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On November 28th Nintendo Switch owners will be able to play a game, which is a tribute to the arcade racing games of the 90s. What creators are saying about their title?

Horizon Chase Turbo is a tribute to such classics as Out Run and Lotus Turbo Challenge. The game of the Brazilian studio Aquiris Game Studio has already conquered PC and PS4, and by the end of November it will come to XBox One and Nintendo Switch.

The player needs to win races on 109 routes with 32 cars available. In addition to the single-player game, the developers also give us a multiplayer mode with a classic split screen - you can invite up to three people to play together.

I have contacted with the creators to talk with them about their work on the Switch version. After reading their answers I pressume that Horizon Chase Turbo will be a cool and polished game, which will in a great way refer to the classics.

Can you tell a little bit about the team which created Horizon Chase Turbo?

Our studio is located in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil. Horizon Chase Turbo has been developed by a team of around 15 members between programmers, artists, game designers, sound designers, marketing and business professionals.

We dedicated over two years to develop it, with the goal of delivering the best possible homage to racing classics from the late 80s and early 90s using modern technologies.

Was it hard to create a game that is a homage to such 16-bit classics as Outrun or Lotus?

The development has been a challenge in many aspects, firstly we wanted to keep the fast and fluid gameplay of the classics, and evolve it adding the responsiveness of nowadays arcade games. Related to controls and gameplay, we did plenty of tests with the physics of the car, since it was not easy to find the sweet of the car weight spot during the turns. Graphically we didn't go for a pixel art aesthetic and took a low poly approach, thus modernizing the visuals and making them look sharper than ever at 4K resolution and 60 FPS.

Each of the scenarios is inspired in a real world location, transporting the player to that place and allowing him to enjoy the mood at different times of the day. Lastly, but not less important, we produced a lot of content for the game: 109 tracks distributed in 48 cities and 32 cars, that can be enjoyed in multiple game modes.

Music for your game was created by Barry Leitch. Was it hard to convince him to do this?

Barry was very happy to collaborate with us. For him, the Horizon Chase series has been a fantastic opportunity to bring back the spirit from the classics and with modern tools, reimagine the classics and create something new but familiar at the same time.

Your game is coming to Nintendo Switch pretty soon. Was it hard to port it to this hybrid console?

It was not really hard, but we had to be extra careful about CPU performance, specially. Due to the split screen multiplayer, a lot of code was rewritten to extract the maximum performance from the Switch's multiple core CPU. Since only the GPU is overclocked when docked, this extra work on the CPU was important to ensure smooth performance in both modes, handheld and docked.

Can you tell more about technical aspects of Switch version (resolution, frame rate in docked and handheld mode, etc)?

The game runs at 1280 x 720 in haldheld and full 1920 x 1080 when docked. Both modes have stable 60 fps, with 1 or 2 players. And variable 30 - 60 fps with 3 or 4 players split-screen, without any drop in visual quality.

Is your game going to use any of special Switch functions (HD Rumble, gyroscope)?

Yes, HD Rumble features can be experienced throughout the whole driving gameplay. Motion controls, unfortunatelly, will not be available.

Thank you for your time in answering my questions. Hope to play your game on Switch pretty soon.

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Geekretro.pl is a Polish blog where you can find reviews of indie games for Nintendo Switch, interviews with game developers and curiosities from Japanese popculture. Section "geekretro.pl in English" has selection of best articles (mainly interviews) that is available in English.

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