A brief interview with Jesper Kyd. Other released titles you may be familiar with in which he has helped with in the past are Amok, Red Zone, Sub Terrania, and current titles MDK2, Hitman and Messiah.

Austin : First of all, what was your part in the development and production of Scorcher?

Kyd: I created the music and sound effects for Scorcher. Towards the end of Scorcher I was the producer on Scorcher PC, meaning I basically helped create the gameplay. I was also the game tester and spent an insane amount of time playing the game and finding bugs. I helped create and write the manual together with Sami Badawi.

Austin : When was the original idea for Scorcher conceived?

Kyd: Not sure exactly when. Red Zone (A game by Zyrinx/Scavenger on the Genesis) was originally a car game before it was turned into a flying game. We had been wanting to do a driving game for a while.

Austin : With mission-based action games such as Sub Terrania and Red Zone behind them, what led the development team (Zyrinx) to create, of all things, a racing game?

Kyd: After doing two mission based games we were ready for something new. With the newly developed Zyrinx engine for PC and Sega Saturn, we could do new things graphically that was just not possible with the Sega Genesis engine.

Austin : Could you tell me about the Zyrinx engine? How did it effect Scorcher, say, using the Zyrinx engine, as opposed to another (By you all, or someone else)?

Kyd: Well, at that time there were not a lot of engines being licensed like there are today. The Quake 1 engine is the only engine I can think of that was actually being licensed out. Also, Zyrinx consisted of competitive coders and mathematicians from the demo scene, so we would never use someone else's technology, but invent something better by ourselves. We also created a great FM music program for the Sega Genesis, which used CD quality sounds, instead of horrible low quality samples which 99% of all Genesis games used.

Austin : Scorcher went through some name changes before coming to be what we know it as. What was or were it's name(s) before being dubbed 'Scorcher?'

Kyd: Vertigo was the only other name Scorcher went by.

Austin : After the PC Scorcher's release, what made you all want to do a Sega Saturn version?

Kyd: It was a natural choice going from Sega Genesis/32X to Sega Saturn.

Austin : In the Saturn version, certain video options seen in the PC version were taken out. Any reason?

Just for kicks, I always thought it would be kind of cool to play it in wire-frame mode on my Saturn ;)

Kyd: Those options were included on the PC in order to make the game run faster on lower-end machines. It didn't make sense to have the ability to switch these on an off on the Saturn version.

Austin : After getting opinions from a few people, it seems the major drawback was the lack of more tracks, and more-so a multiplayer mode. Again, any reason for this?

Kyd: The track design in Scorcher was very complex for it's time. Scorcher came out at a time were all car games had repetitive textures. Recently most car games got rid of the receptiveness of track design, but Scorcher did this 4 years ago.

Austin : True, true..

Kyd: As for the multi-player, I can't comment on that.