So did the subject of this B-Side manage to succeed "in spite of" being outside of its developer's comfort zone, or was it an example of proving people's hesitation right? Let's find out!
Founded on October 1, 1993 in Nagano, Gust was formed as a spin-off of the amusement software development division of Keiken System (which owned Gust until December 2011, when Koei Tecmo acquired the studio) & initially started off as a doujin developer. Gust would make its retail debut in 1994 with The Story of King Aress, a tactical RPG for the PC-98 that notably featured character designs by mangaka Seisaku Kanou, but it didn't take long for the studio to "go legit". Gust would become an officially licensed developer following The Story of King Aress & would make their "official" debut with Falcata in 1995 for the PlayStation, which was another tactical RPG-like title. However, RPGs weren't the only things that Gust would develop in its first few years, as while the studio would eventually become successful with the release of Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg for the PS1 in 1997 (which, in turn, would create a franchise that's still going strong to this day) it also made a variety of adventure-style games, namely the Welcome House duology in 1996, Karyujou/Fire Dragon Girl in 1997, & The Adventures of Robin Lloyd in 2000, all for the PS1 (& Sega Saturn, for the first Welcome House). Gust was even (allegedly) hired to develop a fighting game that wound up never coming out due to publisher Zamuse going out of business... though the TV anime adaptation produced by Toei Animation did actually air in late 1994. While RPGs were definitely already becoming Gust's bread & butter by 2000, the studio was still willing to experiment with other genres.
However, that would all change after that specific year. Five months following The Adventures of Robin Lloyd came out on January 6, 2000, & two months after Windows PC ports of Atelier Marie & Atelier Elie that April, Gust would release its very first "next-gen" title: Hresvelgr: Formula Highpowered. Named after the eagle-shaped jötunn that created the wind seen in Norse mythology, Hresvelgr was released on June 22, 2000, was Gust's very first game for the PlayStation 2 (which Gust would primarily develop for up through 2008), & as a racing game was also a first for Gust. However, it wasn't just your standard racing game, by any means, because Hresvelgr was a rarity by being a futuristic air racing game. Due to it being a PS2 game that came out prior to the console's international launch later that fall it wound up getting some international coverage at the time, with the likes of both IGN & GameSpot giving it rather poor "import" reviews, with complaints mainly being directed at the controls, sense of speed, & lack of any multiplayer at all; the reviews in Japan itself apparently were only marginally better. Gust would seemingly take the reception into account, though, as on December 21, 2000 (only six months later) Hresvelgr: International Edition would see release in Japan, which added in a new track (plus reverse races for all tracks) & two-player split-screen, as well as some tweaks to the gameplay. As the subtitle indicates, this update came about because it was actually planned for an international release, with Crave Entertainment even announcing an English release, under the name "Fusion GT", mere days after the initial Japanese version came out. However, despite that early announcement the only international release would happen in European regions in March of 2002, now under the name Jet Ion GP, with Ubi Soft handling the release there, though Crave was still credited for the localization itself. Hresvelgr would effectively end Gust's efforts in genres outside of RPGs, and aside from life sim Ciel Nosurge in 2012 (which itself was a spin-off of the Ar Tornelico RPGs) & Atelier Questboard in 2014 (a mobile spin-off of Atelier Rorona) the studio wouldn't attempt something wholly new & different from its usual fare until 2015's Nights of Azure, a hack-&-slash game (though still with action RPG mechanics); meanwhile, Hresvelgr remains Gust's one & only racing game in its entire catalog.
Was Hresvelgr truly so bad that it made Gust decide to never make another non-RPG (related game) ever again? Did International Edition/Jet Ion GP actually improve on the original in any way? I've admittedly always been curious about this game ever since it was first previewed & import reviewed back in 2000, so it's time to see how Hresvelgr holds up 25 years later.
