Cooked skele
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wipEout (1996, Saturn)
Full disclosure, this isn’t a review as such as it is a bit of an, I dunno, a rant? Word’s a bit strong for the slew of opinions (or, if you’re so inclined, “cope” <tired sigh>) that will follow.
But hey. Let me say that I am a big fan of the wipEout series in general. Every game that isn’t Fusion is an absolute banger as far as I’m concerned, and the original PlayStation game is a favourite. I love it to bits, seriously. And yes, I know I’m writing here about the Saturn version. And for a further “yes”, the PlayStation version is the better of the two. Just to get that out of the way.
But the Saturn version of the game was My First wipEout™ so obviously I have a soft spot for it. Is that purely nostalgia though? I’m going to argue that it isn’t.
In a vacuum, Saturn wipEout was and is a fine game. If you’d never played the PS1 original; as I hadn’t back in ‘96; then the various handling quirks, somewhat chaotic (but mercifully-forgiving) collisions just seemed like part of the game. It’s learnable, it’s completable. Hell, I didn’t even think the much-criticised framerate was even that bad. Okay, it’s not the smoothest thing, but it’s playable. Yeah, yeah, I know some zoomers are gonna disagree with me because it’s not 140fps or whatever, but how many fucking frames do those greedy little shits really need anyway? I was eating fine off the 15 or 20 or whatever the PAL version of Saturn wipEout had.
And, y'know, when I eventually got a PlayStation so I could play that version with my friends across the link cable I was somehow instantly better than they were because of my familiarity with the courses from this version, so it’s not entirely without merit. In fact, the leap to the PS1 version to me was almost like learning the same game (albeit smoother) with a different ship. Same roads, new car.
Fine game. 3.5/5
BUT HOLD ON A FUCKING SECOND BECAUSE I’M NOT DONE YET.
I want to latch onto that “in a vacuum” bit. I was there, as a teenager, in the 1990’s and I’m here to tell you that some of us really did have one console. I did for a bit, until I wisely used some of my college student grant to get a PlayStation at my friends’ behest. But until then it was like, yeah I just play the version I got. And without side-by-side comparisons of the different versions, there never really seemed to be a lot in it y'know? Okay, so the mesh transparencies were not ideal. The framerate was, I dunno, you 'felt’ it more than saw it but in the driver’s seat of the slower Saturn version it didn’t seem to matter so much.
And this is a point I want to make before I get around to reviewing a “not as good as the PlayStation version” Saturn game I’ve been playing a frankly insane amount of lately, the almighty CastleVania - Symphony of the Night. But at the moment I’m here talking about wipEout, and it’s a fine enough Saturn racer if you’re actually playing the fucking thing and not pixel-spotting the transparencies or frame-counting or sat fapping to a DF Retro video on YouTube where that tiresome potato-faced John fella yaps on about frametimes because, presumably, he can’t actually play the game with the controller jammed so far up his own ass.
Or something. I guess that was a rant in the end. Surprise.
Fine game. Just don’t play it with the Arcade Racer wheel peripheral, that does kinda suck. 3.5/5
