Melbourne House Q&A

We recently had the chance to talk to Andrew Carter, executive producer at Infogrames' internal development team Melbourne House, about the Australia-based developer's upcoming title, Grand Prix Challenge. The racer makes use of the F1 license and features some truly impressive visuals on the PlayStation 2. We had a chance to talk to Carter about Melbourne House's background and the game's development.

GameSpot: How long has the game been in development?

Grand Prix Challenge is just the latest in a very long line of games developed by Melbourne House.

Andrew Carter: From the concept to going gold it took us 18 months of development.

GS: How big is the team working on it?

AC: The size of the team varies during the development process. In the early stages we had around 24, but at the peak, towards the end of the project, we had around 40 staff working on Grand Prix Challenge.

GS: What other games have they worked on before?

AC: Over the years we have built up a very experienced racing team, and our racing engine is already fourth generation. Many of the core team worked on Dethkarz (PC), GP500 (PC), and Le Mans 24 Hours (Dreamcast).

GS: Could you give me some background on Melbourne House?

AC: Melbourne House is, in fact, one of the oldest development houses of the games industry. We released our first game in 1980 on the Sinclair ZX80. We actually developed under the name Beam Software and published using the Melbourne House brand. Over the past 22 years we have made many titles including The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and Way of the Exploding Fist on all of the 8-bit home computers in the '80s; Star Wars on the NES, Super Smash TV and Shadowrun on the SNES, and Hunt for Red October on the Game Boy in the late '80s; KKND, Dethkarz, and GP500 on the PC in the '90s; and more recently 24 Hours Le Mans on the Dreamcast. Today we are part of the internal development force of Infogrames and have roughly 90 staff. As such we are focused on developing for PS2.

GS: Why did you decide to develop a racing game?

Melbourne House is aiming to make the "Gran Turismo of F1 games" with Grand Prix Challenge.

AC: Many of us here have a great passion for cars and motor racing. We love cars! Prior to making racing games we were inspired by some of the great arcade racers of the '90s. When the first amazing 3D hardware like Sega Model 2 and Model 3 appeared running games like Daytona and Sega Rally, we were really floored and amazed. We dreamed of being able to produce games with this kind of hardware, so when we found out that 3dfx were going to make high-spec 3D graphics cards for PC, it opened the door for us to begin creating high-end 3D racing games. Dethkarz was our first 3D game using 3dfx and was a high-speed, futuristic combat racing game with huge open vistas, sweeping curves, and great physics, not all that dissimilar in principle to what F-Zero has now become. We then went on to GP500 on the PC, which we made for MicroProse, then LeMans on the Dreamcast as part of Infogrames. Of course Grand Prix Challenge (GPC) is our latest game.

GS: Who are your inspirations in the development community? Why?

AC: For inspiration we look towards developers in Japan, more so than Western countries. Our inspirations are the likes of Polyphony with Gran Turismo and Sega's classic arcade racers. We also have a great respect for classic titles like Grand Prix Legends. We like games that are well made, with flair and fun, but with a depth not obvious at first. At the beginning of GPC we looked at other console F1 games and felt that they were very serious, restrained, and maybe boring. Also we felt that the handling, physics, and AI in existing games were very basic and not much fun. So our target was to make Grand Prix Challenge the Gran Turismo or Sega Rally of F1 games with the idea of capturing the feeling of those types of games in an F1 game. We think GPC truly captures the ferocious feeling, the exhilaration, and speed of racing an F1 car, but it has a hidden depth that takes time to realize.