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| Hey, I just really like the UI for the game. Very sleek. |
In the near future the creation of the "Floater Unit" completely changes the way flying is looked at, separating things into the "Floating Field" & the "Aviation Field". Once jet engines were installed in these floating craft the idea of "Super Speed" became a reality, so much so that wings started shrinking in size, becoming more about "balancing" the craft for stabilization purposes than for the sake of creating lift. Eventually the idea of racing these craft came about, resulting in the formation of "Formula Highpowered (FH)", a league where races are done on tracks laid out using "Power Bands", energy fields that loop around & provide energy for the crafts being raced, and should a racer get too far away they'll be left without any energy & unable to race. Also, small weaponry is allowed to be used, allowing racers to hinder those in front of them & get past. It is now the year 2040 & FH is filled with "Heroes of the Era" that excite & fascinate viewers all around.
Meanwhile, Jet Ion GP (or, at least, the European release) has its own set up & lore behind the races. Sure, Hresvelgr's lore is pretty bare bones, but for whatever reason JIGP now says that the "power belts" were the creation of mega-corporations that discovered the secret to cold fusion, and since fossil fuels have now been fully used up gas prices skyrocketed, resulting in the rich hoarding the knowledge & energy above the common folk. This resulted in rebel groups creating planes that could suck the energy of the power belts, which in turn led to the rich sending out their own craft to combat the rebels. In the end, a man named Jet Jevons led his band of Xenum rebels & stole enough energy to crush the corporations & revert power back to the government & people, with the entire concept of racing now being done in honor of Jevons' actions. Yeah, this is absolutely a case of overthinking things to a ridiculous extent & I completely prefer the original Hresvelgr's more straightforward lore.
So, as you can tell by now, Hresvelgr is a futuristic racing game where in place of traditional land-based vehicles, or even hover-based vehicles, everything is done with straight up flying vehicles, resulting in a bit of a learning curve to it all. Understandably you have two controls schemes to choose from in the Options, Auto & Manual, with the main difference being that Auto simply has you control ascent/descent & turning, while Manual replaces turning with more flight-focused roll & yaw control, adding in the L1 & R1 buttons (by default) to the mix for the latter; JIGP lets you also control yaw in Auto mode. As for the rest of the controls you have accelerate, brake, "change view" (i.e. first-person or third-person), use item, & change target for lock-on weaponry. However, the thing with accelerating & braking is that the "brake" button is really more of a handbrake & should only really be used for things like hairpin turns & instant adjustments in verticality. That's because simply releasing the accelerator activates the "engine brake", which will automatically slow you down enough for most turns when needed. It's definitely something that might take a couple of laps before you really get used to it, but I'd say that it makes sense, considering the type of vehicle you're racing with, since coming to a complete stop is something you don't really want to do here (& I don't think is even technically possible, according to the speedometer).
Hresvelgr is a game based around completing the four courses on offer (five in Jet Ion GP) across all three difficulties offered, though at the start you only have access to the initial difficulty, "Standard". This difficulty heavily enforces automatic course correction when it comes to the Power Band, making it extremely hard to actually go off course, with only a couple of exceptions, and in all honesty I'd recommend completing this difficulty with Auto controls, as I feel trying to use Manual controls with all of the course correction just makes things harder. After beating all four courses you then unlock both "Expert" difficulty, which lowers the automatic course correction a good amount (but it's still there, in extreme cases), & "Master" difficulty, which removes all course correction & leaves the player to their own devices. Meanwhile, the game itself is made up three modes: Grandprix, where you race all four courses, get points depending on how you place, & aim to get the highest score to win the Gold; Singlespot, which is your standard "single race" mode; & Time Attack, which is the same as Singlespot but features no other racers on the track. What's also notable is that for Grandprix & Singlespot modes you have to first "qualify", which is a single lap by yourself in which you have to complete within a set time, and your lap time determines which position you start in for the real race; also, you have to earn the Singlespot & Time Attack modes by first beating Grandprix on Standard difficulty.
