#scaletrix | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thehungryplaice · 4 years ago

Photo

Go Back To The 80s With The Hungry Plaice....

https://www.the-hungryplaice.uk/go-back-to-the-80s-at-your-event

The 80s....What a Decade! I don't mind admitting we are big 80s lovers at The Hungry Plaice, it was the decade of our childhood filled with cheese and the start of the video game revolution and if we could go back in time that's where you would find us, I would love to go back to experience the feelings of being back there but with alot more appreciation for what we had as we didn't have a clue back then how fab that time was. There are loads of 80s revivals around, 80s pop stars relaunching their careers and touring again and TV shows picking up on the 80s themes. We love our 80s vans so much that we currently have two these are our Vintage Fish and Chip Vans Betty and Beryl, we try not to look around and see if there are any more for sale as we would be quite happy to fill up our driveway with more of these beauties!

The 80s was filled with fun, fun and loads more fun from the Neon leggings we all wore to the Arcades full of cool games that we used to play, things back then just seemed so much easier and we were still in the days when it was safe for us kids to be playing out all day without our parents knowing where we were rather than being stuck in your bedroom glued to a game, we enjoyed fresh air and freedom and as long as we were back for tea our parents didn't worry about us. We didn't have rules like we do nowadays, Health and Safety was in it's infancy and as kids we could do pretty much what we wanted, we had metal bars we would swing on in the playground at school with huge concrete stepping stones you'd jump across, I got a scar from banging my nose on one of those in my Primary School and I still think it was character building. At home we had a metal framed bunk bed I'm sure was from MFI, there was a metal netted bottom that the mattress sat on top of, I always used to get my hair tangled up in that and I'm sure I've probably got bald patches from where I had to be cut out to be freed. We had a pampas greenish coloured bathroom set in my childhood home which would be considered Vintage today and lots of brown 80s things around the house like pull down coiled lights in the ceilings. My parents were delighted when they had the chance to put an eye level oven in the kitchen and ditch the freestanding gas oven where you had the grill at the top and try to burn your hands when you were cooking your fish fingers, we did have a microwave at some point and that lead to a rebellion on proper cooking! I remember using libraries alot when I was younger, it was a treat going and picking out books you could take away home, there was a limit to the number that you could have and you had to be careful not to get a fine for taking it back late. Information had to be researched and you couldn't do that from the comfort of home, for school I had to go there to find books on certain subjects and I remember being fascinated when having to use those terminals to look at old newspapers. The music was so much better back then, there was a happiness to songs that just made you want to dance not full of rude words and sexual references like today, we had an array of one hit wonders and big massive stars like Madonna and Kylie, Duran Duran and Wham! The songs still get played today but they sound more superior as we no longer listen to them on cassette tapes.

Cassette Tapes.....they were the days, I forgot how you had to rewind them to the beginning to get to the start and you could use a pencil if the tape pulled out and how there are pauses between songs and of course whilst you can try to to rewind and forward wind you'll never find the start of a song, we are spoilt now that we can do that just by pressing a button. The most embarrassing bit was when I asked my husband if something was wrong with the tape as the pause was going on just a bit too long....he gently reminded me that it was the end of the tape and it needed to be turned over haha!! Of course we all had those high tech Pre MP3/IPod/CD Players to play our music with a set of headphones with the fuzzy ears, my brother had one of the early Sony Walkmans and never let me even see it, I bet that's worth something these days I bought a cheap one off Ebay recently I couldn't help myself! Toys were actual toys there were a few electronic ones around such as Speak & Spell or a talking doll where you had a pull a bit of string and it only said about three words, we really actually played with physical things I had Sindy and some Barbie Dolls in fact I had so much of it I'd carry it all in one of those old large blue plastic shopping bags funny there were sold by Tesco to put into your trolley when they introduced self scanning it seems the technology died a death all those years ago but it now all the range. My brothers had Action Men and loads of model cars, we had a huge floor mat that had map on it with roads and a town that you would drive your model cars around all day on. There were Garbage Pail Kids, Care Bears, Rubix Cubes Train Sets and Scaletrix and as we were a bit more money savvy in those days you'd only get something for your birthday and Christmas not just because your parents wanted you to be quiet!

