Two of the first bespoke cars in SEGA Rally are the Peugeot 206 RCC and the Andorra Racer, and both are vehicles with more than their fair share of stories, 

The Peugeot 206 RCC is a racing version of the road-going Peugeot 206 CC; however the RCC versions roof definitely doesn’t fold down.  The RCC takes its name as it is a unique combination of the 206 CC body shell and 206 RC engine. It is a stripped down high performance circuit racer, which competes in the French Coupe 206 RCC race series.  We were keen on getting this car into SEGA Rally because it is quite unusual and actually very pretty.  The large low profile tyres, functional rear wing, solid lightweight fixed hardtop and deep aggressive front bumper all make this car look fast and agile.

This would be a car to use on some of the more tarmac oriented events, getting it sideways in the snow on the Alpine tracks is especially fun though.

The Andorra Racer is very special because I designed it:).  We wanted a Super Group B/Group S type rally car for modern day rally events, so I took the original rear engined/4wd chassis layout (typical Group B setup) and then designed a modern up to date interpretation of a Group B rally car.  Whilst designing the Andorra Racer I was spending a lot of time looking at Pikes Peak Racers and GT style racing cars, so the Andorra Racer ended up with a huge wing!

It’s always a challenge creating a car from scratch for a game because everyone has a different idea about what looks good and bad.  Hopefully we have gotten it right with the Andorra Racer, I mean when is a massive spoiler on a hard core racing car a bad thing? 

The livery was designed by Sam Neale one of the other Car Artists and he went for a loud and proud in your face SEGA themed paintjob, and I have to be honest I think it looks outstanding.  Bright orange paint, big stickers and a huge rear spoiler make the perfect combination and a must have for any racing game surely.

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When we approached SEGA with one of their back catalogue titles, Alien Syndrome, and told them that we wanted to make a totally new game based on that franchise for the PSP and Wii, SEGA was all for it! All the initial pre-production milestones were met and away we went. But it was no easy task. We wanted big meaty levels where players could sink their teeth into the game and play for as long or as short as they wanted. We didn’t want just another RPG game that was too heavy on action and not enough role playing. We wanted to push what the PSP and Wii could do and we think we nailed it.

For the PSP, we designed the game with every intention of making it a full scale action RPG with hundreds of items, weapons, monsters, and tons of action. We created 5 very different classes each with its own weapon advancement tree and specialty proficiencies to spec into. It was a huge challenge to fit this big of a game into the PSP. But we managed to do it and not lose any of the scope of the original design. 

This is something that we’re very proud of. The feature cutting, that’s so prevalent in most game dev cycles, hardly had to happen on Alien Syndrome. We actually had time to implement almost every key feature we spec’d out in pre-production. Which is why, in my opinion, our Wii version came out as great as it did.

On the Wii, we immediately started in on the design for the Wiimote/Nunchuck control system. We were able to polish the game’s infrastructure and core gameplay ideas as well as the math and itemisation curves, in tangent with the PSP. The levels and the length of the game (we’re talking a whopping 30 to 40 hours on just one difficulty level) makes the Wii a solid console for the game.

On the Wii, it was nice that we were able to concentrate on controls and multiplayer. The differences on the Wii are noticeable in the higher-rez textures and models. On the Wii, players will notice the increase in details such as dynamic shadows, lighting, and specularity, as well as a large number of sounds and more details on Aileen and her guns.

And the controls are absolutely the best feeling controls out there. The Wii remote points at a target, like a laser pointer, and the character spins and rotates to follow that pointer. Then the Nunchuck’s joystick moves the character in all directions. The result… the most intuitive aiming and movement system ever designed. I think when players pick up the Wiimote and Nunchuck to play Alien Syndrome, they’re going to be treated to a really smooth and awesome gameplay experience.