Naturally, a racing game should offer various vehicles with differing stats, and Hresvelgr does something unique here by technically being a team-based racing game, with there being eight two-man teams to choose from, though each team has only one type of vehicle. However, the idea behind each team is that one person is the "First Pilot", i.e. the one whose goal is to win each race, while the other is the "Secondary Pilot", i.e. the one who helps the First Pilot win by messing with the opposition during each race, and aside from individual points being awarded at the end of each race there's also a total team score that's added up, so in Grandprix mode there are actually two league winners, essentially (single & team). That being said, though, the team aspect doesn't seem to matter when it comes to proper player completion, as even if you play as a Secondary Pilot & help your team win a Grandprix the game won't consider you as having "won" if you yourself didn't win Gold, individually. There's also actual lore behind the teams & pilots, both in the manual & even in-game, so let's go over each one. Weimar is the only privately-funded team & is represented by the all-female duo of Marien Schallrotte & Filis Theodor; their vehicles are mobility focused. Charles & Martel was founded by the creators of the FH league itself & is represented by "Phoenix" Jean Lascaux & Dartanius Jr., though in Jet Ion GP they're actually changed to Daniel Jevons & Jet Jevons Jr., the son & grandson of the made up hero of the people mentioned in the English manual; regardless, their vehicles have the highest max speed. Forkner is kind of the upstart team represented by the rookie pilot Max Tender & the experienced legend William Tips; fittingly, their vehicles are all-rounders.
Hecthor was founded by a former C&M racer who left the team & is represented by the seemingly perfect Edward Miller & premier race blocker Burger Etanderl (Velger in JIGP); their vehicles have the second highest max speed. Akashina is a bit of a mystery team & seemingly is more interested in testing new tech than purely running, while their rep racers Joe & Sin are just as unknown; their vehicles are similar to Forkner's, but with reduced stats for more stability. Xenum is the requisite "bad guy" team that will do anything to win & are represented by longest-tenured racer Xenum Yugo & his protége, Devid Valzac; their vehicles have the highest durability, but the lowest acceleration. Gust is the newest team in FH & plan on winning by taking early leads, with their reps being Vendaval Este & Avis Rapax (Rapous in JIGP), both of which want to prove their worth; their vehicles have the highest acceleration, but lowest max speed. Finally, Velvet Works is the second-oldest & most powerful team in FH, represented by brother/sister team Carl & Ofelia Endumion; they're the only real unlockable in the original Hresvelgr. As you can likely guess, outside of their vehicle stats everything about the teams & racers, lore-wise, is nothing more than flavor text but I do appreciate Gust (the dev studio, not the racing team) for taking the time to at least make the world of Formula Highpowered racing feel more fleshed out, even if it's only slightly; their experience as RPG developers really shows here.
As for the tracks, they all take place in what looks to be a modified (& spun around 180°) map of Venezuela & Colombia, and their Gulf region, with upside-down versions of Jamaica, the southern (now northern?) tip of Cuba & Hispaniola also seen on the map featured in Hresvelgr's manual; it's not 1:1, Lake Maracaibo is missing completely, but it's very clearly based on these areas. Anyway, there are four tracks in the original JP-exclusive release, starting with Woodstock Planes (which, when the map is spun back around 180°, looks to be in the area of El Cerrito, Venezuela), a rather straightforward course with a lot of tubes & walled off areas to keep racers in check. Then there's Marinepark F.H. (somewhere in the area of Portland Cottage, Jamaica), which introduces some tighter turns & a hairpin to the mix & gives the best sensation of speed in the game, without a doubt. Easily the toughest course of all would be Bramble Yard (roughly where Sierra de Perijá National Park is in Venezuela), which is very open & with little in the way of guardrails, really highlighting the fact that these are flying vehicles, as there's a ton of verticality, both upwards & downwards, as well as some obstacles to maneuver around; easily the hardest track in the game. Finally, Luminous Bay Area (which is located on an island within the Gulf of Venezuela that doesn't actually exist in real life) is kind of a breather to finish things off, as it's easily the most straightforward course in terms of layout, but also utilizes verticality at points & requires you to slalom between barricades in the final stretch of each lap. Jet Ion GP adds in a fifth track, Comforest Viola, which takes place in a forest & massive cave with a rather straightforward layout & is an enjoyable enough track. Similar to the Ridge Racer series all of these tracks also feature alternate & extended variants on higher difficulties, with Woodstock Planes, Marinepark F.H., & Bramble Yard each featuring three variants, while Luminous Bay Area & Comforest Viola only feature two. This is based on Jet Ion GP, as the initial version only has two variants for each of the OG four tracks, and you only ever play the alternate layouts on Master difficulty there, whereas in JIGP they're spread out between both Expert & Master difficulties.