TV Back in the 80s

When we wanted to watch something on TV we only had a few channels I remember the time before Channel 5 and we had one huge Brown TV in the Lounge where you had to press the buttons on the front to change the channel, I reckon you would have needed a forklift to move the damn thing it was so huge and took up half the room. Days were filled with whatever my parents wanted to watch, there was Rainbow and Playschool when I was little, I remember watching the very first episode of Eastenders (a bad TV habit I dropped a few years ago), programmes were quite limited back then but it wasn't a huge deal because we entertained ourselves as kids, sometimes watching a Film would be a big treat and made special times like Christmas were more exciting sitting down together as a family and watching a film just released on TV that we had never seen before. We didn't mind adverts if we were watching ITV or Channel4 they didn't drag on like you get these days.

I don't remember exactly when Video Recorders came on the market but I know there were Betamax and VHS, we had VHS machine, you could record programmes off the TV and playback at your leisure and you always knew someone who was copying VHS to VHS that would sell you some films. I still used VHS tapes when my daughter was little so they were around all the time I was growing up. Buying a VHS tape was a real treat, you might have been lucky enough to have seen a film in the cinema but there was always a really big delay until they were released on Video or so it seemed. Of course for a really special treat you would go Blockbusters to rent a video but they were quite strict if you forgot your video card I guess computer systems weren't able to let you confirm any of your account details you had!

80s Fashion

Then there was the fashion in the 80s.....wow it was great and brilliant all neon neon neon and bright colours, I had one of those multi coloured white and purple shellsuits and Hi-Tec Trainers. There were punk hairstyles and coloured dyed hair and clothes that didn't match, famous stars created looks from throwing clothes together like Madonna and Boy George. Colours like pink, yellow and blue where everywhere, we had shoulder pads and polka dots, tracksuits and fitness gear, an explosion of trainers and dungarees. There are brands that have come back into fashion nowadays like Kappa and Champion, I wish to god I had kept them all to have them now! We would shop in the local high street and independent fashion shops, I lived in London and would go markets at the weekend, Wembley market was a huge favourite. We had BHS and C&A and a shop called Madhouse in the High Street at the top of the road, I don't really remember when the supermarkets starting selling clothes and the rise of the bigger fashion names back then we were quite limited to only a few shops. I have to mention Woolworths of course, we had one in our high street and I would enjoy just walking around looking at the everything they had including the glorious pick and mix!

Rumbelows.... I remember when you wanted something electrical you could shop at Currys and Comet and even Rumbelows, you always had to go out to buy something and bigger electrical items were never in stock and always had to be ordered and delivered weeks later, we really don't know how lucky we are to have the internet and the ability to order online it saves so much time and give us the freedom of choice to buy from so many different places. Of course the reason we couldn't buy online was because we didn't have the internet in our homes, no mobile phones, I got my first when I was 18 and had to ask permission to call anyone from the house phone, if you wanted to meet your friends you had to arrange it all before you went out and you couldn't check if they were on their way to see you unless you have 10p and phone box nearby. You were lucky if you had a Games Console let alone a Computer....

Gaming in the 80s, well what can I say it put gaming on the map and if it wasn't for those early days I doubt the gaming industry would be what it is today. We had a Spectrum Sinclair 48k first, I'm not even sure what a 48k would be today in terms of processing or storage even a single Word document can be bigger than that. It was bought as a shared present in the family one Christmas and I rarely got to play on it. All I remember is that we had a small black and white TV that we would connect to the computer and you'd have a cassette player connected to, for the Sinclair 128k we had later on I know there was a cassette player connected to the right hand side of the keyboard. Anyway you'd press play and then hear this whizzing buzzing noise whilst the game was loading and the TV would go all fuzzy, sometimes it would take ages and if you had a copy your mate recorded it might not load properly, talk about building your anticipation and then letting you down! The games we had included Daley Thompson, Hungry Horace and Jet Set Willy, I've seen the Spectrum emulator and its a great reminder of the games we had in the days gone by, they now download in seconds....just think what we could have done with all that time we sat staring at a screeching cassette tape player waiting for games to load. We would use the keyboard to play or a joystick if that sort of thing was sold with the Computer you had and your parents could afford one, it was quite easy....left, right, up, down and fire. Us kids would normally have one type of computer, ours was the Spectrum and I know someone on our road had the Commodore and I think there was a Binatone in someone's house, you were royalty if you were lucky enough to have more than one Computer. Handhelds were around then like the Game and Watch ones I don't remember all the different ones they made there were so many sold, we had an early Donkey Kong split screen it was orange on the casing of course I hardly got to play that either, the newer generation of Gaming Consoles like the Sega Megadrive was a big surprise to us kids that you could just put your game in and not long after be playing your game how did that happen! We also had the launch of the Nintendo Gameboy at the end of the decade which changed our gaming lives forever! Another side of gaming that you don't really see today was the Arcades, they were places you hung out with your mates for hours and hours playing Street Fighter and Pac Man, we had a shop on the high street which only had one or two I think it might have been a cafe, when you scored a high score you'd put your three initials in, arcades are mostly for the seaside holidays today full of the boring 2p push machines and fruities, as we know the game industry moved from those high street arcades to bedrooms.... So next time you complain about having to wait whilst you're downloading that highly sophisticated game with the controller I would need a degree to understand how to use think about us kids and our gaming....!

