Why WipEout 2097 Made the PS1 Cool

Defining ‘cool’ in the 1990s console wars

Trying to pin down what ‘cool’ means is harder than it sounds. The Nintendo 64 was undeniably a good time: it offered stacks of brilliant games, splashed in bright primary colours and backed by melodies you can likely still hum today. It felt wholesome and cheerful, and it was easy to enjoy. Yet it never really read as cool, did it?

By contrast, the original Sony PlayStation - the PS1 - carried an aura the Nintendo 64 didn’t. In hindsight, that vibe was probably kick-started by a cold, suit-and-tie marketing drive. The message of the adverts was clear: the SNES and Megadrive were for children, while this new grey box was positioned as something edgier. Something with a whiff of danger. Something your older sibling might have claimed as their own.

Put it this way: if the SNES spent its spare time quietly whistling the Mario Kart theme while getting on with its homework, the PlayStation was behind the shed smoking.

WipEout (1995) and the PS1’s ‘cool’ identity

Still, the true shape of the console’s coolness - the way the games actually delivered on that marketing we swallowed like sugary ‘90s cereal - came from a set of bold creators shipping software that felt genuinely inventive and culturally switched-on.

No series in the PS1 catalogue represents that better than WipEout in 1995.

It imagined a far-off future where Formula One had long since been replaced by anti-gravity craft, launched down sterile, metallic circuits at impossible speeds. For a ‘90s racing game, WipEout didn’t just suggest a setting; it seemed to hold a precise, intriguing worldview that most of its contemporaries never attempted. It gave off the impression it had read widely, gone to university, and learned a bit about design.

Even the name telegraphed it: the capital E in the middle, the typeface, the presentation. WipEout was saturated with older-sibling appeal - the sort of thing you felt you needed permission to like, even as it invited you in.

Why WipEout 2097 (1996) made you feel ‘cool’

Then the 1996 follow-up, WipEout 2097, took that foundation and sharpened every edge. It expanded the experience with additional circuits and ships, delivered bigger, more dramatic weapon detonations, and paired it all with a soundtrack that could convert you to electronic music instantly.

It featured Fluke, The Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, and other names your parents hadn’t heard of.

Against the broader PS1 racing landscape, the difference was obvious the moment you tried to take a bend. In plenty of typical PlayStation racers, cornering could feel skittish and a little implausible - as if the cars had no mass at all. WipEout 2097’s craft, on the other hand, weren’t just fast; they felt buoyant, agile, and precisely weighted.

They rolled and slid through turns, and when their wings kissed the steel barriers you’d hear a crisp metallic scrape that sold the physics. No one has ever piloted one of these fictional sci-fi machines in real life, but the instant you gripped the grey PS1 pad and threaded a ship through a handful of corners, your brain supplied the verdict: “this feels correct”.

Psygnosis, Liverpool, and The Designers Republic

That blend of cultured futurism and exotic style wasn’t accidental. It emerged from the Wavertree technology park in Liverpool, where Psygnosis was based.

For its promotional look, Psygnosis partnered with Sheffield’s The Designers Republic, and the collaboration gave WipEout 2097 both a Japanese influence and a strong connection to electronic music. The Designers Republic had already worked through the ‘90s with artists such as Aphex Twin, Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Itself, and that same spiky, hyper-stylised, anti-establishment tone carried straight into the game’s packaging and magazine advertising.

If anything, it intensified the feeling that the game might be too cool for you - but would allow you to play it anyway.

That makes WipEout 2097 one of the key pillars supporting the entire console’s identity. PlayStation 1 wasn’t the most powerful piece of gaming hardware available, but it arguably did the best job of showing what 3D polygonal graphics could be used for: a library of culturally aware, innovative, faintly dangerous games that felt as life-affirming to own as a brilliant new album.

Yes, the fundamentals were still familiar - racing a circuit and firing weapons at rivals, not a million miles away from Nintendo’s far safer Mario Kart in that basic sense - but WipEout 2097 made you feel inherently cool while doing it.