Metropolis Street Racer
From Sega Retro
Metropolis Street Racer | ||||||||||||||||||||
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System(s): Sega Dreamcast | ||||||||||||||||||||
Publisher: Sega | ||||||||||||||||||||
Developer: Bizarre Creations | ||||||||||||||||||||
Genre: Racing | ||||||||||||||||||||
Number of players: 1-8 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Metropolis Street Racer, known as Metropolis during development and frequently listed simply as MSR, is a racing game developed by Bizarre Creations for the Sega Dreamcast. Highly praised at the time of release, MSR was often considered to be the Dreamcast's answer to the PlayStation's Gran Turismo racing series, as it has over 250 circuits (set in real-world locations) and numerous officially licensed cars.
Contents
History
Development
MSR's origins date back to 1997 when Sega's Kats Sato was tasked with finding out who had developed the PlayStation games Formula 1 and Formula 1 Championship Edition for Sony Computer Entertainment. Reportedly Sato purposely pulled the power cable at a display at ECTS 1997 to see the game's intoductory credits, and, upon discovering the team was Bizarre Creations, a meeting was arranged with Kazutoshi Miyake in an attempt to get the team to produce games for Sega instead.
While an initial plea to create Sega Saturn titles was rebuffed, Bizarre Creation's head, Martyn Chudley kept in contact, and his team began working on MSR while the console was still being developed[5].
Metropolis Street Racer had an extremely rocky development cycle, being announced well in advance of the Dreamcast's Western launch and repeatedly missing deadlines over the course of a year. It was reportedly the first Dreamcast project to be started in the United Kingdom[6].
While initially aimed at the Dreamcast European launch date (1999-09-27 as it was then)[5], the game did not materialise fully until November 2000, at a time when Dreamcast sales were on the decline. Development on a Japanese release was started but never completed.
Thirty hours of real-life footage from the streets of London, Tokyo and San Francisco were captured in order to create accurate representations of the host cities[5], as well as 32,000[5]-35,000 photographs[7]. Richard Jacques who had at this point composed many soundtracks for Sega, provided the audio for the game.
Associate producer Jose Aller borrowed Kats Sato's Fiat without his knowledge to obtain engine sounds for the game, taking it up to 140mph on a test circuit[8].
Release
Metropolis Street Racer originally launched in PAL regions with a number of bugs, so much so that the game was recalled and Sega felt the need to issue replacement discs (the later North American version is the bug-fixed version, although not all the bugs were actually fixed). A replay option, included in review copies of the game, was scrapped at the last minute due to time restraints.
Despite initially high expectations, MSR sold 101,757 units in the U.S. through January 2003 according to NPD Group. In the UK 13,297 were sold in the week ending November 4th, 2000 according to Chart-Track. In Germany it debuted at number one in Media Control's November 2000 Dreamcast chart. Martyn Chudley described releasing the game exclusively on the Dreamcast at this time was like "The Beatles exclusively selling The White Album on Mars". £1 million of Bizarre Creations' own money went into the project, and although the team was happy to port the game to the PlayStation 2, management at Sega declined the offer.
Bizarre Creations would use what they learned through Metropolis Street Racer to create their line of Project Gotham Racing games for the Xbox/Xbox 360 which are seen as a spiritual successors.
Production credits
- Managing Director: Martyn Chudley
- Business Director: Sarah Dixon
- Technical Director: Walter Lynsdale
- Design, Structure and Frontend: Martyn Chudley
- Technical Coding: Roger Perkins
- Engine and Dynamics Coding: Walter Lynsdale
- Tools and Effects Coding: Phil Snape
- AI Coding: Dave Al-Daini
- Sound Coding: Jonathan Amor
- 3D modelling and Textures (Tokyo): Jon Dugdale, Paul Spencer
- 3D modelling and Textures (San Francisco): Matt Sharatt, Glen Griffiths
- 3D modelling and Textures (Tokyo): Julie McGurren, Derek Chapman
- Car Modelling: Steve Heaney
- Car and City Textures: Lee Carter
- Frontend Artwork and City Textures: Gren Atherton
- Senior Producer: Brian Woodhouse
- Associate Producer: Peter Wallace
- Production Support: Glynn Williams
- Bizarre PR: Sarah Dixon
- Office Management: Michelle Langton
- QA Manager: Ged Talbot
- QA: Kevin Reilly
- Director of Product Development: Naohiko Hoshino
- Executive Producer: Kats Sato
- Sound Producer: Richard Jacques
- Associate Producer: Jose Aller
- Test Manager: Jason Cumberbatch
- Lead Tester: Pete O'Brien
- Technical Support Manager: Serge Plagnol
- Hardware Engineer: Tamer Tashin
- Support Engineer: Sandeep Bisla
- Spanish Translator: Roberto Párraga-Sánchez
- German Translator: Angelika Michitsch
- French Translator: Caroline Ruiz
- European Product Marketing Manager: Jim Pride
- European Product Marketing Executive: Mathew Quaeck
- UK: Tunde Orelaja
- Localization Producer: Howard Gipson
- Supervising Producer: Jason Kuo
- Lead Tester: Benji Galvez
- Assistant Lead Testers: Shawn Dobbins, Robert Reich
- Localization Manager: Osamu Shibamiya
- Testers: Gabrielle Brown, Jason Jensen, Steven Jee, Devin Tomcik, Jason Mercer, Todd Slepian, Rafael Meza, John Saito, Eric Ling, Joseph Amper, Derek Wong, Aaron Poser, Walter Kim, Daniel Airey, Shaheed Khan, JR Villatuya, Raymond Kwan, David Taleg, Chester Lee, Michael Jones, Joseph Mora
- Product Manager: Rob Alvarez
- Associate Product Manager: Dennis Lee
- Director Product Marketing: John Golden
- Public Relations: Heather Hawkins, Gwen Marker
- Creative Services: Robert Schonfisch, Angela Santos
- Special Thanks: Peter Moore, Chris Gilbert, Charles Bellfield, Karen Brown, Terri Higgins, Molly Fitzpatrick, Kathleen Joyce, John Amirkhan, Todd Slepian, Paulita Escalona, Sandy Castagnola
Magazine articles
- Main article: Metropolis Street Racer/Magazine articles.