The 80s....wow what a decade

what a time, full of colour, lights and fun, I do wish I could get in a time machine and go back there and have some fun but I know we will never go back to those easy days we will keep moving forwards so instead I'll enjoy our road trips in the vans with the crackling radios....

https://www.the-hungryplaice.uk/go-back-to-the-80s-at-your-event

#thehungryplaice #vintagefishandchipvan #fishandchipvanhire #weddingcatering #weddingfood #corporateeventcatering #eventcatering #1980sparty #1980s

1 note · View note

deepsea-dive · 5 years ago

Text

Catching up with Virgin Galactic

This December on the 12th, Virgin Galactic’s space program had yet another misfire. According to their PR, “Did Not Reach Space as Planned, as the Rocket Motor Did Not Fire Due to the Ignition Sequence not Completing.”

Did Not Reach Space as planned, huh.

The “moon landings” were over fifty years ago, and this bunch of space clowns has yet to make one Low Earth Orbit flight you can buy a space-ticket for, despite having massive cash backing and all the R&D you can shake a delta aluminum wing at.

“According to SWP president Mark Tepper, the stock's rise is not justified by fundamentals. Rather, Virgin Galactic is "a pure speculation, pure hype stock," and one with a potential market size less than half what investors say it is.”

Despite us all having supercomputers with capacitive touch screens in our pockets and graphics cards able to throw around enough polygons to compute the entire “solar system” a bazillion times over, the mess of conflicting hominids called “humanity” has not been “back” to the moon. In 1969, the height of consumer technology was a cassette player and rudimentary scaletrix.

You cannot go to space because space is not a real place. There was never a Tesla in space. There was never any such thing as “space.”

Infinitely expanding vacuum universe huh. Dumb.

Fucking vacuums, how do they work?

Speak to you later.

- DD

#space #space exploration

4 notes · View notes

meteora-fc · 5 years ago

Text

damn i can't believe they made scaletrix a real sport!

#god bless this is boring x #f1 #my og post

6 notes · View notes

newmummyblog · 8 years ago

Text

#WIN 4 tickets to the BTCC final race day (1st October 2017) and a Scalextric BTCC Touring Car set | #Giveaway #Competition

I’ve a fantastic quick giveaway running on Twitter and a smaller giveaway on Facebook. Twitter giveaway: 4 adult tickets to the BTCC final race day on Sunday 1st October 2017 at Brands Hatch and a Scalextric BTCC Touring Car set Facebook giveaway: 4 adult tickets to the BTCC final race day on Sunday 1st October 2017 at Brands Hatch —————————- Twitter Giveaway I’m giving away one prize…

View On WordPress

#btcc #scaletrix

0 notes

ohsoretroevents · 8 years ago

Photo

Booked into #OhSoRetroShow get free entry to @hornbyvisitorcentre on Saturday 23rd Sept on showing your prebooked ticket! 😯 Www.OhSoRetro.co.uk #OhSoRetro #hornby #hornbyvisitorscentre #margate #visitkent #visitthanet #classiccar #classiccars #classicfords #ClassicMinis #retro #retrocars #retrofords #oldmini #oldskool #oldskoolford #scaletrix #corgi #hotrods #racecar

0 notes

historicalvideos-yt-blog · 8 years ago

Video

youtube

Gilbert Slot Car Racers - vintage 1960s American toy commercial

A vintage 1960s American toy commercial for Gilbert Slot Car Racers. They are a scaletrix style electric cars on a track racing set.

