Wipeout, PlayStation, and The Designers Republic

An iconic cultural phenomenon that fused the ’90s club scene, maximum-minimalism, and digital entertainment. In this video, I discuss the collaboration between the developers of the early #Wipeout series, Psygnosis, and the legendary design studio The Designers Republic. Links: The Designers Republic - Psygnosis - How Sony infiltrated youth culture - Music By: Young Logos and Coyote Hearing Produced by: Chris Kernaghan Support: Jiji the cat The year was 1995, I was 10 years of age. The number 1 single in the UK was Think Twice by Celine Dion, and Batman Forever was the highest grossing movie across the pond in the States. Manchester United, unfortunately, won their 3rd Premier League title and the world was on tender hooks for the OJ Simpson verdict. The gaming scene was by and large regarded as something for, male only, individuals that were socially inept —for individuals that felt safer in the confines of their own four walls, happy to socially distance themselves before it became government policy. A far cry then from the billion dollar industry currently propped up by gargantuan titles such as Fortnight, Minecraft and Roblox. These attitudes would not remain however; they would rapidly shift and directly collide with ‘90s club culture and anti-establishment aesthetics from The Designers Republic like an atom bomb. Press Start The Sony PlayStation, released in November 1994 in Japan, and eventually September 1995 in US and EU territories, launched with a number of interesting games — but none quite so groundbreaking as #Wipeout. I remember it distinctly. I couldn’t possibly forget, wandering into my local electronic store to pass a bit of time. It was winter, long nights illuminated only by orange street lighting and passing headlights. Celine Dion was on the radio all the time. Indoors, beneath long tubes of off-white fluorescence, a beacon of Maximum-Minimalism glittered in my direction. The box was decorated with bright, heavy typography and advanced looking extraterrestrial iconography akin to something from Predator. If you haven’t seen the 1987 classic, alien iconography is used towards the end of the movie to signify the hero’s impending doom, when the antagonistic Predator activates its self-destruct sequence. I had never seen anything so grandiose in my then 10 years on Earth. You might even consider it gaudy. It was my first introduction to The Designers Republic — and it was glorious. The Designers Republic Based in Sheffield, England, The Designers Republic was founded by Ian Anderson and Nick Phillips in 1986. At their inception, Anderson would design flyers for the band Person to Person. “I’d had no training, but I’d been doing posters for one off clubs that I’d run in Sheffield. The band (Person to Person) liked the stuff I was doing and asked me to do their sleeves as well.” Anderson goes on to say, “We do it for ourselves because we enjoy doing it, and all the bright colours and high contrasts, the insignia, the trimmings, are part and parcel of what we like. Thankfully, other people like it too.” Even back in the hazy days of the late ‘80s, their jokey, playful attitude was on full show. “One of the best moments was when we seen a piece in Cut magazine, it wasn’t a review of ‘Kiss’ the record, but a review of the sleeve! This bloke had tried to decipher everything on the back.” “It was brilliant — we were down here laughing! Everything we’d ever wanted to do in terms of playing visual games — no disrespect to the punter — had come true!” They would go on to create many sleeves, including the iconic artwork for the 1987 song “Don’t Get Mad… Get Even! (The New York Remixes)” by Age of Chance which was featured in Q magazine’s “100 Best Record Covers of all Time” in 2001. 2097 I didn’t own a PlayStation at the time of its release, it was much too expensive at the time and most folk were probably still uncertain if it would have any sort of success. Sega and Nintendo had been duking it out since the early ‘90s, and they were household names; how on earth could Sony compete with these two? Surely a Herculean task was ahead of them. Evidentially, Sony had their finger on the pulse of youth culture considerably more than their competitors. If you visited any large Nightclub in London, you could expect there to be chill out areas for 1-on-1 time with a PlayStation. #Wipeout, and later Wipeout 2097, with it’s tDR artwork and incredible, made-to-measure electronic soundtrack featuring The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, The Future Sound of London and The Prodigy — really was the culmination of 1990s artistic merit coming together in one neat, little, interactive package.