[Gamer's Day 2007] The Revo Will Be Televised
We finally get a peek at an actual PS3 running an actual build of SEGA Rally Revo. Wanna know what we learned?
Published: May 10, 2007
When SEGA bowed out of the hardware race to become a software-only publisher, a lot of people were pissed, mainly because the Dreamcast was actually a rather nice piece of hardware and carried with it a solid software library, not the least of which came from SEGA's extremely rich arcade heritage and their 8-, 16- and 32-bit days. That those games would end up on another system was sacrilege for some, and being the superdorks that we are, we can't blame 'em (even if we didn't quite feel as strongly about it all).
With the death of the arcade here in America, though, it left SEGA with an interesting situation: whereas previously they could release at times arcade-perfect ports on their system, they didn't have a system anymore -- much less a healthy arcade industry to continue some of their more popular specialty cabinet games like racers. Among them, few beyond maybe Virtua Racing was as beloved as SEGA Rally Championship (developed by none other than Tetsuya Mizuguchi), which at the time had a fairly novel friction model that gave different handling properties based on dirt, gravel, mud, tarmac and so on.
It's with this same attention to driving surfaces that SEGA's newly formed Racing Studio is attempting to bring the same mix of arcade controls and real-life handling into the mix, though they're doing it by way of fully deformable terrain. Though we'll get to the whole "yeah, well, MotorStorm did that first, dummy," debate in a second, first we should mention that the Racing Studio was actually formed after pilfering quite a bit of talent from other UK devs as Codemasters, Rockstar and Criterion. Secondly, shut up, it's different... kinda.
As they demonstrated after letting the cars loose to have the AI tear around the track on its own and detaching the race cam to inspect things a little closer, the terrain deformation in Revo actually looks different. We never got a worm's-eye view of how Evolution Studios was doing it, but upon close inspection with SEGA Rally Revo, the deep grooves carved into the track aren't just bump mapped texture changes, they actually look like meaty gouges in the mud (complete with a thin layer of water underneath in the deeper tracks). Whether it's a trick or real deformation, we're not sure, but it was impressive nonetheless.
After checking out the lush tropical environs of the first track (noting some very nice textures on the cars in the form of caked-on mud that we were told would actually wash off in the event the cars went through a pool of water), we got to peek at one of the other climates: the classic mountain course. Except here the elevation played with the whole idea of how the surfaces would change. What started on relatively dry tarmac slowly transitioned into light slush, then a mix of slush and snow and finally the entirely snowy peak... and then it was all flipped around heading back down the mountain. It was a fun way to play around with different surfaces and handling, and we're hoping we'll see more natural progressions in the other courses (of which there will be a whopping six -- they'd better be good).
When the issue of how many cars would be in the game was brought up, the SEGA Racing Studio folks weren't quite sure yet. The plan is for somewhere around 30 total (give or take, with the emphasis on give), and there were promises that we would see "some surprises" in the lineup. Given that we saw some of the standbys like a Ford Focus, Subaru Imprezza STi (no, we won't capitalize it, we're old-school) and Mitsubishi Lancer, we're curious if they mean returning ultra-decaled cars like the Celica or if they meant something really out there. Hopefully we'll find out soon.
With the death of the arcade here in America, though, it left SEGA with an interesting situation: whereas previously they could release at times arcade-perfect ports on their system, they didn't have a system anymore -- much less a healthy arcade industry to continue some of their more popular specialty cabinet games like racers. Among them, few beyond maybe Virtua Racing was as beloved as SEGA Rally Championship (developed by none other than Tetsuya Mizuguchi), which at the time had a fairly novel friction model that gave different handling properties based on dirt, gravel, mud, tarmac and so on.
It's with this same attention to driving surfaces that SEGA's newly formed Racing Studio is attempting to bring the same mix of arcade controls and real-life handling into the mix, though they're doing it by way of fully deformable terrain. Though we'll get to the whole "yeah, well, MotorStorm did that first, dummy," debate in a second, first we should mention that the Racing Studio was actually formed after pilfering quite a bit of talent from other UK devs as Codemasters, Rockstar and Criterion. Secondly, shut up, it's different... kinda.
As they demonstrated after letting the cars loose to have the AI tear around the track on its own and detaching the race cam to inspect things a little closer, the terrain deformation in Revo actually looks different. We never got a worm's-eye view of how Evolution Studios was doing it, but upon close inspection with SEGA Rally Revo, the deep grooves carved into the track aren't just bump mapped texture changes, they actually look like meaty gouges in the mud (complete with a thin layer of water underneath in the deeper tracks). Whether it's a trick or real deformation, we're not sure, but it was impressive nonetheless.
After checking out the lush tropical environs of the first track (noting some very nice textures on the cars in the form of caked-on mud that we were told would actually wash off in the event the cars went through a pool of water), we got to peek at one of the other climates: the classic mountain course. Except here the elevation played with the whole idea of how the surfaces would change. What started on relatively dry tarmac slowly transitioned into light slush, then a mix of slush and snow and finally the entirely snowy peak... and then it was all flipped around heading back down the mountain. It was a fun way to play around with different surfaces and handling, and we're hoping we'll see more natural progressions in the other courses (of which there will be a whopping six -- they'd better be good).
When the issue of how many cars would be in the game was brought up, the SEGA Racing Studio folks weren't quite sure yet. The plan is for somewhere around 30 total (give or take, with the emphasis on give), and there were promises that we would see "some surprises" in the lineup. Given that we saw some of the standbys like a Ford Focus, Subaru Imprezza STi (no, we won't capitalize it, we're old-school) and Mitsubishi Lancer, we're curious if they mean returning ultra-decaled cars like the Celica or if they meant something really out there. Hopefully we'll find out soon.