The fan who’s spent most of this year porting futuristic racer wipEout to the Dreamcast declared it complete with the version released last Sunday.
Jnmartin84 uploaded “v2 final” to his GitHub where a TGZ file containing a playable CDI file and some cover art can be downloaded.
“This is the final release for v2. It no longer requires custom KOS to be built,” Jnmartin84 said on his GitHub, talking about those who want to build the port themselves from code rather than simply use the CDI file. “If you have cloned/built Wipeout prior to 2025/10/13, you will need to grab a fresh copy of KOS v2.2.1 tag from the official repo.”
KOS refers to KallistiOS, the Dreamcast homebrew software development kit used to port wipEout and other recent fan ports to the console.
Jnmartin said the port’s current feature set includes 24-bit color depth, extended draw distance, optional 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, reimplemented screen shake, restored PlayStation-original collision behavior and more.
The port also features VMU saving and loading for settings and high scores — 6 blocks are required — as well as full input remapping for the Dreamcast controller.
He calls it “feature complete, almost 100% 60 FPS (100% is a strong guarantee),” with full music and sound. He said that he offers no support for playing it in emulators or on a GDEMU optical drive emulator — although that doesn’t mean it won’t work with those methods. The screenshots in this story, for example, were taken using the Redream emulator.
Jnmartin wasn’t the only person who worked on the port, though. The game credits these people with helping out on the Dreamcast version:
- Programmers
- JNMartin84
- MrNeo240
- Third Party Code
- Kasade
- Falco Girgis
- BBHoodsta
- Modeling
- Bruce
- Derek Ateam
- EgregiousGuy
- VMU Assets
- Stiffpeaks
- Case Art
- Stiffpeaks
- Special Thanks To
- Thesegaguru
- Pcercuel
- FreakDave
- Simulant Discord
- KallistiOS Team
Jnmartin’s first build was uploaded April 4. At the time, his GitHub page said the port “may or may not [have been] based off of the source code of the PC (ATI-Rage) version that was leaked in 2022.”
Developed and published by the Liverpool-based Psygnosis, wipEout released in September 1995 as a launch title for the PlayStation in Europe, coming to North America that November. The futuristic, anti-gravity racer’s critical and commercial success helped propel Sony’s fledgling console to an early lead in the fifth-generation console race. It was ported to the Saturn in 1996, and Peter Malek wrote about that version for SHIRO!.
In wipEout, the player competes in the lightning-fast action of the F3600 Anti-Gravity Racing League in the not-so-distant future, piloting eight craft across seven courses. The game’s soundtrack famously featured electronic music inspired from the then contemporary U.K. rave and underground electronic music scenes, with notable contributions from Psygnosis’s own CoLD SToRAGE, The Chemical Brothers and Orbital.
The success of wipEout prompted the creation of a sequel followup, wipEout 2097, a.k.a. wipEout XL, on PlayStation in the second half of 1996 and on Saturn a year later.
This story originally appeared on Sega Saturn SHIRO!