms about them, it just made everything feel even cooler.

My first race went badly. I remember it being almost uncontrolably fast. I bounced off walls and got left in the dust by the other ships. At the same time I was still in the throes of that 'this is the most amazing thing in the history of ever' feeling. The speed was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever experienced, the graphics far and away the best I'd ever seen, the ships felt like they really were floating, the weapons hit hard, and the music was incredible.

All this from one race at vector class. I was impressionable and easily amazed at that age.

I was hooked. We passed the pad around for about three hours, right up until the moment my dad came to get me. In time, I gradually began to master the handling and we managed to get up to the heady heights of venom class. Dad bought me home buzzing and I told him I wanted, nay, needed a PlayStation. We weren't that well off when I was a kid. I got a PlayStation with WipeOut 2097 the following Christmas. My parents had been saving for it all year.

There were other games, but none had the effect that WipeOut had on me. My nacent musical taste formed around it, I discovered new artists with each instalment and gained a love of music that I retain to this day. It introduced me to The Designer's Republic and the concept of graphic design, leading to two years at college as a fairly rubbish art student trying and failing to replicate the game's minimalist aesthetic. Zone mode taught me about the buzz that only extreme speed can give, and along with Road Rash, is one of the main reasons I own a sports motorcycle that is far to fast for my own good. Most importantly though, and I've said this earlier, WipeOut showed me that games can be far more than just fancy toys. They have their own culture around them. WipeOut bought my loyalty to the PlayStation brand and shaped the way I play games.

I owned a PS1 because of 2097. I still play Wip3Out sporadically. Even though I never actually got Fusion, I still bought my PS2 because the demo I played of it blew my mind. I bought a PSP because of Pure, then bought Pulse on release day. And even though circumstance meant I got an 360 to stay in touch with my gaming mates more easily when they moved away, I still created a PSN account, got WipeOut HD and Fury on my housemate's PS3, then wound up playing on his console more than he actually did. The only reason I didn't buy a Vita after thirty seconds of 2048 is because I couldn't afford it at that very moment. It made me very sad.

WipeOut is PlayStation. The PS4 will have a huge gap in it's library without it. I'd have a huge gap in my life without it. Maybe I'd even be a slightly different person, such is that one game's influence upon me. Hopefully the WipeOut franchise doesn't stay gone for long.

You had me at WipeOut

Those who know me know I like WipeOut. I mean I really like WipeOut. I love the graphics, the handling, the sleek, minimalist aesthetic, the consistently fantastic and bang on trend soundtracks, the lot.

It’s responsible for a lot of snap decisions to buy a console that in the past have wound up being pretty fruitful. I decided on a Playstation when I first played WipeOut 2097 at a school friend's house and it’s a decision I feel I will never regret. Mainly because Wip3Out came out two years later and glued itself into my disc tray. To a lesser extent, the same goes for WipeOut Fusion for the PS2, which I never really mastered, and WipeOut HD on the PS3, which I most certainly have mastered.

Recently I tried WipeOut HD in 3D and I was sold instantly. After years of scepticism over 3D cinema, suddenly it made sense. Somehow there wasn’t even any of the ghosting which puts me off seeing a 3D film at the cinema. It was smooth as silk. Vineta K looked beautiful as it stretched into the distance, and watching my quake disruptor disappear into the screen was just incredible Admittedly one race at Rapier Class did completely fry my retinas and melt my brain, but I was so blown away, I told myself I could get used to it. I probably couldn’t, and I'm yet to try a Zone race, but I can't help myself. I get such a buzz out of WipeOut that it just makes my mind susceptible to a dumb idea or two.

WipeOut suckered me into buying a PSP. And while I love WipeOuts Pure and Pulse, a lot of the games on that system never really did it justice, even though I built up a fairly decent sized library of games. On release of the PS Vita, Sony nearly got me again. My local Game store had a demo unit running Wipeout 2048. It was beautiful. It was awesome. And holding the Vita gave me cramp, but I still wanted a Vita there and then, and I very nearly bought one, but I'm an adult now and I can be objective when that amount of money is going to fly away from my bank account. I took a step back and had a look at what other games the system had to offer, and with the exception of Uncharted: Golden Abyss, the answer was none.

There was next to nothing on the Vita on release that screamed, “BUY ME,” apart from those two games, and even now, it feels like most of the games on it are home console conversions. Don’t get me wrong, conversions are nice, but I already have them to play on my big screen at home, where games like that belong. With the exception of Gravity Rush, there is still nothing on the Vita that makes me want to own one, and I can’t abandon my sanity and spend that much on one to play three games. I made that mistake with the PSP. I don’t need another slab of plastic gathering dust on my games shelf.

I know it’s been said already, but this is an issue Sony really needs to address. A system lives and dies on the standard of its games, and it seems that everyone, publishers, developers, consumers, everyone, is ignoring the Vita. Without the games, the Vita will go the way of the 3DO. And even if we do see some unmissable content arrive for Vita, with the way its life has started, it could go the way of the Dreamcast instead. Loved by the few, ignored by the many.

So this goes out to Sony. I want a Vita, I really do, but I can’t justify buying one yet. Not until you give us games that only Vita can do. Games like Tearaway. If there were more like that, I’d buy one tomorrow.

Another Wipeout might help too.