The Making Of: Rock ’N Roll Racing
Perhaps one of the most iconic 16-bit racers, Rock N' Roll Racing was one of the jey games that helped Silicon & Synapse make a name for itself. We speak to Alan Pavlish to find out the game came to be
Discover how licensed music played an important role in Silicon Synapse’s 16-bit sequel
Sound isn’t one of those things that often comes to the forefront for classic games, and even more rarely are they in a positive light. If we were to admit it to ourselves – which we won’t – some retro gaming can be as much about enduring repetitive beeps and bloops as it is about adoring the actual gameplay. But Rock N’ Roll Racing is one of arguably only a handful of games whose mere mention can bring certain sound effects, dialogue or audio rushing into the heads of fans. That’s not to say that this is the only reason to have whiled away the hours drifting high-speed cars around various planets, but it’s almost certainly the one that everyone will remember it for. In fact, just seeing these images on the page will likely summon phrases that had been long buried at the back of your mind: “Rip... is about to blow!” may be one such quote; “Jake... jams into first!” even; or maybe the simpler but just as iconic “Holy Toledo!”
What is interesting is how completely separate Silicon & Synapse’s Rock N’ Roll Racing seems to be; the sequel was all but ignored and there was no ‘direct’ predecessor meaning that to the uninitiated it seems to have been the only one of its kind. But its core game design had its origins in much earlier titles. Initially this was actually born off the back of the rather overlooked predecessor RPM Racing, but this was itself based on the design of Racing Destruction Set – an Electronic Arts game on the Commodore 64 that utilised a very similar style of racing. The problem was that RPM Racing was one of the first games developed by an American developer for the SNES – also Silicon & Synapse – and ended up suffering because it targeted high resolution graphics at the cost of everything else. As such, there was much that needed working out. “We liked RPM Racing,” says Alan Pavlish, designer and producer on Rock ‘N Roll Racing, “but we wanted to do something better.” It was already at this early stage that the idea of sound was considered, because – as Alan puts it – if you’re listening to good music while you’re driving, “you tend to drive faster”. There were a number of criteria that this sequel – which was in development as simply ‘RPMII’ – needed to meet, but the idea of implementing rock songs was number one. “It just gives racing a great feeling,” he adds. “You know, when you’re developing games and you do demos for games, if there’s no audio in them you kind of – even though it’s only a small technical part of the game – lose half of the game. Half of the emotion of the game comes from the idea and so while it didn’t drive the game design, it certainly drove the emotional impact of the game itself.”
That term there, emotion, is an important one. It wasn’t just about creating something high quality
We liked rpm racing, but we wanted to do something better Alan Pavlish
and fun, but instead it was about creating a game that felt fast as much as anything else.
The biggest issue with RPM Racing was that it was slow and clunky, it didn’t have a sense of speed that Silicon & Synapse had wanted to implement. With the decision to include fast-paced rock-and-roll music into the sequel, there needed to be a pace to it that wouldn’t feel out of place. “On the technical side, this meant sitting with the programmers and designing the physics. We wanted the cars to be able to slide around the corners for the great feel of it,” says Alan, again eluding to an intangibility to the game’s design,
“so that they’re not just on rails.” This was one of the most significant aspects of the game, the drifting enabling both a skill and a thrill that its predecessor with its slow, stuttered cornering simply couldn’t match. “The sliding aspect of it was important for us to get just right,” adds Alan. To really perfect that ‘feel’, though, there was so much more that needed fine-tuning. The bumps as racers collided with one another or the walls, the exaggerated jumps over hills and the various environmental traps that could cause erratic spinouts. It was a process of testing and iteration to really ensure the racing could match the rock and roll attitude of the game. “We just added in little things, as you got higher in levels we added more complexity to it. We had to ask, ‘Does that feel natural? Does it feel like you connect to the game?’ That’s the art of game design; if we liked it, we figured that there was a good chance that others would too.”
But it wasn’t solely about skill. For as important as the player’s ability to properly predict corners was – and therefore their ability to safely drift around it – Rock N’ Roll Racing was also an RPG, which was rather novel at the time. Again the heritage of the games that came prior had given birth to the concept of adjustable vehicles (Racing Destruction Set had customisable tyres and equipment), but Silicon & Synapse pushed this into further territory. “Imagine a roleplaying game,” explains Alan, “where you build up a character, you kill some monsters, you level up and you get new swords, magic spells and things like that. The design of this game was meant to be designed with that in mind, but with a car.” This meant that not only could players pick the type of car they wanted – perhaps one was quicker, one could take corners better or another was able to withstand more damage – but their chosen ride could then be upgraded over the course of the game. New vehicles could appear, too, each with their own particular benefits to help give a sense of progression. The Marauder, for example, which was pretty much everyone’s starting car, offered plasma rifles, jump packs and traps that caused racers to spin out. But this soon gave way to the likes of the Air Blade, with its rockets and turbo boost, before ending up with The Havac that couldn’t be beat. “The beauty of an RPG is that, if you design it well, it doesn’t matter how good or bad you are as a player,” says Alan, “you’re always progressing forward.”