#Gilbert Slot Car Racers #scaletrix #america #1960s #toy commercial #advertisement #historical videos #vintage #toys #toy cars

0 notes

unkindness313 · 7 years ago

Text

Stuff The Turkey

The Irish Times Tue, Dec 24, 1996, 00:00 By Dylan Moran

AS a small boy Christmas was an important chance for me to reflect upon and appreciate the Christian values of sharing with and caring for others. From a very early age I had perfected this meditation, so it occupied no more than .0000000001 per cent of my time, leaving the rest free for me to stroke, rattle, smell and talk to unwrapped presents. As an only child I was utterly spoiled. At least that's what my relatives tried to tell me.

Aunty Sally: Sure look at all these presents, isn't it spoiled you are entirely?

Me: Yes, yes. Spoiled, blah, blah. Very good, other children would be happy with a rusty fork and a piece of string, blah blah. You may make your deposit now.

A.S.: Don't I get a kiss?

Me: Do you have any blank cheques, stocks or bonds lodged in your eye-teeth?

A.S.: No.

Me: And so Cupid finds the quiver empty. Send in Uncle Joe on your way out! Next!

But I was not entirely selfish. The scrawly drawings offered to my parents as gifts took up many seconds of business time.

Ma: So this is baby Jesus and all the angels and donkeys and things ... and these in the front, these are hills, right?

Me: No, these are mounds of cripplingly expensive presents.

Ma: Gold, incense, myrrh.

Me: The bible is an allegorical text. Research shows that Jesus, whose birth we are celebrating in a few short hours the shops close, received the following: Scaletrix, cash donations and chocolate. In buckets.

They were happy times, before my parents matured. Later, in adolescence, the main concern for me and my kind was deciding which hour of St Stephen's morning would be most opportune to disappear to the pubs. Food was irrelevant at this age. I was in the middle of my vegetarian phase, which did not entirely succeed due to my giving up meat on moral grounds while hating vegetables on an almost personal level.

I still loathe broccoli. People pick up broccoli and say "this one is fresh". But how do you know? All of it looks as if it's been around and done bad things. It is, after all, the only vegetable that would not look out of place in a nightclub, chain-smoking and writing IOUs at a blackjack table.

Bad Sam: You better be good for this, Lenny.

Lenny the Broccoli: Good, schmud. Button it and deal, if I want a lecture in morality I'll go talk to a lettuce. You give me a pain in my heads.

That year I sat sullenly over a plate of beans. I was sullen all that year. The beans depressed me because my acne was very bad. It was like eating my own reflection.

More recently my mother, who is a brilliant cook, decided quite brilliantly to abandon the dinner half-way through the preparations. Traditionally in our house the ceremony of this feast takes place quite late, three in the morning, say, the afternoon and evening being given over to wine-sampling.

On this occasion we had all been extremely rigorous in our sampling and the business of dinner was somewhat sidelined by our obsessive sommeliering. At a wee small hour I therefore assumed the role of chef turkey-meister.

First I had to stuff the bird. My parents thought this hysterical. I didn't. I don't know if you have ever held an uncooked turkey to your bosom with your hand way up its personal self, but if you have you'll agree that it's one of those times when you don't want your mother to take photographs.

Me: What the hell are you doing? Think I want evidence lying around?

Ma: (Click) We never see you. (Click).

Me: Stoppit! You'll get us all arrested.

Ma: It (click)... It looks (click) good. Very rugged.

Me: Yeah? You're gonna look pretty rugged in a minute. I'm gonna murder you with whatever I find in here. What am I gonna find in here anyway?

Ma: Giblets.

Me: Get me out of this bird right now, and call the social services. You're going down, sister.

I did find them eventually and they are not nearly as attractive as they sound. Giblet finding does not score well on life's scale of emotional highs. The Mafia probably uses them when there are no horse heads available.

