![]() ![]() ![]() The final game was first released later that year in Japan, before arriving in a more complete form a few months later in the US and Europe. However, it's clear in hindsight that, even in the face of adversity and technical challenges, the crew at Evolution Studios were driven to deliver something as close to its original vision as possible and as its 2006 demo confirmed - this was the real deal. The game's creative director later revealed that, after seeing an early demo of Motorstorm, Phil Harrison took them aside to berate them calling the team at Evolution the 'worst in the world' in the context of Sony's range of internal development teams. ![]() Beyond this, the programming team found themselves implementing all sorts of new techniques that none of them had used before all while dealing with early, unfinished SDKs. Plus, even adjusting things such as the handling characteristics of each vehicle required tweaking values in a text file then recompiling the game resulting in lots of waiting. I'm told it was a difficult time - the hardware did not meet expectations and the super-tight deadline was always looming. The studio wouldn't receive actual PlayStation 3 development hardware until months later - leaving them with just one year to build the game. The trailer had been created by VFX and CGI specialists known as Realtime UK - it was just a rendered flavour piece never intended to publicly showcase the game, but its misrepresentation at E3 put a lot of extra pressure on Evolution - a team that didn't even have access to PlayStation 3 hardware yet it was still being prototyped on PCs that supposedly matched the specs of the real deal. Watch on YouTube DF Retro's deep dive into the amazing Motorstorm in all of its hour-plus running time glory! For the Evolution Studios crew back in Runcorn, England, however, what should have been an exciting moment for the team with the announcement of their next game, turned into a moment of panic when Phil Harrison himself suggested to the press that this Motorstorm trailer represented actual gameplay. Motostorm's short trailer featured unbelievable chaos, physics and destruction as a herd of vehicles storm their way across the landscape. Phil Harrison famously took the stage during the show presenting games that were in-development via the use of bombastic trailers. This now infamous showing blew people away at the time, promising a level of fidelity that seemed impossible - and that's because it was. The goal was to create something worthy of the 'next-generation' label but there was just one problem - the next-generation platform it was being designed for was nowhere near ready and things would get a whole lot worse before they got better, and that's where the infamous 'target render' from Sony's E3 2005 press conference comes into view. Originally known as 'Stampede', Motorstorm was originally envisioned as a celebration of dirt racing featuring asymmetric vehicle battles, massive tracks and complex physics simulation with up to 48 vehicles in a single race. It was a success, however, with a trilogy of PS3 releases, plus PSP, Vita and even PS2 off-shoots. At the same time, the path to release was fraught with challenges that almost serve as a microcosm of the PlayStation 3 release situation itself. It's a release designed to answer the question posed by each new console generation: what makes a game 'next-gen'? With its robust physics engine and massive tracks, Motorstorm serves up a bold affirmative answer to this question, delivering an experience that could never have existed on prior console hardware. Evolution Studios' Motorstorm is one of the first, finest and most fondly remembered of launch titles for PlayStation 3. ![]()
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