Rest in Peace Designers Republic, you will be missed.
btw, most incredible QED ever:
Turrican wrote:In my view it has no future. The pax romana imposed by the Playstation brand has come to an end. Virtually all of the franchises that made Playstation great in the beginning have lost their raison d'etre. Sure, Wipeout HD is well done and fun - but Wipeout doesn't represent the european development renaissance that it represented in 1995. Tekken is avoided like the plague, Ridge Racer nowadays is just remembered because of a kaz hirai joke speech. Tomb Raider has achieved the ultimate goal of going to Hollywood, and now is the shadow of its former self. Those are pretty much the games which sealed the deal in Europe, the first continent to fully embrace Sony... Japan was on the edge and didn't really choose between PS and SS until FF7. The "soul" of early Playstation is also hidden in the less commercial gems: Jumping Flash, Motor Toon GP... This alternative soul has not survived either. The only "artistic" developer within Sony is Fumito Ueda's team, they do great things but they are alone. And the quirkiness has spread among all platforms - today every console has a Rez, a Monkey Ball, or a Katamari. In short, creativity has gone third party.
Ganelon wrote:Did they create the characters for the original WipEout? I missed seeing them in all the subsequent installments.
I'm not sure about Fusion and the following ones, but DR was essential in the first trilogy. The conceived the ships, their logo, brands, hubs, weapon icons... Basically they are responsible for the game's aesthetics.
Stormwatch wrote:I've only played Wipeout 2097, and thought it was terrible.
Wipeout 2097 was released under the official title of WipeoutXL (eXteme League) for the USA PSX market. I love how WipeoutXL has built-in support for the Namco NeGcon controller. This was as close to virtual reality back in the mid-1990's with that game. ^_~
Sorry to hear that Designer's Republic is no more. It would've cool to see their aestethics used in a Japanese arcade shmup title.
I tried playing the Wipeout game on the N64, seemed waaaay behind eXtreme G (especially XG2).
Tomb Raider has had its ups and downs, although I think the last two games should be pretty decent. Legend was kinda lol. I play TR on a PC, btw...fuck playing that game on a console.
I recall going to my local Blockbuster and renting the original PSX version of Wipeout that came with the big jewel case instruction manual. The overall visual presentation that Designer's Republic did with the USA PSX version was legendary. When the USA PSX ver. of Wipeout was re-released as a normal sized CD-Rom case format, the instruction manual was shrunk down but not as effective overall as with the big jewel case-sized instruction manual (in terms of showing off the cool artwork of DR to it's fullest potential). The ol' saying: Bigger is better is very true (when it comes to cool futuristic artwork/graphic design in video game instruction manuals). ^_~
The real reason why SCEA sold it first PSX games with big jewel CD cases: SCEA made a deal with Sega regarding it's unused Sega CD big jewel cases bought all the remaining inventory from them. Hence, the reason why it's possible to buy both versions of USA PSX version of Wipeout in the big jewel case or the smaller normal sized CD case format.
PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
Last edited by PC Engine Fan X! on Wed Jan 28, 2009 8:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
