WipEout is one of the original PlayStation’s most important games released during the launch period – its style, speed and challenge made a strong statement against the competition. The game received many sequels over the years including three installments on PlayStation and ports to other platforms – but now, WipEout is available to buy on all Xbox consoles, except something doesn’t quite right. The Xbox “version” of WipEout is actually called Anti-Gravity Racing WipEout. User reports prompted me to investigate and then promptly refund, but not before I put some hours into testing the game, finding oddity upon oddity.
When you first boot the game, you’re “treated” to a super-basic main menu with a wealth of options. You can enable a CRT shader, opt for wireframe, flat shaded or fully textured display modes and you can adjust change resolution. I was then treated to a stunning CG introduction, exactly in line with the original game but built with modern rendering. Then I realised I’d seen it before. It’s a remake of the WipEout introduction, lovingly created by a certain Benjamin Brosdau back in 2021. We’ve sent email to Benjamin to see if he was aware of his work’s inclusion in the game but if that doesn’t raise an eyebrow, the music might as it includes licensed tracks, just like PlayStation.
We’ve only really scratched the surface here. The initial menu is nothing more than an entry point – a configuration screen, if you like. Once you start the game proper, the actual main menu appears. It has a different background, but it is effectively the same as the WipEout menu from PlayStation. However, it’s stretched out and buttons are replaced with Xbox icons which don’t match the menu resolution.
WipEout 3 is also included in the purchase and this one’s even wilder – renamed as Anti-Gravity Racing Special Edition, it is just Wipeout 3 Special Edition but stripped back further. The same menu is here but with a blank background. In both cases, once you enter the game, you’re presented with a widescreen image rendered at one of the available resolutions selected from that initial options screen. It’s also just 30 frames per second, has noticeable texture warping and various other issues.
Amusingly, the description suggests not playing it on an Xbox One 2013 model, so of course we had to try it and, well, it seems that this emulator doesn’t play nice on that console at all – the performance is terrible – at least in the Xbox Series mode. Various modes are included for Series, Xbox One X and Xbox One and while switching to the latter mode gets you to 30fps, it’s not at all solid. The emulation does indeed seem a little heavy for the original system.
Emulation? Yes, if I had to make a guess, I would say that we’re looking at straight emulation here. The initial menu is basically the emulation configuration page. Things like resolution and widescreen enhancements are part and parcel of any normal PS1 emulator as well, which also explains why you can’t adjust any of this within the game.
So, of course, I decided to make a proper comparison and, sure enough, the authenticity claim is true enough – it’s very obviously the PlayStation version. The affine texture mapping, the textures, effects and draw-in all behave exactly as they do on PlayStation. That doesn’t mean it’s identical, however – the developer is using texture injection to replace key assets. This is how the main menu was handled and how the in-game textures were modified. I also noticed the addition of render to texture being used to create moving billboards. Was this in another version on PlayStation? It’s not in my copy, at least. Either way, they scrubbed all references to Psygnosis and anything else licensed.
WipEout 3 is a little more interesting – this game never received a port to any other platform and on the surface, this seems identical to the PlayStation version, as you’d expect, but I noticed something – this is WipEout 3 Special Edition yet it runs at 30fps. Special Edition is a PAL exclusive which means it was designed for 50Hz where it runs at 25fps instead. However, Psygnosis adjusted the speed to ensure both NTSC and PAL versions run correctly. With this Xbox version, however, it seems that the developer has simply taken the PAL game and bumped it up to 60Hz which raises the game speed beyond the original. So, it’s WipEout 3 but it runs faster than it should.
On the one hand, it’s cool to see WipEout available on a modern platform – but clearly, what we’re dealing with here is not legitimate. Did LLS Games acquire the rights to WipEout and its music? I don’t think so. Does it own the rights to the game at all? Surely if it did, it would be called WipEout, not Anti-Gravity Racing.
What I’d really like to see, though, is something a bit more robust. Something like this. WipEout has already received a reverse-engineered port of the game to PC known as Phantom Edition that uses data from the PS1 game to present a massively enhanced version of the game. Ultra-wide aspect ratios, uncapped frame-rates, improved draw distance and other enhancements are all here. It’s an amazing conversion of a classic – and it relies on the user to supply the PS1 game data, so it’s perfectly legal. The budget necessary to pull this off shouldn’t be prohibitive and this sort of release of classic games would be a big deal.
However, that’s where we are for now. Yes, WipEout is indeed available on Xbox but I don’t think this is the way to enjoy it. It basically feels like a generic emulation experience and all of the changes are for the worse. If the question is how this release came to Xbox at all, it’s likely a variation of what happened with the classic War Gods: Zeus of Child. Kratos’ “unofficial” debut on Microsoft hardware. It’s possible to self-publish UWP apps on the Windows Store that run on both Xbox and PC – and it is unclear how much oversight there is on what gets published there.
War Gods: Zeus of Child, or God of Warning as the title screen named it, was quickly deleted after we reported on it. We’ve contacted Microsoft for comment on Anti-Gravity Racing and we’ll keep an eye on how long it remains on the Store.
