Mods and source ports haven’t, historically, really been my kind of thing (“clever people doing clever things with FPS games or RPGs that were probably fine to begin with” being my completely uninformed and dismissive summary) but my interest was piqued by news of Wipeout: Phantom Edition, a new source port of the old PSX racer.

The sloppy and largely unloved DOS version of Wipeout is to most people worth little more than a footnote in the series’ history. To me, though, despite horrible graphics and unwieldy controls, it was still the version that I played and enjoyed back in the 90s. While the Playstation version was undoubtedly better, subsequent attempts to revisit it on original hardware, or an emulator, haven’t quite ignited the same levels of passion as when I clunked through the PC port, via DOSBox and using the keyboard, a few years ago.

Without underestimating the work involved, the Phantom Edition is a pleasingly low-key update that basically makes the PC version of Wipeout feel like you’d always imagined it would be – an upgrade on the PSX version, rather than a hobbled poorer cousin. The graphics can now be enjoyed in widescreen high-res (although 320×240 is still an option), and there’s support for modern controllers, but otherwise it still looks and feels like the original.

Overtaking the mysterious Paul Jackson.

Phantom Edition uses assets from the PSX version of the game, so you do need to have a copy of the US version on hand in the first instance to get it up and running. (That also just happens to be the version without any big-name electronic acts on the soundtrack, which possibly isn’t a coincidence, although if you have access to your old MP3s or CDs then it’s easy enough to patch them in, or some of your own 90s big-beat music, if you prefer).

The other main tweak concerns the collision options. Traditionally, Wipeout was particularly punitive when it came to making contact with the wall, or other ships, but beyond the Legacy mode, which keeps things as they were, the Phantom Edition also offers two alternatives: Classic, which apparently brings things more into line with the two sequels and Modern, which is even more forgiving.

While both are welcome additions, they did seem to make the game a little on the easy side: I was always pretty rubbish at Wipeout, but breezed through both championships on my first attempt using the Modern setting, and while things were a little tougher on Classic, I didn’t need to refine my racing style too much further to achieve success with that enabled either. (Having said all that, the notorious Silverstream course was still about 100 times harder than any of the others, so I’m not quite sure I’m ready to try and tackle it all again in Legacy mode just yet.)

Bloody Silverstream.

It all seems to have been put together in the interests of getting you up and running as quickly as possible with the minimum of fuss, and it’s definitely a great way to revisit the original Wipeout on PC. Certainly, I went from the point of initial investigation into burning through an afternoon on the game itself pretty quickly.

(Greedily, I’m now wondering if something similar can be done with the PC version of the first sequel, which apparently does work in modern Windows but, as far as I remember, runs far too fast to be playable on modern machines. The venerable PCGamingWiki suggests that the frame rate is linked to the refresh rate, so maybe that’s worth some further investigation… but an all-singing, all-dancing Phantom Edition of 2097 would be most welcome).