• Anile – Change Of Direction (WipEout mix)
• Camo+Krooked – Breezeblock (WipEout mix)
• Deadmau5 – Some Chords (WipEout edit)
• DirtyLoud – School Of Funk
• DJ Fresh ft. Sian Evans – Louder (Drum Sound & Baseline Smith Mix)
• Future Sound Of London – We Have Explosive (2011 rebuild) WipEout edit
• Kraftwerk – Tour De France 2003 (WipEout edit)
• Noisia – Regurgitate (WipEout 2048 Edit)
• Orbital – P.E.T.R.O.L (Final Drop Mix)
• Orbital – Beelzedub
• Rockwell – BTKRSH (WipEout edit)
• The Chemical Brothers – Electronic Battle Weapon 3
• The Prodigy – Invaders Must Die (Liam H re-amped mix)
• Underworld – Kittens (Will Saul & Tam Cooper Remix)

I recognised both The Prodigy and Future Sound Of London songs when I was playing the Unity Square zone mode and Rockway Stadium tracks at the recent Vita Rooms event.

However, Tim Wright (aka CoLD SToRAGE) previously told me at London Gaming Con 2011 and has now announced on his Facebook page that he has a folder on his hard drive called CoLD SToRAGE 2048 containing lots of remixes.

All we need now is a custom soundtrack feature to appear in wipEout 2048 and I’ll be happy. Japanese PS Vita owners will be able to download a demo of wipEout 2048 from the 17th Jan 2012.

WipEout 2048 will be released on the 22nd Feb 2012 for PS Vita.

London Gaming Con Event Details:

• Date: 3rd-4th Dec 2011
• Time: 11am – 1am
• Location: Rocket Complex, 166 Holloway Road, London. N7 8DB
• Tickets: Full day – £10. Evening only (after 5pm) – £5
• Event Planner: Available here
• Note: Over 18s only

You can also watch Tim’s last gig at the Sunrise Festival 2011 here. I hope to see some of you at London Gaming Con and at Tim’s gig on Saturday. I will be tweeting from the event so keep an eye on TheAvgGamer.

Q – Are you hoping to emulate the success of WipEout HD on the PSN? Any plans for expansion packs in the future?

Dave Parsons (DP): We’ve really been too busy to see how well WipEout has done, and I have no idea how many units it’s sold.
We’d love for Gravity Crash to be really successful, but really have no idea how well it will resonate with the user base. We’ve had some very encouraging noises from quite a few people now, but they tend to be in the same age range as ourselves, who all grew up in the 8-bit era, and moved on from there. As for expansion packs, we do hope to be doing some extra stuff in the future. Maybe some new levels, and a few other extras, but we’re not going to commit to anything right now.

Stewart Gilray (SG): To echo what Dave said we want Gravity Crash to do well, only time will tell guess. Again, we’ve had idea for DLC for a while now, but that does depend on whether the sales warrant people wanting more. And also if we want to revisit it.

Q – The CoLD SToRAGE music really suits the game. Who’s brilliant idea was getting him involved?

DP: This was thanks to Stewart. He’s known Tim (Wright) for over twenty years, so got in touch to see if he’d be interested. He was, so we had a meeting with him back in February, and Tim just got on and produced the music, which we’re very happy with.

SG: Tim and I first worked together when I was hired to create the introduction sequence for PowerMonger back in the 16bit days, so yeah 20/21 years. I placed the call, since a) I knew him very well, and b) he’s obviously worked with Sony before on WipEout etc.

Q – Were there any particular technical challenges you faced during development?

DP: There were a number of tricky issues in the early days of development regarding collision, but they were mostly sorted out a long time ago. As always, the TRCs (for those unfamiliar with the term, it’s the checking of platform standards, e.g. the PlayStation button on the controller always working etc) issues can be painful to resolve, but we understand the importance of making sure all games on the platform behave in a consistent manner, so we just had to get on and sort things out, but it’s always a bit fiddly.

Dugan Jackson (DJ): The way we ended up creating the in-game art was quite unusual, although you see all the objects presented in a 2D neon style, they are actually made in 3D. We worked out a system in the end that allowed us to easily create and manage the geometry, as well as smooth export process to let everyone see it working in-game.

SG: One of the challenging things we had to work on was creating a system that allowed us to use the PSN for level sharing. We are the first PSN-only title to do this, and as such there was a fair amount of “invention” we had to do.

Q – Which bit of the game are you most happy with/proud of?