But this is a racing game in the end, so how is the racing itself? To be honest, I think Hresvelgr is... interesting. It's a mix of a traditional racing game, a flight game, & a vehicular combat game, and when combined with the usage of the Power Band mechanic to encourage racers to keep as close to the band as possible to maintain the best max speed as possible there's a lot to honestly like. Before every race (after you've qualified, of course) in a Grandprix you can select a "Item" to bring with you, with some being weapons & others being more defensive. You have lock-on missiles & straight-shooting rockets, auto chaff to stop incoming missiles, a laser that works like the rockets but can bounce off of walls, an enhanced shield, and a two-time use "T-booster" that increases your acceleration & max speed temporarily. There are also team-exclusive Items in the Gae Bolg (an enhanced laser only for Xenum), the Berserker (a radio jammer only for Akashina), & the Tempest (an enhanced T-booster only for Gust), but none of them really feel like they inherently give their respective teams an instant advantage. The end result, in theory, is a futuristic flight racer where you try to stick to the Power Band as closely as possible, all while dealing with the various twists, turns, dives, & rises, as well as possible incoming attacks from foes.
In execution, though, Hresvelgr does have some problems. The most common complaint back in the day was with the frame rate, and when at its worst it is definitely a bit of a chugger, though in this case the end result more is in dropped frames than in actual slowdown. However, playing the original JP-only version I only really came across the worst possible performance maybe once or twice in Marinepark F.H., and only when there was me & maybe four other vehicles on screen with me, all crowded together in a tube. Otherwise, while the the game does slow down a bit more than I'd like it wasn't by any means unplayable, and I'd chalk it up more towards this being Gust's first PS2 game than anything else. No, what really hurts the racing in Hresvelgr is the Power Band system itself, namely in just how utterly harsh it is when it comes to veering away from the Band. While not all that possible in Standard difficulty, due to the strict course correction, it's not that tough to veer too far off from what the game determines is "too far" from the Power Band in Expert & Master difficulties, which really isn't far at all, and instead of slowly reducing your speed when that happens the game instead essentially tries to halt almost all of your speed ASAP, resulting in you going from ~1,700-2,000 wph (the game's measurement of speed) to just 500-600 within a second or two, and once that happens you're essentially stuck until the out of bounds timer expires & you're reset onto the course... or, in Master difficulty, DQ-ed from the race entirely. This isn't helped by the fact that the movement in Hresvelgr is a bit weird, as while it's not too sensitive for general movement whenever you have to make more fine & precise movement it feels like you have to be much more specific with the analog stick; the game also uses the Dual Shock 2's pressure sensitive d-pad, but I couldn't get used to it.
This also makes the "Manual" control scheme more or less kind of useless, since that kind of control scheme should encourage the player to fly around more freely, but doing so here really punishes the player more than anything; also, the aforementioned weird movement sensitivity makes it all too easy to veer off more than intended. Ironically, about month prior to Hresvelgr's original release in Japan the game NGEN Racing came out for the PS1 in Europe (by developer Curly Monsters & publisher Infogrames), with a North American release two days before Hresvelgr, which was another flight racing game with options for both more traditional racing controls & more free-form flying controls. However, NGEN Racing decided to go with sequential checkpoints for its courses, and while there is an out-of-bounds mechanic in that game you don't get any speed punishment for simply going off course, except for it you do it for too long, upon which you're autopiloted back onto course at a slower speed. However, don't take this to mean that I dislike Hresvelgr, because despite its flaws I still think it's a really cool flight racing game, and said flaws are really more things that could have been fixed with a sequel, rather than flaws inherent to the game concept itself (which do exist but aren't game breaking, in & of themselves).
