The long-running Wipeout racing series has its roots deep in the history of the PlayStation. Its first incarnation was a slightly dodgy affair that held the promise of 3D antigravity racing, and despite a number of problems it went on to become a hit as the first non-Japanese PlayStation game. Wipeout 2097, or Wipeout XL as it was known in North America, was an amazing upgrade that fulfilled the promise and became what is still widely considered a watershed game. After a number of sequels, and a strangely weak showing on the PS2 with Wipeout Fusion, the series seemed to have gone on hiatus for a number of years. And then when the PSP launched in March 2005, like a fiery vodka-and-Red-Bull-fuelled techno phoenix, Wipeout Pure appeared, and it was the very best version of Wipeout ever made.

The series has never been known for radical departures in gameplay. After the fanfare following XL, the designers were probably loathe to mess with what was widely considered a Very Good Thing. Thus the franchise has become the epitome of iterative game design. Each Wipeout is essentially the same thing: futuristic antigravity racing with rapid-fire combat and an edgy, electronica-fused atmosphere. What you historically got in new versions has been a mix of further refinements to craft handling, weapon tweaking, and track design. This is what made Pure special; for the series, it was the evolutionary equivalent of a shark. An absurdly optimized killing machine, nearly perfect in form and consequently at an impasse. Nothing more could really be done with the franchise in the way of gameplay without adding new base capabilities to the hardware that had become feasible in the post-PS2 days. Namely, online multiplayer.

So when I tell you that Wipeout Pulse is the ridiculously polished, online-capable, super-tweaked version of Wipeout Pure, I want you to understand where I am coming from. It is a game that has been in the works, in some form or another, for 13 years. It is probably the finest handheld racing game ever made by the hand of man. And I say this with all due reverence to the Burnouts, Ridge Racers, and Mario Carts of the world. Those are fine games. But this is Wipeout.

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Previously, on Firmware Stories: hit this link for all the details.

I’m curious to see if the rumoured blu-ray to PSP portable copy features are in there as well. Some studios are mulling the idea of including a standard-def PSP/iPod version of the film on the BD that you can transfer to whichever device.

I used my randomly-forged Japanese PlayStation store account to download the Echochrome demo today for PS3. I also snagged the PSP demo, but was unable to check it out due to aforementioned forged Japanese account – the software instructed me that installing it under Nerfgun-san rather than Nerfgun would nuke my North American “certificate”, which of course means the PSP would be unable to find employment and die alone and destitute. I can’t have that.

Echochrome plays much as the videos say it does “solving a series of black-and-white Escher-inspired perspective drawings that are technically impossible in Euclidean geometry. The only control you have is over the camera. While quite mind-bending at first, the demo does a great job of walking you through the “five mysteries” of the game at the outset and you quickly acclimatize to the odd 3D/2D translation you must do in your head to make it work. All the while soothing YoYoMa cello music plays in the background, making the entire enterprise feel quite cerebral and scholarly. It’s like the polar opposite of Madden. The kind of game where you don’t blink for an hour.

I did have some trouble with the camera, which does not bode well at all since that is the entire control scheme for the game. At certain points it seemed like it was trying to help a little bit, which had the opposite effect. You must join up the edges fairly precisely, there’s not really any snap to it, so when you line up a nice bit of walkway for your poser-hero and then the camera shifts of its own accord, you rightly want to hurl something sharp. Wasn’t a big deal, it only happened twice but it immediately pissed me off. I hope there’s some setting in Japanese that I can’t read for Camera Assist=NO.

The demo is in Japanese with English voiceovers in the tutorial, so not so hard to figure out. If you have access, I recommend it.

Have to say though, a bit disappointing that the PS3 version doesn’t seem to support Remote Play; and the PSP version has twice as many maps as the PS3 one. The PSP is really where you want a game like this in the end but it just looks so damn sharp in HD.

(UPDATE: PSPFanboy has posted the Echochrome demo for, durr, PSP. Gogetit.)

(Originally posted at citizengame. Come for the impudence, stay for the ennui!)

It’s probably impossible to follow Dan’s amazing BioShock find, but this wallpaper from the recently-opened Metal Gear Solid 4 teaser site is definitely worthwhile. Ever since Portable Ops, the series has adopted this really striking hi-contrast icon style that I can’t get enough of. (Was happy to see that they have sizes up to 1920×1200 at that link.)

Where’s his Old Snake moustache? It’s a mystery.

Sony came out with a veritable cornucopia of announcements today. The timing is a little odd, coming as it does just after GDC. The vagaries of Sony PR are confounding and mysterious.

First up is the news that there shall be an 80GB Playstation 3 bundle which includes Metal Gear Solid 4 and a Dual Shock 3 controller*. That is one mighty bundle of gaming bliss. Alongside that, we learn that MGS4 will be hitting our shores on June 12, and the DS3 controller will be available in April for (a slightly cringeworthy) $55 USD. Thankfully most of the big games for PS3 have already been patched to support the rumble features.

Furthermore, those who engage in that damnable custom of pre-ordering shall be reserved a guaranteed place in the upcoming beta trial of Metal Gear Online, the multiplayer-only title set in the MGS universe. (No word on how exactly one secures that valuable perk yet.)

And finally we have a pretty sweet new PSP bundle – the God of War: Chains of Olympus game, a copy of Superbad on (snicker) UMD, and a voucher for a free download of Syphon Filter: Combat Ops. Oh, and the unit itself has been tastefully dipped in the blood of your fallen enemies. Mr. Happy himself, Kratos, is silk-screened onto the back, in a manner similar to the white Star Wars PSP bundle with Darth.

* Where’d they get the idea that a special edition bundle shouldn’t be a puke green console, and actually include the game it’s named after? That’s just crazy.

On the last Playstation Nation podcast, David Jaffe mentioned that he had tucked a hint away in the dubiously-titled Twisted Metal: Head On Extra Twisted release for PS2. Head On is the new “semi-anniversay/special edition” release of Twisted Metal as remixed by Jaffe’s new dev house Eat Sleep Play.

The code was embedded in one of the videos contained on the disc, unlockable by beating the game on hard. All the nerdy details are on NeoGAF:

“ok, so the super gumshoes at Gamefaqs have cracked the code from the Dark Past video on the disc.

The code is displayed with random numbers throughout the video. If you put the numbers together, and match them to their alphabetic cousins, you get -

Twisted Metal is coming on PSTHREE”

It’s a nice little teaser. And it also gives me the perfect excuse to use this awesome clownsplosion picture.

If you asked me about “The Society Against Playstation” I honestly wouldn’t have had any idea what you were talking about, but as soon as I started watching this commercial it all came back. Wasn’t that long ago that Playstation was the underdog and they’re commercials were not only funny but risk-taking (in a good way, not the risk taking they take nowadays).

It’s all a bit ironic now since a lot of the things they joke about in the spot are the same things crazy lawyers and idiot pundits spew on 24-hour news networks these days…