THE other thing about this point on the calendar is that past and present become riven, your mind lolls at avenues of memory, you have a lot of conversations with people whose names you have forgotten.

Them: Hi!

You: Oh hi! How's everything in the, uh....

Them: Great! And you...

You: Couldn't be better.

Them: Good, it's certainly been good to see you again.

You: Oh God, yeah ... Well, Ha!

Them: Ha! Ha!

You: See you soon! Keep in touch!

Them: Youtooseeyabye!

But it can be instructive to meet old associates to get a perspective on what you've done with your life.

Maura: So that's how I ended up getting my whole face pierced, and the other thing about the religion was that you had to carry a piece of tree with you all the time, and we had to omit the letter "p" from everything we said. I was only in it for about eight years ... now I'm teaching mime to a group of convicted serial killers. And I do a little animal therapy on the side just for money.

You: I always knew you'd do well, you were very good on the recorder.

Here in London the festive spirit is all around, Oxford Street is all full of smiling faces, people all heading towards you, quite happy to trample you to the consistency of spit if you get in their way. Dublin's no better of course. V. and I spent all last week being pin-balled up and down Grafton Street. There's nothing like consumerism to make you feel like a doomed piece of cosmic crud.

Neither of us is talented. shoppers, the idea was to pick up a few books and shirts for siblings and parents. We returned to the room for a snooze. When we awoke we found we had acquired the following: one shortwave radio in the shape of a leopard in mid-leap, a pair of solar-powered whistling sunglasses, a holster for false teeth, hedge-trimmers engraved with Polish drinking songs, a triple album set of "typical noises emanating from Cavan", totem cleaning equipment, crotchless shoes and an angle-grinder.

Sure it's stressful, but I still like this crazy, necessary celebration. It's high emotion, it's family, it's people you haven't seen in ages, it's all those things you meant to say but never did. But crucially, for me, its my girlfriend and I going away by ourselves to leave you to get on with it. Merry Christmas and best of luck with the ..... ah.

(source)

#dylan moran #the irish times #dylan moran's written things #christmas

4 notes · View notes

futuristicballoondream · 3 years ago

Text

I wanna know what these kids would LOVE.

the parks. sweetshops. children’s books. coming in from the rain and shoving your jumper in the tumble dryer. bubble baths with all the soaps and moisturisers. cartoons and scaletrix and mariokart and wii sports. spinny computer chairs.

We always talk about giving a Victorian child a Cheeto Puff or Gatorade, but what about music? If I traveled back in time and blasted God Race by Metaroom they would absolutely perish.

10K notes · View notes

wackyracerskatie · 4 years ago

Text

The final images of the scene around the scaletrix track after being put in place in the canteen.The scene is full of small hidden details within the larger areas like the polluted area,the forest, and the are of sea stacks. The many areas around the track represent not only effects of pollution but many of the artists we researched such as all the artists who create miniatures i have researched. The outcome of the track is obviously not as extravagant as artists like Matthew Albanese as we are not able to play around with lighting as easily as the track is not made to be photographed but instead interacted with.

0 notes

hugochamberblog · 5 years ago

Photo

Slot car racing European Championship Finals, Helsinki Slot car racing European Championship ... #hugochamber #autorata #autorataharrastajat #fastest #finland #finnish #hobbies #hobby #scaletrix #scalextricbrand #siipiauto #slotcar #slotcarracing #slotcar #slotracing #superfast #toys #virgin #wingcar #wingcar Source: https://hugochamber.org/slot-car-racing-european-championship-finals-helsinki/?feed_id=9349&_unique_id=5f2c696b2cf04

0 notes

seganerds · 8 years ago

Text

You know you’re in the right location when the car next to yours features a Sonic plush

There’s a common misconception among many gamers that the mobile gaming industry is a cheap way for developers to make games and bring in lots of money. You can’t really blame people for thinking this, often we hear about some of the success stories about teams of just three or four developers coding in their bedrooms, launching an app on the AppStore (other app stores are available) and seeing overnight success, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue over a few short months.

Flappy Bird is one of the biggest examples, where a single coder managed to bring in more money a month than many people earn in a year through ad revenue. Of course, the game was pulled from the marketplace, with Dong Nguyen (the developer) citing that the game’s success was “ruining his simple life”, others have questioned the game’s originality and likeness to Piou Piou vs Cactus which was released some two years prior.

