Wipeout demo CD ROM from PC FORMAT 1995 issue

[jonju.gzira]

First I was introduced to Wipeout by PC FORMAT. The CD demo version that came with the issue of January (number 40 if I am not mistaken) had an audio track that was not part of the official wipeout soundtrack.

The audio track was a rock song (similar style to ZZ-Top) with a nice guitar riff and lyrics - again if I my memory doesn't fail me - about "going back to my hometown, I can't stand living like this anymore...".

I am looking for that song (artist / group / title). Maybe it was not connected to the game, but it was heard when you played the demo because it was one of the audio tracks on the CD of the magazine.

If any of you were one of those who bought this PC FORMAT issue and still have the CD... PLEASE contact me!!!

And thanks anyway for reading the post of an old nostalgic and obsessive wipeout fan.

PS: I was playing with FEISAR and completed the whole original game!

[Slacker]

I know this is is a nearly 13 year gravedig - but I've recently been doing some deep dives on various Wipeout demo discs, looking for weird or early content, and found both the song you mention and some leads on where to look for its identity. Had to post about it somewhere.

The song itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIptLv8yZg

It either comes from the Dec 1995 edition of the PC Format Magazine CD-Rom series, and belongs to the demo of Destruction Derby on the Dec 1995 disc or to an unrelated piece of software or content on the same disc - or, it belongs to an unrelated piece of software or content on the January 1996 edition instead.

Due to how Wipeout is normally programmed to play music off the CD-ROM while playing, the Wipeout demo seems to end up playing songs from other content on these demo discs. Probably unintentionally, maybe as a cheeky cross-promotional thing. A similar effect happens if someone runs multiple demo discs of the same series on the same computer - pop a different demo disc in, end up with different music. So for example, if you had Wipeout running from the Jan 1996 disc, but the Dec 1995 disc in the drive, you might hear music from that disc instead.

According to the link above, this ZZ-Top like song plays during a PC demo of Destruction Derby, which is likely the demo that came with the earlier December 1995 PC Format CD-Rom (Issue 51). Three things are possible: 1, the song appears exclusively in that demo of Destruction Derby, 2. Destruction Derby, just like Wipeout, is playing unrelated CD Audio off the demo disc while running, 3. the uploader of the video above played Destruction Derby with the Jan 96 disc in, and ripped the song without being aware of the connection. Or the terrifying 4. we're all deranged and this song comes from some other demo CD that both of you happened to accidentally have in your drives while playing your respective demos.

I have dug through the December 1995 disc for maybe half an hour, looking through readmes and TXT documents, but I haven't stumbled upon any song credits or the data for the song itself, nor can I get Destruction Derby or any of the related software running yet (it looks like a virtual machine or old PC is needed). I also cannot detect any CD audio on the disc itself. The lack of CD audio, and the relatively small file sizes of the data in the Destruction Derby folder (none of which match a 5 minute song of this quality), leads me to believe the song is actually on the January 1996 disc (or at least this isn't part of the Derby soundtrack) and that option 3. above is correct. But, the January 1996 disc is not archived online, so I can't check. That's as far as I have gotten on this and I'm probably giving up now. My main motivation is digging up absurdly obscure Wipeout trivia, and we are steadily walking off the anti-gravity path into the forest at this point. There is a piece of music info software called Rockbase on the December disc that seems promising, but the txt doc is in a strange encoding and is only partially readable, and again none of the file sizes in the folder look correct. Attempting to play the disc in Foobar only brings up other content.

Anyway, on a maybe related note - I stumbled across this video at the same time as this thread. It looks like another song that could play during a PC demo of Wipeout was "Minds Eye Remix" from Tempest 2000. I can't track down any such demo disc with both Tempest 2000 and Wipeout on it (small thanks to the uploader who, of course, does not mention the name of the demo disc). But I can confirm that all three of these games read and use CD Audio, which is why they so easily cross-pollinate their music. Odd bit of trivia anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r95aIWUzBTU

Even more unrelated and trivial, another song from Tempest 2000 has a sample shared with Canada:

https://youtu.be/4mC1rhToA0g?t=36

Thanks for coming to my very inconclusive TED Talk.