Formula Fusion looks like the closest we're going to get to a new WipEout
Heavy beats! Anti-gravity racing! The Designers Republic!
Formula Fusion is an in-development racing game that looks a lot like a spiritual successor to WipEout.
It's from R8 Games, a Middlesbrough-based studio founded by Andrew Walker, who worked at Sony from 1996 to 2000.
R8 launched a Kickstarter for Formula Fusion, asking for £35,000. It's raised just shy of £50,000 with eight days left of the campaign. If it gets £100,000, it'll make console versions for release in the second quarter of 2016.
You can see the influence of WipEout coursing through the veins of Formula Fusion. It's got that same sci-fi anti-gravity racing mechanic, track boosts and thumping soundtrack pioneered by WipEout back in the mid 90s. The Designers Republic, the celebrated Sheffield-based graphic design studio who helped shape the look and feel of WipEout on PSone, is also working on Formula Fusion. Early footage is in the video below.
Formula Fusion may be the closest we're going to get to a new WipEout game. Sony closed Studio Liverpool, née Psygnosis, back in 2012, and there hasn't been a sniff of a new PS4 WipEout since.
Ah well. A good time, perhaps, to point to our sweeping investigation into the rise and fall of Sony Liverpool.