Promotional material
also published in:
- Official Dreamcast Magazine (US) #12: "March 2001" (2001-01-28)[10]
Artwork
- MSR DC Art IMAGE01.jpg
- MSR DC Art IMAGE02.jpg
- MSR DC Art IMAGE03.jpg
Physical scans
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90 | |
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Based on 30 reviews |
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 File:CVG UK 229.pdf, page 82 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>
tag; name ":File:CVG UK 229.pdf_p82" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ File:SegaMagazin DE 85.pdf, page 13
- ↑ File:ODCM US 10.pdf, page 87
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 File:Hyper AU 088.pdf, page 44 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>
tag; name ":File:Hyper AU 088.pdf_p44" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 File:NextGeneration US 55.pdf, page 32
- ↑ File:Arcade UK 07.pdf, page 13
- ↑ File:EGM US 132.pdf, page 64
- ↑ File:NextGeneration US 55.pdf, page 34
- ↑ File:Metropolis Street Racer DC US Manual.pdf, page 25
- ↑ Official Dreamcast Magazine, "March 2001" (US; 2001-01-28), page 24
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 File:ConsolesPlus FR 107.pdf, page 88 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>
tag; name ":File:ConsolesPlus FR 107.pdf_p88" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ 12.0 12.1 File:Edge UK 091.pdf, page 98 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>
tag; name ":File:Edge UK 091.pdf_p98" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ 13.0 13.1 File:VideoGamer UK 01.pdf, page 46 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>
tag; name ":File:VideoGamer UK 01.pdf_p46" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ 576 Konzol, "December 2000" (HU; 2000-xx-xx), page 40
- ↑ Ação Games, "Fevereiro 2001" (BR; 2001-xx-xx), page 47
- ↑ Bonus, "9/2000" (YU; 2000-12-25), page 50
- ↑ Click!, "3/2001" (PL; 2001-02-01), page 24
- ↑ Dreamcast Monthly, "Christmas 2000" (UK; 2000-11-23), page 84
- ↑ Dreamcast Magazine, "No. 15" (UK; 2000-11-02), page 62
- ↑ Electronic Gaming Monthly, "January 2001" (US; 2000-12-05), page 193
- ↑ Entsiklopediya igr dlya Dreamcast, "Izdaniye chetvertoye, dopolnennoye" (RU; 2002-xx-xx), page 131
- ↑ Fun Generation, "11/2000" (DE; 2000-10-18), page 58
- ↑ GamePro, "January 2001" (US; 200x-xx-xx), page 105
- ↑ Game Station (UK) (+0:00)
- ↑ Gamers' Republic, "December 2000" (US; 2000-xx-xx), page 69
- ↑ MAN!AC, "12/2000" (DE; 2000-11-02), page 52
- ↑ Mega Fun, "12/2000" (DE; 2000-11-02), page 38
- ↑ Neo Plus, "Grudzień 2000" (PL; 2000-xx-xx), page 54
- ↑ Next Generation, "January 2001" (US; 2000-12-21), page 96
- ↑ Official Dreamcast Magazine, "October 2000" (UK; 2000-09-07), page 8
- ↑ Official Dreamcast Magazine, "Holiday 2000" (US; 2000-11-28), page 86
- ↑ Playbox, "Décembre 2000" (FR; 2000-1x-xx), page 41
- ↑ Play, "Luty 2001" (PL; 2001-xx-xx), page 30
- ↑ PSX Extreme, "03/2001" (PL; 2001-0x-xx), page 38
- ↑ Power Unlimited, "Jaargang 9, Nummer 1, Januari 2001" (NL; 200x-xx-xx), page 42
- ↑ Sega Magazin, "Dezember 2000" (DE; 2000-1x-xx), page 12
- ↑ Strana Igr, "Dekabr 2000 1/2" (RU; 2000-xx-xx), page 48
- ↑ Video Games, "12/2000" (DE; 2000-11-02), page 102
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