Right lads, bit of a cop out one this week because I have rather foolishly taken on not one but two consultancy jobs this week, so I’ve been up to my eyeballs in words and games for WORK PURPOSES and not fun purposes over the last few day, so this week’s newsletter is one that previously apppeared behind my Patreon paywall, before I decided to just stick everything in these newsletters and switch the Patreon to a more ‘thanks for the content’ thing, rather than paying for the content outright (and thanks to my Patreon subscribers - you are the real best lads!). It is, however, relevant as the new Formula 1 season begins this weekend, so here’s a slightly re-worked thing I wrote about how important the officially licensed F1 game was on the early success of the Playstation.

GO GO GO!

A couple of years ago I played through ever available Official UK Playstation Magazine demo disc and it ended up being a very interesting experience. Not only did it reveal some early versions of certain games and showed them evolving over months of development and multiple appearances on the discs, it was also a way to experience the rise to dominance of Sony’s first console in the UK market. The first magazine dropped in November, two months after the European release, and instantly became an essential part of being a Playstation owner - a monthly sneak preview of the future.

A fascinating part of this journey was around the one year mark, where the Playstation brand really started to push into that previously unexplored market - the casual, nightclub going, older, twenty something, ‘cool’ audience, rather than the kid’s toys that Nintendo and Sega products had been putting out for years by that point. Obviously Wipeout played a huge part in this, with Wipeout 2097 appearing on demo discs at this one year mark (the sequel was released almost a year to the day after the original game, such was its popularity and importance of getting another to shelves to capitalise on this sudden explosion in that market) and the appearance of the original Tomb Raider, which upon release became a genuine phenomenon (and would’ve been getting a huge advertising push at this point), the titles that defined this early Playstation era were coming thick and fast and growing this new, mature audience.

One title that doesn’t get enough credit for pushing Playstation’s into the homes of these apparent ‘non-gamers’ and winning them over completely was Bizarre Creation’s F1 game, an officially licensed game of the popular motorsport. Sure, it lacked the sexy, genuine pop culture crossover power of Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, appearing with her angular ubbs out on the cover of Loaded or something, or the sheer effortless mid-Nineties cool of the Designer’s Republic styled, Prodigy instrumental blaring Wipeout games, installed in nightclubs so some lad can gurn in front of in lieu of telling his mate he wishes he was his Dad all night, but F1 was just as important as both in making Playstation the must have machine for so many.

FIFA ‘96 was a launch game for the Playstation in Europe, but outside of a few small, low resolution FMV video sequences and a 3D stadium, it didn’t really push the boat out in terms of presentation. It still looks like the 16 bit games - a time where videogames looked like videogames and this new audience just didn’t really care for that, at all. They had no real care or connection to Super fucking Mario or anything that came before.

Actua Soccer was a much more visually impressive affair, but football, as a sport, has a lot more moving parts. There’s more that can go wrong, or that would need to be scaled back to something a bit more ‘videogame-y’ in order for the entire sport to be mapped to a Dpad and eight buttons (which when you think about it, is still a bloody miracle). The biggest sport on Earth was certainly getting there, but at a much slower pace.

Fitting, that it is one of the fastest sports that was so impressive so quickly. The core of racing games, as an entire genre, had been refined for quite some time by 1996 and, other than the inclusion of analog acceleration and braking, there hasn’t been many gigantic leaps in regards to what you’re expected to do with the controller for many, many years now. Other sports were in a growth period, transitioning into the full three dimensions developers now had power over. Racing games were ready to embrace it immediately, and Bizarre Creations, perhaps influenced by their publisher’s own Wipeout, made sure that the presentation was as important as the actual gameplay.

F1 looked and sounded like real life. Not just because of the 3D tracks and cars, which were admittedly very impressive for the time, but for the presentation. The overlays during races, the camera angles you could choose from. Legendary F1 commentator Murray Walker shouting soundbites at you throughout your play session. You could do arcade style one-off races, or you could do a full simulated season, with qualifying and long, realistic races which required skillful driving and knowledge of the tracks. Honestly, the only thing it was missing was the fucking Chain.

In screenshots, which were all over the magazines, it looked like a photo of the TV coverage. If you were a fan of the sport, this suddenly became essential. If you weren’t a fan of the sport, you were simply blown away by what it looked and sounded like. No disrespect to Ridge Racer - it’s one of the best of all-time - but it looked like a videogame. One of those things for kids. Not this, not this real life proper grown up sports title. Where can I get one of those Playstations? It’ll be perfect for post-pub races, right?

Of course this would all have been a bit of a busted flush if it was rubbish, but as you’d expect from the team that would go on to create Metropolis Street Racer/Project Gotham Racing in the following years, F1 is a pretty good time. Sure, it suffers from a few of the control issues expected with a pre-analog stick racing game - especially one that leans towards the ‘sim’ side of things - but it’s still an enjoyable racing game and certainly one that, at the time of its release, would’ve sat comfortably in the upper quality bracket. Replaying it to grab the footage for the .gifs you see in this very newsletter, I ended up having a lot more fun that expected and, due to it still largely being a pretty solid game, feels like a bit of a love letter to a particular era of Formula 1. If you’re a longtime fan of the sport, it’s impossible to not get a kick out of hearing Murray Walker shouting about Damon Hill, Schumacher, Berger, Häkkinen et all battling for pole, whilst brands like Shell and Fosters whip by as you take THOSE F1 cars for a spin around the tracks.

Although it is hard to get accurate figures for this sort of thing, F1 sold nearly two million copies in its first year, before a sequel was released. Although Wipeout holds the status of being the game that really pushed this ‘cool Playstation’ brand, legend has it that the sales didn’t necessarily back this up. F1 sold really well, it was an extremely popular title and one that became a yearly fixture in the Playstation release calendar. After the direct sequel, other F1 games followed, but Bizarre Creations were no longer involved and the series began to splutter and stall. By this time, other sports games had caught up in regards to presentation and quality, while other racing games were doing things better. Gran Turismo and Colin McRae Rally were on shelves and it wasn’t THE impressive new thing any more. Its importance, however, has to be acknowledged.

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