But because this was more than just a racing game – which would typically require practice and, in the end, skill to beat – there needed to be care to ensure that players would progress smoothly through the game. As it happens, the team had an interesting solution to this: “We actually played this on paper,” recalls Alan. “We had all these rules, and there was maybe five or six of us sitting around a table. We would each pick a car, and then we’d roll some dice to randomly decide who would win. Then we’d go around the room, we’d do a race on paper, we rolled dice to see what place we would come in, what we would get. Just literally a half hour on paper design meant you could see the progression, if it was working or not working and you can see where it’s not working very quickly.” Partway through development, however, there was not one, but two name changes. Silicon & Synapse
We wanted the cars to be able to slide around the corners for the great feel of it, so that they’re not just on rails
Alan Pavlish
would ultimately give way to Blizzard – and in fact different versions of the game use different branding – but much like the company’s name change, there was now an opportunity to really stand out as something new, something bold, something cool. Rather than use it as a sequel to a rather overlooked title, RPMII ’s new name needed to be just as strong as the audio tracks: Rock N’ Roll Racing was born. The look of the game was already taking on a more suitable style, the various planets and racers really harnessing a unique sense of attitude. And with the decision to add fast-feeling rock-and-roll music to the game, Alan had already begun the arduous task at the start of development – but it wasn’t a particularly easy task. “Certainly without the internet it was a lot harder than it is today,” recalls Alan, “but there was a company in New York that I ended up connecting with, and they specialised in music licensing. We wanted the sync licence, which allowed us to use the music but not the actual recording of the lyrics or the performance of the song itself. We got sheet music, basically, and we had to redo the music performance ourselves.” Alan and the team put together a list of songs with a simple rule: if it made them want to drive faster, then Alan would try to include it. “I gave a list of 100 songs to the guy over there, and he parsed through what he thought we could maybe go get. There were some ZZ Top songs that I wanted, but they wanted a ridiculous amount of money. Led Zeppelin was on the list; people were asking us why we didn’t put Led Zeppelin in there, well, they wouldn’t do it.” What started as a long list of 100 songs was whittled down, one after another the songs were too expensive or not available to use in a videogame. “So, we got the shortlist of 100 songs,” says Alan, “and we ended up with five or six, and they were the ones that we could get for a reasonable price.” It was worth the cost, though, since those songs had quite the impact on the experience, to the extent that many will think of Rock N’ Roll Racing whenever they hear them. “Even today I’ll hear a song and I’ll remember that I used that song for Rock N’ Roll Racing!”
But that wasn’t the only audio aspect that was important to include from the start of the development. “There was a local speedway announcer,” says Alan, “and he did local speedway and racetrack announcing, he did some of the local commercials. I told the team ‘I know exactly the announcer that I want to have, but I can’t remember his name’. And I think it was actually on the way back from a CES trip driving back from Vegas to Los Angeles, me and four or five of us, we were just driving back having a good time and I suddenly remembered his name: Larry Huffman.” The voice became arguably the most iconic thing about Rock N’ Roll Racing, a small but important touch that created a sense of an intergalactic death race. Once the game released on SNES and Mega Drive in 1993 (or 1994 in Europe), it quickly became a huge success. The combination of Silicon & Synapse’s bright and colourful art, slick vehicle handling and of course the fantastic audio made for a title that was hard to ignore, and led to a popularity that even Larry himself was affected by. “He got a lot of people talking to him about the game,” adds Alan. “He would always call me up and say ‘yeah, someone’s just found out I did that game and they’re big fans of it, they were so excited!’ He got a big charge out of it.” It’s a shame that the voice of Rock N’ Roll Racing didn’t go on to do much else in the industry, but his unique tones were a large part of a total package that was evocative of speed, had quality and, most important of all, created emotion. It may have been the gameplay that kept you hooked on Rock N’ Roll Racing, but it will be the audio that you remember – that, as Alan points out, is the power of sound in videogames.