But regardless, it’s stories like this in circulation that have given the impression that developing mobile titles is a piece of cake compared to console or PC games – it’s something that I was beginning to believe myself. Let’s face it, it’s the dream for many people – making a ‘simple’ product that brings in the big bucks.

But that dream is often far from the truth for many of the industry’s developers and my perception on this matter changed on Monday Nov. 13, 2017, with an eye-opening visit to SEGA’s most prominent mobile studio, SEGA HARDlight.

A brief history lesson

Founded in 2012, HARDlight was established by SEGA to specifically develop handheld titles, originally focusing on an action adventure for the PS Vita, and also expand the company’s reach into the, then, fast-growing mobile gaming industry. But that strategy changed slightly, when their Vita title fell into obscurity and the team’s focus shifted towards the mobile market – with the single exception of porting the excellent Viking: Battle for Asgard to PC (so it’s not been 100% mobile).

The studio was made up of a range of industry veterans, including several members of SEGA Racing Studio (which closed doors a few years prior) and headed up by former Chief Technology Officer for SEGA Europe & America, Chris Southall. Some five years on and the studio has seen success with several mobile titles, many of which are based on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.

Possibly the best known and most successful of SEGA HARDlight’s games is Sonic Dash, an addictive and gorgeous-looking endless runner – where gamers score points based on how far they can run through the various surroundings, allowing them to unlock new characters and upgrades, plus upload their scores to servers and try to beat their friends.

This year sees SEGA HARDlight release another Sonic mobile title, Sonic Forces: Speed Battle. As the name suggests, it is tied in to the Sonic Forces universe and, you shouldn’t be too surprised, it looks and plays in a very similar way to Sonic Dash (well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – right?).

Unlike Sonic Dash, though, Speed Battle is not an endless runner, replacing this mechanic with a multiplayer aspect, allowing gamers to directly compete against three other players in live races – with actual finish lines to each stage.

Breaking down the fallacies

It’s not a SEGA office without a neon sign!

Nestled in the centre of the picturesque and quaint town of Leamington Spa (about an hour’s drive from London), you’ll find several gaming studios, including SEGA HARDlight. My visit started out by a quick tour and introduction with SEGA Europe’s Mobile Games Community Manager, Fran Shergold, and HARDlight’s Director of Operations, Harinda Sangha.

Immediately, the misapprehension that mobile teams are made up of a handful of people was quashed – HARDlight’s office proved that idea wrong straight away. While it’s not the biggest gaming studio I’ve ever visited, it was a bigger team than I had expected.

HARDlight was initially setup with some 20-odd members, with room to grow to about 35-40 people. The studio’s current team is actually around the 50-person mark and Harinda commented that HARDlight recently had to acquire the office next door to expand (the signage from the old company is still on the door).

Typical. I take a shot of the room at large and all the devs go on a bathroom break! (Joke – actually, they were in a meeting)

You could also be forgiven for thinking that mobile teams are only made up of developers, just coding away like some farm animals, until someone pushes a button to upload it to an app store and the game’s released into the world. And then the team begins developing yet another title.

I can’t speak for every mobile studio (again, you do hear stories of such studios and teams out there), but SEGA HARDlight is made up of a range of departments, from developers, to analytics, art, design and QA.

The structure of the team was also one that surprised me. Through the handful of game studios I’ve visited in my time, I’ve usually witnessed quite a rigid hierarchy structure; trickling down from studio heads, to management teams, to project leads and then basically everyone else with their own micro-management eco-system.

Every office needs a Sonic arcade machine

But SEGA HARDlight’s team was more flat and open. You had the studio head, Chris Southall and maybe a couple of other managers, but then the structure seemed very open. And those few managers weren’t encased in glass offices away from the team, they were among them, part of the team.

I know this open team dynamic isn’t a new or unique concept, many companies are adopting this approach, but SEGA is a company that was born from a time that this wasn’t the norm and even SEGA’s main offices in London don’t seem to have this open, flat structure. It’s also a working environment that’s often hard to maintain – I’ve also worked in tech/media companies that claim they have this approach to work life, but it’s always easy to see how the management staff split from the rest of the team and it becomes the usual ‘them verses us’ dynamic among the rest of the staff – but not at HARDlight, it seems.

