WipEout (1995) - PC Futuristic Racing Games
5WipEout by Psygnosis, 1995.
Full disclosure: I hated WipEout the first time I tried it, on a Sony PlayStation! The way your ship stopped dead from touching walls didn't gel with me. It wasn't until the sequel when things changed (and my love of futuristic racing games began)... but we'll get to the sequel in due course!
Before WipEout became a Sony PlayStation exclusive, a couple of the games did make it to the PC (as well as other platforms). This is the original PC DOS version of WipEout, which proudly stated on the box that it wouldn't work in Windows 95!
As this used a software non-accelerated 3D engine (there is a special ATi accelerated version, but I'll cover that later), this only runs in 256 colours, with no transparencies, which makes weapon fire and your ship engines appear flat and not see-through. On this video I do a single lap of all the basic tracks (the bonus Firestar track isn't shown here).
Music on the PC version lacks the big name tracks from the likes of Chemical Brothers, but what's present suits the game well, being from CoLD SToRAGE, whose tracks you can find here: https://coldstorage.bandcamp.com/
There is no engine noise however, unlike the PlayStation version (which also features fancy sound processing effects like echo).
Overall this was an important game, but one that was largely overlooked on the PC, and maybe rightly so, as it wasn't yet the hero game that the sequel would become...
View the full PC Futuristic Racing Games playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYDobL0b26uijLs3qAzTaFuXl3eSSfmgK