“We race. We die. There is no beauty anymore.” -Stefan Geist Review

“We race. We die. There is no beauty anymore.” -Stefan Geist

When you think of the world’s greatest racing leagues, what comes to mind? Formula One,

NASCAR, CART, maybe IMSA and SCCA – all valid answers. Well, add to that list the

F5000 Racing League from Midway’s newest offering for race fans, Wipeout 64. Sure, it’s

completely fictitious, but as far as the game goes, Wipeout 64 will give the best game from

any one of the aforementioned leagues a run for their money.

To their credit, Psygnosis (the developer) has kept the story in Wipeout

64 consistent with their Playstation masterpiece Wipeout

XL. Gone is the liberating idealism of Pierre Belmondo’s new anti-gravity

technology. Two years later, Stefan Geist, a pilot for the Qirex team, reveals

the truth about the F5000 races: the newness has worn off, racers and fans alike

have become jaded, and it’s damn cutthroat.

How does Wipeout 64 measure up to Sony’s “A” offering? Well to tell

you the truth, when I first took it home from the office I thought to myself,

“Great. Another weak racer that I’ll probably be bored to death with in five

minutes.” I was completely wrong. I played for what seemed like five minutes

and when I looked at the clock, I’d already been at it for two hours! So how

good is this game? Good enough to make me want to sit down for some intense

sessions and pull me away from other top-notch titles I’ve been working on,

namely Tales

of Destiny (Rutee’s a babe) and Resident

Evil 2 (Yeah, like how C4 works is common knowledge. Sheesh.).

Wipeout 64 is the best Playstation to N64 port I’ve seen recently. New to the 64 version is

the “Challenge mode,” which includes three categories of six challenges each. You must

complete each challenge in a specific craft, and qualifying rewards you with bronze, silver,

or gold medals. Categories include Race (finish third or higher to advance), Time Trial

(beat the pre-set time limit), and Weapon (eliminate prescribed number of opponents).

Qualifying in all challenges opens a fourth, secret category.

Also new are super weapons. If you thought the Quake disruptor made you laugh like an idiot for days, wait’ll you get a load of these. Each team has their own specific super weapon with cool names like Energy Sphere and Shield Raider.

Graphics are really cool, though on some tracks the pop-up gets wicked. The

graphics on the craft could use more detail and look much more simple than in

the Playstation version, but not shabby by any means. The engine moves at blistering-fast

speeds without any hint of slow-down. The faster pace of Wipeout 64 also

puts a new spin in the gameplay. You’ll need lightning-quick reflexes as well

as perfecting the turn-air brake-turn-thrust technique. Hardly any games give

me Nintendo-thumb, but this is definitely one of those arthritis-before-you’re-thirty

games.

The aspect of Wipeout 64 that really impressed me was the challenging

track design. You’ll need to put in some quality time perfecting turning and

thrusting techniques before mastering any of the seven tracks. Psygnosis did

a killer job with not only track design, but in giving the whole game a feel

and challenge that usually only comes with good Formula One racers. You’ll find

yourself memorizing every section of track, where the turbos and weapons are,

and looking for landmarks to indicate the best possible time to slam on the

air brakes and slip around that hairpin just as smooth as a prom queen’s thigh.

Not surprisingly, the sound

isn’t as good as in the Playstation – but then again, what on the N64 is? There

are three new techno tracks by Propellerheads and Fluke and the rest come courtesy

of PC Music (???). Expect the same kinds of sound effects as in XL; the

snowspeeder-like whine of the engine and the fabulous wing-scraping as you skitter

around a wall are killer. Crashing into a wall provides a pretty boring “thunk”

which sounds similar to XL, but without the metallic-echoing effect.

The manual for this game just rules. Psygnosis really has an attention to

detail with profiles and backgrounds on not only the teams but also the tracks,

giving the game a real “legit” feel. Take a gander at this excerpt about the

Klies Bridge track, built on a radar base in Greenland: “Plus, the magnetic

disruption caused by the craft has resulted in wildlife mutation. I believe

the penguins can no longer swim.”– Grant Watson, Staff Architect of the

F5000 Racing Commission.

Wipeout 64 suffers from a couple of curious omissions. Gone are the spectacular lighting

effects that were present in Wipeout XL. Remember watching your craft reflect all different

colors of light as you traveled through dark tunnels? Well, that’s pretty much gone in

Wipeout 64. A regrettable omission, but this and the simple craft design were probably

done for the sake of four-player racing without sacrificing the blistering speed.

And what happened to the speedometer? It’s very difficult to tell at what

speed to take turns and sometimes you’re left wondering if those boost pads

are really doing anything at all.

Although Wipeout 64 is an excellent racer, it’s really just a translation of XL for the N64 with a couple of goodies added. I’d love to give this game an A grade, but it just doesn’t

offer a lot of innovation to the genre. For the next sequel, I’d like to see fully customizable

craft, maybe multi-level racing, and shortcuts would be ideal. With the glut of “anti-grav”

racing games on the consoles as well as in the arcade (like Vapor TRX, also by Midway,

surprise, surprise) you gotta come up with something really mind-numbing to get that

coveted Revolution ‘A.’