Wipeout, PlayStation, and The Designers Republic
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ธ.ค. 2024
- An iconic cultural phenomenon that fused the ’90s club scene, maximum-minimalism, and digital entertainment. In this video, I discuss the collaboration between the developers of the early #Wipeout series, Psygnosis, and the legendary design studio The Designers Republic.
Links:
The Designers Republic - www.thedesigne...
Psygnosis - en.wikipedia.o...
How Sony infiltrated youth culture -www.theguardia...
Music By: Young Logos and Coyote Hearing
Produced by: Chris Kernaghan
Support: Jiji the cat
The year was 1995, I was 10 years of age. The number 1 single in the UK was Think Twice by Celine Dion, and Batman Forever was the highest grossing movie across the pond in the States. Manchester United, unfortunately, won their 3rd Premier League title and the world was on tender hooks for the OJ Simpson verdict.
The gaming scene was by and large regarded as something for, male only, individuals that were socially inept -for individuals that felt safer in the confines of their own four walls, happy to socially distance themselves before it became government policy. A far cry then from the billion dollar industry currently propped up by gargantuan titles such as Fortnight, Minecraft and Roblox.
These attitudes would not remain however; they would rapidly shift and directly collide with ‘90s club culture and anti-establishment aesthetics from The Designers Republic like an atom bomb.
Press Start
The Sony PlayStation, released in November 1994 in Japan, and eventually September 1995 in US and EU territories, launched with a number of interesting games - but none quite so groundbreaking as #Wipeout.
I remember it distinctly. I couldn’t possibly forget, wandering into my local electronic store to pass a bit of time. It was winter, long nights illuminated only by orange street lighting and passing headlights. Celine Dion was on the radio all the time.
Indoors, beneath long tubes of off-white fluorescence, a beacon of Maximum-Minimalism glittered in my direction. The box was decorated with bright, heavy typography and advanced looking extraterrestrial iconography akin to something from Predator. If you haven’t seen the 1987 classic, alien iconography is used towards the end of the movie to signify the hero’s impending doom, when the antagonistic Predator activates its self-destruct sequence.
I had never seen anything so grandiose in my then 10 years on Earth. You might even consider it gaudy. It was my first introduction to The Designers Republic - and it was glorious.
The Designers Republic
Based in Sheffield, England, The Designers Republic was founded by Ian Anderson and Nick Phillips in 1986. At their inception, Anderson would design flyers for the band Person to Person. “I’d had no training, but I’d been doing posters for one off clubs that I’d run in Sheffield. The band (Person to Person) liked the stuff I was doing and asked me to do their sleeves as well.” Anderson goes on to say, “We do it for ourselves because we enjoy doing it, and all the bright colours and high contrasts, the insignia, the trimmings, are part and parcel of what we like. Thankfully, other people like it too.”
Even back in the hazy days of the late ‘80s, their jokey, playful attitude was on full show. “One of the best moments was when we seen a piece in Cut magazine, it wasn’t a review of ‘Kiss’ the record, but a review of the sleeve! This bloke had tried to decipher everything on the back.”
“It was brilliant - we were down here laughing! Everything we’d ever wanted to do in terms of playing visual games - no disrespect to the punter - had come true!”
They would go on to create many sleeves, including the iconic artwork for the 1987 song “Don’t Get Mad… Get Even! (The New York Remixes)” by Age of Chance which was featured in Q magazine’s “100 Best Record Covers of all Time” in 2001.
2097
I didn’t own a PlayStation at the time of its release, it was much too expensive at the time and most folk were probably still uncertain if it would have any sort of success. Sega and Nintendo had been duking it out since the early ‘90s, and they were household names; how on earth could Sony compete with these two? Surely a Herculean task was ahead of them.
Evidentially, Sony had their finger on the pulse of youth culture considerably more than their competitors. If you visited any large Nightclub in London, you could expect there to be chill out areas for 1-on-1 time with a PlayStation. #Wipeout, and later Wipeout 2097, with it’s tDR artwork and incredible, made-to-measure electronic soundtrack featuring The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, The Future Sound of London and The Prodigy - really was the culmination of 1990s artistic merit coming together in one neat, little, interactive package.
The hype behind this was real, I was early 20s when this first hit the cover of Edge magazine in early 94, as a gamer, these were fast moving times and the whole Wipeout phenomenon was huge, in clubs with bands like the Chemical Brothers, FSOL and Orbital very prominent in club culture at that time, the whole thing fit like a glove, amazing times.
I discovered them in 2017 (I was 15 at the time) when I first played Wip3out. They shaped my musical and artistic taste.
tDR and WipEout is big part of my life
That's great to hear, Normalny - Wip3out is an incredible game and a real evolution of the series! Thanks for watching my video, and feel free to subscribe to see more content like this. 👍
Exactly the same situation for me :) Probably the reason I'm a designer now
Znam to bardzo dobrze, bracie.
@@shuttzi9878fajnie że świadomość o istnieniu tdr jest też u nas :)
God how I waited for a video like this. This sort of art made you feel cooler and more grown up simply for having seen it! Fantastic 🤙🏽
Great video! I haven't seen someone dig into the visual design of the earlier games. It's really impressive how much care they put into them.
Apparently WipEout 2097 inspired the Sci Fi Channel in the US to hire tDR to design their genre icons in 1999.
this is so good!
3:58 looks a lot like one of the stages in wipeout 2048. Fascinating
so please to see somebody giving the designers Republic and wipe out the respect they both deserve. I was at art college when Wipeout 2097 was released. it blew all our minds with the maturity sophistication and general grown up nature of the art style that seemed to have been created just for us: the rave generation. great video. great respect. now I'm going to go feel some of the magic from those times by booting up an emulator and playing 2097..... but through somewhat less of an "artistic" haze......😜
Mate this is exactly the video I was looking for. Thanks
tDR has had such a global cultural impact
Thank you for this video. TDR inspired me to get into graphic design after my experience with Wip3out.
I've only recently discovered the beautiful world of British graphic design. I've noticed that British media tends to be very creative( little big planet, amazing world of gumball, the punk rock art movement, etc) but didn't know it was all connected
punk is technically american born - though we did our own thing with is, as punk is.
i fucking love this video. great work
BallisticNG is the closest to 2097/XL gameplay
Meant to say 2097.
Great video. Check out Pacer, it's an anti-gravity racer in development by some of the original Wipeout team and The Designers Republic are back too.
90's...Golden age British company videogames
i was wondering the other day if Wipeout wasn't as successful in the USA due to them ditching DRs box art for generic 3D renders
The pinacle of 90ies design! Those were the days
how do i make art like this
get a program called marmoset hexels, go mad. splice results into a program like photoshop (or gimp if youd rather not spend loads of money), then start to learn.
When done learning, unlearn everything! go mad.
amazing
just wanted to say tho that the sound is a bit too low and it's a bit hard to understand some parts. Beyond Ghibli has a similar tone as you, maybe download the audio to one of their videos and use it as a reference when you're mixing the next one :)
They literally designed the mid-late 90s.
0:01 theyre choking our onion
i fuckinh LOVE this video by the way this is dope as FUCK
"2 dot 97"?
It's 2097, as in the year.
2 "nought" 97.
@@pspolygons I hope you're having an okay time in 2 nought 2 nought.
@@C.I... Thanks. Hope you are too, see you in 2 nought 2 1! ☺️
Play BallisticNG