Meeting the team

Lead Artist, Matt Allan and Hardlight’s resident SEGA Nerd 🙂

Matt Allan was one of the first team members I was introduced to. Lead Artist on Sonic Forces: Speed Battle and a resident SEGA Nerd (shout out to Matt!), he was able to explain some of the process of how they worked on creating Speed Battle’s look and feel.

Showing me some concept art hanging on the wall, it was explained that the team at HARDlight worked off ideas for levels “based on previous 3D Sonic titles, drawing inspiration from their environments and set pieces.”

Matt was quite specific about 3D Sonic titles, so I asked whether they ever draw inspiration from the classic 2D Sonic games. Matt informed me that they would rarely use the 2D Sonic games as a basis for their tracks, because there would be a lot more work involved.

Concept artwork stuck to the wall – based on other 3D Sonic titles

“All major artwork and assets need to be approved by Sonic Team/SEGA Japan, including the environments,” he said. “The 3D environments we work from are based on 3D Zones that Sonic Team previously created and used in their console titles, so it’s a lot easier to build a mobile title like Sonic Dash or Speed Battle using pre-approved styles and 3D designs.”

It makes sense, essentially it would be a waste putting a lot of effort into transitioning a 2D level into 3D, only for it not to meet the approval process in Japan.

This is not to say that HARDlight is simply taking environments from other Sonic titles and dumping them into their own game, it doesn’t work that way. The art team draws up concept art for each Zone and translates it into 3D from scratch and it still needs to be approved by Sonic Team.

The team had also created quite a nifty way of building their levels, once the artwork was approved and created. Because each level in Sonic Forces: Speed Battle is, essentially, a race track, the team has created small, inter-connecting segments of each track, such as rails, loops or split paths etc. and put them into Unity as separate pieces. From there the team can take each piece of track and slot them together in a variety of ways – think a computer-generated version of Scaletrix.

Of course, they can still only have a finite number of these pieces, but to ensure they don’t look too repetitive, they can easily change parts of each track piece, such as plants or trees, with the click of a button. The result is hundreds of variations on a single course.

The launch is not the end

Dev Ops hard at work

One other thing that became clear visiting HARDlight, is that once the ‘go live’ button is pressed, the game is far from finished, if anything, there’s more work to be done.

Speaking to James Back, the Live Ops Manager, I was shown how HARDlight monitors gaming sessions and can use the data to tweak the game to ensure that it remains entertaining for audiences.

One basic example of this was the way they monitor which characters are preferred by gamers and which ones win/lose the most. It was an interesting thing to look at, because characters need to be unlocked and it went to show which characters the more prominent players tended to prefer to play as.

I was also shown a discrepancy they spotted early on, where Sonic lost the most races out of all the characters. But this was soon explained, because Sonic is the base character that everyone starts out with it makes sense to see that he lost more times than won, because new players would still be getting used to the controls and courses. Knowing this allows for the Live Ops team to plan around this data going forward.

What can they do with this data? You might be asking. Essentially monitoring gameplay sessions allows the team to tweak the way the game plays, such as how soon characters are unlocked or in what order. Not too many details were given to me, I guess they didn’t want to say anything too concrete, in case I reported it and it never came to light, which is fair enough.

Gamesmaster, Steph taking a break to talk about how HARDlight uses Discord and other channels of communication

But it’s clear from the way they monitor every session that the team is committed to the game’s ongoing development and the fans who play the game. This came across clearly when I met with Stephanie Brooke-Harris, a person I’m very jealous of, because she has the best official job title I’ve ever heard: Gamesmaster.

Steph’s role partially involves monitoring Sonic Forces: Speed Battle’s official Discord channel and communicating with the gamers playing the game. She is able to feedback any bugs or problems people are experiencing with the game to the QA team, or even suggestions some of the more prominent players may have to improve things to the dev team.

Another part of Steph’s role is to help promote new events or store bundles to the community and gauge their feedback. Again, this ensures the team is on the right track with in-game promotional events and offers.

