Dear Reader:

You are viewing a story from GN Version 5.0. Time may not have been kind to formatting, integrity of links, images, information, etc.

Shin'en on FAST Racing Neo - built from the ground-up, deep experience, 'biggest production'

by rawmeatcowboy
02 November 2015
GN Version 5.0

Coming from Shin'en Art Director, Martin Sauter...

This isn't like part two, it's a completely different game. It's built up from the ground - it's the same engine but we've added and changed a huge amount. It looks and feels different and we've focused on the feeling of speed. We had a great reaction to FAST - Racing League so we thought it was a good idea to revisit when we started three years ago.

We want to focus on the F-Zero vibes and fast racing, not worrying about pick-ups. It should feel like a rhythm, like Boost-Boost-Boost-pick up. So if you know where the pick-ups and boosts are you can effectively boost all the way around a lap. There's a lot of depth, such as boosting into or landing on others to spin them around, or boosting while flying to land quicker. There are various things you don't know in the beginning which don't necessarily matter until to take on Time Trials or online races. We really want this to be a deeper game, not just a shallow arcade game - though we like arcade games too!

You start off with one cup and three ships. The early ships are easy to use but the heavier ships behave differently and drift, so you have to use strafing and so on. It's harder but they are faster, for example. So in the single player campaign you unlock different ships that are harder to use but faster, and then you access faster speed classes. The top speed in the expo demo (at EGX) is about 400, but in the fastest ships - it's too fast for me but I'm told by someone else in the team that it's good - you go at about 1000. It's fun for the player to progress and unlock more stuff.

It's not totally finalised, but there might not be a lot of players online all the time - we hope lots! - so we're keeping it quite simple. You just choose ships from those unlocked and choose any track you've unlocked, then just like in Mario Kart others jump in and you race. You collect points which make up your online score, so you can see if someone's pretty good or not, and you can try and improve on the leaderboard. We're keeping it simple for fast races.

The response to E3 was tremendous. That was a first time for us. In the past we'd just make a game and release it, but Nintendo were saying to us "show the game, do something with the people". It's so important to show the game, there are so many people surprised to see a new game, so we're happy to show it and get their reactions. We're pretty sure we're on the right track.

We are much more present, doing these shows and showing the game. We've really focused on going to shows and showing footage - it's been almost three years of development and it's been the biggest production for us. We're sure it'll pay off.

Full comments here