PlayStation Basement #73 - CyberSpeed

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on January 18th, 2020.

The future is here once again! Welcome to PlayStation Basement, a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go!

For this week’s futuristic game, we’ll be zooming through CyberSpeed. I previously reviewed a game called Cyber Sled if you remember all the way back to two weeks ago. When I decided to collect all of the longbox games for PlayStation, these two names confused me with their similarity, however, the games are not related. CyberSpeed is an unusual racing game with some similarities to Wipeout. Interestingly, CyberSpeed was actually released in North America two weeks before the more familiar Wipeout was released anywhere - September 15^th, 1995. The European release of CyberSpeed followed the European release of Wipeout by a few months – December 15^th, 1995. CyberSpeed also came out in Japan in August of 1996. Anyway, that’s enough about Wipeout, for the most part.

All three of the images used for the cover art of Cyberspeed are quite different and show the character of each region. The original US release shows a few ships, explosions from weapon use, and the various pilots below. It’s a cinematic cover that emphasizes action and the dark future of the game world, the latter shown through the use of textural grittiness. The European release shows more whimsical ships in space, a red craft escaping a silver racer’s attack as they swoop around an asteroid on some kind of rail. This is a major element missing from the North American artwork – the game is about racing down a singular rail and spinning around it. As we shall see, this provides both clever and annoying attributes to this game. Finally the Japanese release is incredibly bright and colorful, showing a red ship zooming away from missiles fired from encroaching opponents. This cover makes the game look like an arcade flight sim or perhaps a shmup. The rail is there, but it’s almost indistinguishable from the background elements. Of these three, the European release is probably the most honest, though the American release captures the aesthetics the best.

In-game, CyberSpeed looks surprisingly detailed for such an early release. The game features big polygonal ships on various tracks ranging from metallic tunnels to rocky canyons. Unlike the previously reviewed Tunnel B-1, a game with some similar graphical elements that I reviewed a while back, CyberSpeed is very colorful and lively. Emerald greens, electrifying reds, and fiery oranges are all here. Importantly, each ship has a unique design, color scheme, and pilot. The ship designs go along with the names too (“Blocker”, “Vampire”, and others). The game even has a number of FMV sequences showing ridiculous ads that highlight the future world of convenience, violence, and wayward science. It’s interesting to see these 90s-styled commercials showing such a future world. On the lower end of the graphics, I should mention that backgrounds of the races look a bit weird at times, the FMVs are not the highest renderings seen on the console, and the viewing range and camera angle in the races are both awkward. We’ll get into that more, in the future.

In the now, I have to tell you about the sounds of CyberSpeed. It’s a game driven by musick. In fact, I would kind of call this a rhythm game for a few reasons we’ll also see in the future. Anyway, the musick is the expected electro-dance stuff similar to the aforementioned Wipeout. Not all of the tracks are throbbing pulses of hard-hitting thumps, though. There are airy and watery tunes as well, songs that are less claustrophobic and compressed. There’s really a nice variety here. As for sound effects, it’s all as you probably expect: lasers, explosions, and thuds. The crashes are a bit underwhelming, unfortunately, but the sonic boom emitted when you break the sound barrier is a cool touch, even if it scares me a bit. There’s an announcer who speaks both praises and ridicules, drawing both pride and annoyance. That’s pretty good though really, and so is the sound design as a whole.

Where CyberSpeed falters a bit is in the gameplay department. You see, this isn’t your usual racer. As mentioned, the game is all on rails. I actually had a toy kind of like this when I was little. I wanted the toy very, very much and was amazed to finally get it for my birthday one year. I took out the little ships and started to assemble the rails around the room, but my grandmother became irritated and returned the set the next day. I’m still upset about this to this day, and I don’t even remember the name of the toy. If you do, let me know.

Anyway, CyberSpeed is kind of like my toy experience, exciting at first but ultimately unfulfilling. Since you race on rails, races are a bit cluttered at times. If another racer is directly in front of you, the two vehicles will collide. Thankfully you can rotate your ship around the rail. You can also flip your ship to fire at incoming opponents and missiles. These are both fun elements and introduce some skill to the game. You need to rotate to close the gap around curves and also to avoid other ships and obstacles. I really find the obstacles to be irritating. They are certainly needed for this simplistic gameplay, but the small view distance makes avoiding many of them impossible without previous knowledge of each track. The camera angle also makes collisions happen more frequently than I would expect. I often thought I was out of the way to then hit the obstacle and slow to a crawl. One big mistake like this can cost you serious time and potentially ruin your chance at getting in the winner’s circle. I had fun with CyberSpeed more before the game introduced obstacles.

There are a few other cool elements here. If you place first in a few races, you start encountering bonus tracks where you race against a single, smarter opponent. I had trouble with the first one and missed any of the later ones because of that, but you unlock something if you are able to finish them all in first, adding some nice replayability to the game. There are also time attack and free races to play instead of the main single-player mode. Some tracks have alternate rails to take for certain sections; this isn’t particularly cool, but it’s a little addition. Finally, I will mention again the commercials for fictional products. These range from gene-altering kits for kids to grow weird animals, a flying pizza delivery service that cuts holes in walls to deliver pizzas within 30 seconds, and ads about super-strength gloves or rocket shoes that end with a disaster for the user as seen in the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons with their Acme products. I always like to see small details like this.

Unfortunately, these cool elements don’t fix the awkward gameplay of CyberSpeed. It’s not a bad game at all, but the rail-racing is limiting. Spinning around a rail to hit the perfect spot on a curve reminds me of rhythm game gameplay more than a real racing game. That’s actually really cool to me, but I feel as if the designers may have been somewhat embarrassed by their design and unsure of how to utilize it to the fullest. The cover doesn’t even show the rails at all. This rail system could be done somewhat better with more advanced technology like we have today in the future, but this early release really suffers due to the short draw distance, the slowness of your ship’s rotation, and the awkward camera angle. It’s not unfun, the sense of speed is there and the musick is good. It’s just that crashing into opponents who are bunched up or hitting a totally unexpected obstacle that you thought you would pass make CyberSpeed less fun than it should be. Also, where’s the multiplayer? That’s the future of gaming, right?

CyberSpeed receives a Neutral.

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