Games That Weren't^®

1998 Simtex / Speedworks / Europress

Platforms: PC, Sony PlayStation and Arcade

XLR8 was a futuristic bike racing game, where you race through the likes of volcanic deserts and ancient prehistoric looking rainforests. The game was due to be released by Europress back in 1998 and was featured in a number of magazines at the time. Due for release on PC, PlayStation – but later arcade too!

You could say it was very similar to Wipeout, but according to the press, it had much more to it than that. One claim to fame mentioned about the title at the time, was that it had no pre-rendered images, and everything was generated in real-time throughout the game. Speedworks/Simtex had spent a lot of time working on a special engine for the game, where players were not restricted, and had complete freedom of movement as you hurtled around at breakneck speeds.

Overall, there were eight different worlds to race across scorched by a bitter civil war. These ranged from prehistoric rain forests, underwater worlds, industrial wastelands to volcanic deserts – with every track featuring an array of corkscrews, loops, tunnels, jumps, twists and more. Fearful of another war, the leaders device a high-speed racing tournament in the hope of coming to some sort of settlement.

Within the game, you would work your way up the ranks of Challengers and Champions, before going head-to-head with Athena, the undefeated and undisputed Inter-Galactic Champion from Olympus. As you complete each race, you get prize money to upgrade your vehicle to give you a better chance of beating Athena.

The game could have you racing through 1st or 3rd person perspectives, depending on your preference, there were multiple bikes/characters to choose from for the game. And to top it all off, there was to be multiplayer through a Local Area Network connection, with up to 8 players.

Unfortunately, when Simtex went bankrupt in 1998, all of the work and team was purchased by Thompson TSF (according to poster 10ahu on the old Assembler Games forums). The goal then was to make the game into an arcade cabinet, and it was actually playable as one at the SEGA Center in London for a little while, as well as being available in Asia.

The arcade itself was reported to be hardware that was running with a custom Voodoo 3DFX card, and was tidied up and simplified slightly from its original PC incarnation (the PlayStation version had only just been started when the company went bankrupt). Gone were the different perspectives, and the game would now only run through a 1st person perspective instead.

10ahu very kindly uploaded a build of the arcade version, but its not clear why that was cancelled as well. According to the text file that 10ahu left in the archive, the following people had worked on the game (sadly missing full names in most cases):

• Fred Heintz – code
• Duncan – code
• Darren – PSX code
• David – art direction and 3d art
• Christophe – 2d and 3d art
• Mark – animation (original version)
• Tanguy – animation (original version)
• Mike – sound and music

But what about the PC edition that had been advertised in so many magazines of the time?

On the same forum, VirtualIceMan posted to say that they had been looking into the game a while ago, and managed to get hold of a beta copy from a former developer. This was of the PC version, and had a lot more content, and also the different perspectives. There was also proper menus and configuration screens which you would expect from a PC game.

A lot of it is unfinished, and starting on some tracks – you’ll find yourself falling through space. But its a great glimpse of how the racer was shaping up. There could well be later builds out there yet to find too, maybe even more complete perhaps?

One thing you’ll find from both impressive previews, is that the controls are very sensitive and its extremely hard to try and keep on the track at times (even with a controller on the arcade version). A lot of tweaking is needed to be fully playable, but it is an amazing glimpse of what was coming together.

On the old archived forum, the arcade edition was still present, but the PC version was no longer active. Thankfully, Frank Cifaldi uploaded the PC edition to archive.org in 2017, so you can find both downloads below. Also, here is a video of the prototypes in action that we’ve produced.

The arcade machine was apparently like a moving cockpit, with a big yellow shell that could sit 2 people inside (like a tiny version of the Star wars shuttle ride at Disney). Hopefully someday a photo of the arcade will surface – the question is whether the arcade prototype may still exist somewhere?

Just how far was the game from completion? This isn’t yet clear, but we hope over time to learn more from those involved on the development and maybe even see more of the title in the near future. If you know anything more about it, please do get in touch.

With thanks to LiqMatrix for flagging up the title, Archive.org for scans, Frank Cifaldi (+ Archive.org) for the download to the PC edition and 10ahu + VirtualIceMan for originally posting the prototypes.

Video of the game in action

• Youtube link to video

Downloads

• xlr8-arcade
• xlr8-pc  (password = “athena” when prompted)

Gallery