This daily communication appears to be working to HARDlight’s advantage, as it keeps players engaged with the game and lets their voices feel heard. Using standard social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook are a typical way many companies use to communicate to consumers, but there’s still a disconnect between companies and gamers through these channels. Meanwhile, Discord offers a more direct connection and focused user base; essentially anyone/everyone on social media can just follow a company, but Discord channels tend to be filled with people who choose to be part of that channel for a specific purpose and are actively engaging with the others in the channel.

Forming an idea

It’s just research… honest!

Finally, I was able to sit down with Sonic Forces: Speed Battle’s lead designer, Nick Adams. Being part of the decision process, Nick was able to explain some of the background in how Speed Battle came to be.

In terms of the games conception, with the success of Sonic Dash the team wanted to try something a little different and the idea of having a true multiplayer-based game was tossed around.

“We wanted to see where we could go next and the idea of having a multiplayer-based title came up,” Nick said. “After speaking to the development team, it was clear that with some tweaking to the Sonic Dash format (such as removing the ‘endless’ gameplay), a multiplayer game could definitely be on the cards.”

What’s not so clear is when the team decided to tie it in with Sonic Forces or if that was the plan all along (I never really got a straight answer from this). But both games started development around the same time, so it’s a very good chance that while HARDlight was planning a new Sonic game, the chance to tie it in with Sonic Forces made sense.

Once again, Nick emphasized that when the game went from main development to post-launch, the team’s efforts didn’t stop, they had to shift focus to ensure the game’s ongoing success.

What does it take to make a mobile game?

Just before I left, I managed to get a quick go at the Sonic Dash Extreme arcade game

My intention was never to originally write this article. My visit to SEGA HARDlight was a simple one, to get an interview (watch it here) and meet some of the team. It’s something that I’ve done many times over the years. But visiting this studio gave me cause to pause and reconsider how I look at mobile games development, and I hope it has done the same for you too.

The likes of ironing out bugs in games is part and parcel for any modern video game. But with an online multiplayer game, there’s a lot more to do than ongoing quality assurance. Servers need to be maintained, of course, but the team involved needs to continuously ensure that players are engaging with the game and new content needs to be regularly pushed out, to encourage repeat customers and attract new players.

As I discovered at SEGA HARDlight, high-quality mobile games take a lot more than just a handful of coders bashing away at their keyboards; it takes several teams, much like any console game does.

HARDlight is a decent sized studio, but it’s not the largest mobile team out there. Both Fran and Harinda told me that compared to many other mobile games studios, HARDlight is relatively small.

It should hopefully be clear now to anyone who was under the assumption that SEGA was taking the ‘cheap’ route with its mobile division, that that’s simply not the case. While SEGA HARDlight is a smaller team than the likes which worked on Sonic Forces (and therefore it is cheaper, due to less man-power being used), it’s not a ‘cheap’ or simple way of making a game and there’s a lot more to the team structure and ongoing development than you might realize.

Mobile is far from my preferred gaming platform (something I’ve been open about previously), but my visit to SEGA HARDlight has opened my eyes, allowing me to understand what goes into making a mobile title and has given me a new appreciation for the mobile industry as a whole.

SEGA HARDlight Gallery

You know you’re in the right location when a car features a Sonic plush toy

It’s not a SEGA office without a neon sign!

Every office needs a Sonic arcade machine

One of Hardlight’s meeting/breakout rooms

Lead Artist, Matt Allan and Hardlight’s resident SEGA Nerd 🙂

Concept artwork stuck to the wall – based on other 3D Sonic titles

It’s just research… honest!

Dev Ops hard at work

Typical. I take a shot of the room at large and all the devs go on a bathroom break! (Joke – actually, they were in a meeting)

Gamesmaster, Steph taking a break to talk about how Hardlight uses Discord and other channels of communication

Personal note: find out who does their wallpaper…

Just before I left, I managed to get a quick go at the Sonic Dash arcade game

Our visit to @SEGAHARDlight was an eye-opening look into mobile #gaming #SEGA There’s a common misconception among many gamers that the mobile gaming industry is a cheap way for developers to make games and bring in lots of money.

#hardlight studio #HLGames #SEGA Hardlight #sonic dash #sonic forces: speed battle

4 notes · View notes