![]() Burcombe had been playing Mario Kart at home when he turned the in-game music down in favour of some of his own dance music. In 1993, the year Microcosm released, it bought the studio.īurcombe remembers the night WipEout was born as if it was yesterday. "We thought it was pretty cutting edge," he laughs. The chap with the shades and the mobile phone is Paul Franklin, who won an Oscar for his effects work in the film Inception. ![]() That's Nick Burcombe, who would later go on to co-create WipEout. If you can forgive the hammy voice work you might notice a man in an orange jumpsuit. It created live action assets - staff were filmed acting in front of a huge roll of blue paper bought from the local B&Q - that were mapped into the scene. Psygnosis had experience with CG work and wanted to do an ambitious intro for Microcosm. It was released on a number of platforms, but for Thompson the best version was for the long-forgotten Fujitsu FM Towns, the first hardware to come with a CD drive. Microcosm, a 3D "shmup" set in some poor chap's intestines, marked the first time Psygnosis had combined its advanced 3D work, powered by its powerful Silicon Graphics machines, with live action and sprites. "You can't talk about WipEout without talking about Microcosm," Neil Thompson, who joined Psygnosis in 1990, eventually becoming lead artist, says. Here, in a sweeping investigation into the studio's rise and fall, Eurogamer speaks to former staff about their time there, gains insight into the development of the many WipEout games and asks, why did Sony send WipEout to the scrapheap? Sony had closed the door on one of the most influential - and long lasting - studios of all time.įor those who worked at Studio Liverpool and Psygnosis before it, it was the end of an era. The news sent shock waves rippling throughout the game industry, saddening hundreds of game developers and thousands of gamers. On Wednesday, 22nd August 2012, 17 years after the release of the first WipEout game, Sony closed Studio Liverpool, née Psygnosis. Forget beeps and boops - WipEout on PlayStation had heavy beats. ![]() WipEout steered into the slipstream of a dance music-fuelled drug culture, leaving its racer rivals in its wake. Improbably, a dozen or so people from a north west England developer called Psygnosis had conspired to stomp on Mario's head and speed past silly Sonic onto the cover of style magazines. By then, WipEout, the racer that evolved from that pre-rendered demo Angelina and Jonny pretended to play on the big screen, was the most exciting video game in the world. They love each other.Īt the end of the movie Angelina and Jonny fall into a swimming pool and, finally, kiss, as Squeeze's little-known love song Heaven Knows lifts the camera up into the air. But then upstart hacker genius Jonny smashes it to bits. Established hacker Angelina is pretty good at the game, and has the top score. In Hackers, the 1995 cult teen cyber thriller, a young Angelina Jolie and an American-accented Jonny Lee Miller play WipEout in a club. Every Sunday, we bring you an article from our archive - and this week, to celebrate the original PlayStation's 20th birthday, we present the story of the studio behind one of the console's most iconic games.
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