Which brings us to Hresvelgr: International Edition/Jet Ion GP... so did Gust make any notable changes with this updated release? First, & most notable, is the ability to adjust the "Input Assist", which acts as an variable autocorrection when it comes to flying too far off from the Power Band, regardless of difficulty, and if you lower it completely you essentially get the OG version's Master difficulty freedom of flight; personally, the default settings for this were just fine for me. You can also change the color of the Power Band between "Normal" (i.e. transparent) & "Highlight" (i.e. opaque), which isn't anything major but it's a neat touch; I just stuck with Normal Bands. Second, Expert & Master difficulty now have both "A" & "B" class variants now, as well as a final "Master - S" class that's exclusive to Grandprix mode, with some of the classes now requiring six laps instead of three, racing in the reverse direction, or both. Third, you only start with four teams/vehicles (Gust, C&M, Forkner, & Akashina), with the rest needing to be unlocked by completing Grandprix difficulties. Fourth, the track order has been adjusted, as it's now Marinepark F.H., Comforest Viola, Woodstock Planes, Luminous Bay Area, & Bramble Yard, a decision that makes a lot of sense & results in a much more natural feeling rise in difficulty. There are also some extra touches here & there, like fireworks when you win a race in first place, though the European release in particular removes all of the voiced lines seen in the game, and while I can understand removing the Japanese narration for the teams & tracks it also removes the English-speaking narrator (Ward E. Sexton) after you win a race in Grandprix mode, which is kind of bizarre; you also don't get the end credits after beating each difficulty, instead receiving a trophy. Jet Ion GP also excludes a CG intro sequence made specifically for Hresvelgr: International Edition, instead starting up similarly to the Japan-only original version.
However, the biggest change is in how Gust was able to fine tune the gameplay, resulting in this updated version being a marked improvement. Yes, the framerate is improved over the initial "vanilla" version, though it's still nowhere near fully consistent & probably should have had a 30 fps cap instead of the uncapped frame rate it very obviously has; still, this version overall runs much better than before. But the biggest change is definitely when it comes to going "off course", and by that I mean that this second version is nowhere near as harsh. You still get punished for going too far away, sure, but it requires you going a good bit further away from the Power Band now than before (& nigh impossible to do at all on Standard difficulty), and simply going just a little bit off course now only results in speed reduction that feels reasonable (& can be offset with smart usage of quick shortcuts), instead of coming to almost a complete halt too easily. It honestly took me until the final race of Expert A (on Bramble Yard's second layout, which is by far the toughest track in the entire game) for me to get my first out of bounds, & I only later received a potential countdown timer in that same race because of an enemy rocket veering me wildly off course. Not just that, but the controls by default also feel not quite as weird as before when it comes to the sensitivity, and while I think Manual controls are still kind of useless due to the Power Band restrictions this definitely feels much better to play.
Simply put, Hresvelgr: International Edition/Jet Ion GP is easily the de facto way to play Hresvelgr, as it improves on or even downright fixes many of the most notable issues with the original version, and the extra content is really just a bonus on top of all that.
Visually, Hresvelgr actually looks rather good, especially for being such an early PS2 release in the console's life. Each track has a very unique look & feel to it, and the use of color is handled extremely well to give each environment a memorable visual aesthetic; this is definitely a more positive outlook on a futuristic world, for sure. The vehicles designed by Gust's Kazuma Sakamoto & Tomato Media Network's Hidezo Ueda are an excellently eclectic mix of shapes & styles, with some going for more sleek looks, others going for wider designs (more akin to planes), & some others being a bit more bulky. That said, Hecthor's vehicle is very vertical in its design, which actually made it tougher for me to use in third-person view, due to its high top obscuring my view of the track a bit, though I do like the design itself. However, the true highlight of either version of this game is its musical score by Miyoko Kobayashi (now Takaoka), with some tracks also composed by the game's co-planner Akira Tsuchiya (who also helped design courses, so he was all over this game). Kobayashi was already a well experienced game music composer by 2000, having worked at both Cube Corp. & Quintet previously for titles like Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Enix's Terranigma, & even Toaplan's Ghox, which means that the songs heard in Hresvelgr are honestly just amazing.
