very good question, Phlow. Certainly for Wipeout 1 you can and probably should break it down into descriptions like that to get good times, much like in a driving game you would know exactly where your braking and acceleration points would be on a lap of Silverstone. The Negcon steering makes it tough to do the "3 taps left" kind of breakdown, but I think you can break the course down into markers and know exactly when and where your next move is going to come, and it includes pitch control. I could write stuff like that for Wipeout 1 - but each track would be a huge essay and I`m not convinced there`s an audience . Others could do the same on 2097 and Wip3out - but how many people would want to play 2097 for long enough to do the kind of amazing things Arnaud can do? And how many of those with the inclination would have the ability?

I think it`s tougher to describe things in minute detail on Pure and Pulse perhaps because the physics of the games tend to make the movement of the ship feel a little random and hence make every lap a little different, or at least the "real world" physics make it feel that way, but there is still an ideal lap and such a breakdown would be possible. We`ve written a few on tracks where we`ve gone mad with intense competiton - 123Klan comes to mind. Every bump of some tracks has been ruthlessly examined. Really every Wipeout game does have somebody pushing the limits, I think. We don`t have huge numbers on most games - but some of this stuff is very specialist and difficult on a game that isn`t massively popular like MK in the first place, and to get the best times on the old games really does demand a Negcon. On Pure the high level competion is there - look at the Vineta K TT tables and others. It`s not there in great numbers on Pulse yet, but it will be. Wipeout`s just not a hugely popular game, but I think the standard is very high all round - nobody is going to come along and knock chunks off the records on any game.

Generally about randomness, I think if Wipeout does have an element of it that can only be considered a good thing. It`s a test. The MK stuff is no doubt very technically tough, but it looks more like a platformer speed run in places than a racing game.