DP: I think it’s probably the basic flight mechanics. When I started making the game (over 3 years ago now), there was a lot of tweaking with thrust / rotation / gravity values, but that has now been fixed for a long time. The very nature of the game means the craft control is crucially important, and I’m pretty pleased with the way it works and feels. I’m also quite pleased with the glow effect we have. It has taken a lot of tweaking and tuning during development, but it’s working pretty well, and the game looks really dull in comparison if it’s turned off.

DJ: I think the editor is pretty amazing, you forget when you are deep in it creating levels, but the tool is really easy for novices to pick up as well as having technical depths for more experienced users – allowing infinite possibilities to creative gamers. I can’t wait to see what people come up with, crazier stuff the better!

SG: If I’m completely honest – the whole thing. The guys have done an astounding job, and they’ve made me exceptionally proud.

Q – Why PSN and not Xbox Live Arcade? What was so attractive about PSN as a platform?

DP: We showed the game to Sony – and they said they were interested almost straight away. I had sent an earlier version to Microsoft some time ago, when it was just myself developing it. They expressed some interest, but wanted online multiplayer, and this was simply not possible on a financial basis (for me to buy the required development kits) or to get all the work done on my own. So, we’re pretty happy we went with Sony – they’ve shown a lot of faith in us getting the job done, and mostly just left us to get on with it.

SG: Sony are incredibly open about working with small independent developers, be it offering development support, or just plain opportunity to work on the Platform. Whereas Microsoft are a tougher nut to crack. We’ve dealt with Microsoft on multiple occasions and to be honest, unless you know the right people there you can’t even get in the door. That alone is enough for me to want to continue our relationship with Sony at this time.

Gravity Crash is released on the 24th Nov 09 on the PlayStation Network.

You can buy Android Child from the CoLD SToRAGE website for £12.99. Also it’s only available as a download (154mb zip) at the moment and consists of 21 tracks that aren’t available anywhere else and a HTML booklet. I’ve bought it and it contains some great tracks.

According to Tim, Android Child was:

2 years in the making, this album is a very personal work inspired by the ups and downs of life and is dedicated to Brian, my father-in-law, who sadly passed away well before his time last year. Whereas MELT was a collection of ideas I’d had for some time, Android Child was composed from start to finish as an entity, and I think the tracks compliment each other quite well.

Hopefully Sony Liverpool will suddenly wake up to the fact that what’s missing from the next Wipeout game is CoLD SToRAGE tracks. Tim’s dropped them a friendly email expressing his desire to be part of the franchise. So it’s over to you Sony Liverpool, time to make it happen.

David Whittaker

• Greatest hits: Speedball (1988), Shadow of the Beast (1989), Xenon II – Megablast (1989)
• Listen to his music @ ExoticA Game Music Archive
• Comments: Xenon II – Megablast…need I say more? David Whittaker has written some of the most memorable music to the early Bitmap Brothers games

Chris Hueslbeck

• Greatest hits: R-Type (1989), Turrican I (1990), Turrican II (1991), Star Wars – Rogue Leader (2001)
• Listen to his music @ ExoticA Game Music Archive
• Comments: Factor 5 games have always been accompanied by fantastic music courtesy of Chris Hueslbeck from the wonderful Turrican series to most recent Star Wars Gamecube games. He has a load of albums available on his website if you like his music

Tim Wright

• Greatest hits: Lemmings (1991), WipEout(1996), WipEout 2097 (1997), WipEout Pure (2005)
• Listen to his music @ www.coldstorage.org.uk
• Comments: In my mind the best tracks on all the WipEout games have always been the ones written by CoLD SToRAGE (Tim Wright). You can listen to his fantastic music by downloading tracks from his website (free of charge!). Don’t forget to listen to Messij and Doh which are my favourite tracks from WipEout. Back in January 2006 I commented on Tim’s newest album – Melt which you can check out by clicking here

Richard Joseph

• Greatest hits: Gods (1991), Chaos Engine (1993), Speedball II (1991), Cannon Fodder (1993)
• Listen to his music @ ExoticA Game Music Archive
• Comments: “War, it’s never been so much fun…” (Cannon Fodder title music) I’ve loved his music since his early collaborations with the Bitmap Brothers (Gods, Chaos Engine, Speedball II and Magic Pockets) and then with Sensible Software (Cannon Fodder, S.W.O.S)

Koji Kondo

• Greatest hits: Super Mario Bros (1985), Super Mario 64 (1996), Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time (1998)
• Listen to his music @ Play any Nintendo game!
• Comments: Nintendo’s in house musician…mmm, there’s one or two iconic soundtracks in his discography! Personally I loved the music to Ocarina of Time as it was memorable, suited the gameplay perfectly and most importantly, it didn’t annoy the crap out of you!