It seriously all begins with the main menu music, "Navigation Zero", which absolutely nails the exact mood & feel for a futuristic air racing game like this, and you kind of never want to leave the menus because it's just such a good song. Beyond that are the songs used for the tracks themselves, which are a great of different styles, like "Spread its WINGS" (used for Woodstock Planes) sounding super inspiring, "Night of the SANCTUARY" (Luminous Bay Area) giving you the feeling that a comeback is always possible, "Highland YO-YO" (Bramble Yard) being the most jazzy & upbeat of them all (which creates a bit of a fun dichotomy with how tough that track is), & "Water PRISMA" (Marinepark F.H.) having easily the most "loose" feeling to it, for lack of a better term; Tsuchiya in particular composed the songs for Marinepark F.H. & Bramble Yard, while Kobayashi did everything else. In a fun twist, each course also has a second song that plays when you race their longest variants in Master difficulty that acts as a remix of their respective original tracks... and I'll just that Akira Tsuchiya kind of went more than a bit crazy with Bramble Yard's alternate song, "GOT'n devil (YO-YOreMix)"; I mean this in the best way possible, too. As for what was added in for the later update, it's mainly two songs for Comforest Viola, "Primitive Nature" & "deep forest (NatureMix)", as well as a song heard only in VS Mode, "Firefly'n High"; to no surprise, these are also excellent songs. Seriously, the songs in this game are well worth listening to on their own, and it's arguable that Hresvelgr may have one of the best scores in all of racing game history.
Gust also hasn't forgotten how good this game's music is, either, as both "Spread its WINGS" & "Night of the SANCTUARY" have been included in best-of collections for Gust's 25th & 30th Anniversaries, while select songs from Hresvelgr have been included as part of DLC music packs for various Atelier Series entries for players to use during gameplay; to be fair, there is a bit of an "RPG" sound to some of the songs here.
In the end, Hresvelgr is a game that's both deserving of the critiques it got back in the day but also way better than you might have heard, though it's certainly a racing game that still doesn't quite reach the heights that I imagine the staff at Gust were hoping for. That original, Japan-exclusive release really is a rough one when it comes to actually playing it, due to the rocky framerate & extremely harsh punishment for veering even just slightly "off course", though I can't bring myself to hate it due to the extremely cool aesthetic, very good visuals, & simply outstanding music. But Gust was given a second chance to improve on Hresvelgr, and the end result in Hresvelgr: International Edition & Jet Ion GP is legit a really damn good racing game. The framerate is improved (though still flawed), the controls feel better, the Power Band mechanic is more forgiving, and there's simply just more to the game as a whole, whether that's the new track & the track variants (including reverse tracks), the added Grandprix sets, an actual VS Mode, & even the ability to simply listen to the amazing music in isolation. To be fair, there are flaws that are just inherent to Hresvelgr that simply can't be fixed without making a completely different game, but the final revision of the game that came out in Japan & Europe is indeed a fun game for those who want to try something different in a racing game.
While it is cool that Gust has kept the memory of Hresvelgr alive in some way via including its music here & there with albums & bonus music DLC for the Atelier Series, I honestly wouldn't mind seeing Gust give its update a full-on remaster today. I would love to see what a "Hresvelgr: Jet Ion GP Remastered" would look & feel like at a locked 60 fps, and more people definitely need to properly experience the music with the game all of it was originally composed for. This is especially true because while Gust did give some of its older games re-releases back in the day on the PS3 via the PS1 & PS2 Archives, including some non-Atelier games (namely Falcata, Meru Prana, & The Adventures of Robin Lloyd), nothing like that was ever done with Hresvelgr, and it doesn't have any obvious licensing hurdles that would have to be jumped over, like the Welcome House duology using actual music from Bobby Hackett, Doris Day, and Bill Haley & His Comets (I am not kidding). There are no doubt better futuristic air racing games out there than Hresvelgr, but there's just an innate charm in seeing this genre tackled by a studio that's best at making alchemy-focused RPGs, and if a first revision was enough for them to improve upon it as much as they did I'd love to see what a second revision could be like.
Game © Gust 2000
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