The Indie Game Studio Memoria Pixel, a team of software and hardware developers from Brazil, has provided new details on its in-development homebrew project titled Kid Racers, coming soon to Sega consoles, including the Saturn.
“This is my new project, called Kid Racers. It’s a top-down racing game with online multiplayer on both the Mega Drive and Sega Saturn” said NaiSan (aka Nai Adventure), the dev behind the Dragon Ball Saturn homebrew title, who shared the news on the SHIRO! Discord in late July.
As stated on the project’s website and its social marketing, Kid Racers looks to be more than a simple homebrew title, not satisfied to just offer “fast-paced, accessible racing” but will include “modern features such as online matches, online rooms, rankings, and crossplay between different platforms.” Memoria Pixel said they will release Kid Racers on the Mega Drive, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, and PC, “leveraging the specific characteristics of each platform while maintaining a shared core experience.” As of this writing only the visually similar Mega Drive and Saturn versions have been shown off, so it is unclear what state the Dreamcast version is in.
The online features are already functional in the current build (not publicly available), and the team has shared videos of crossplay between the Mega Drive and Saturn versions of the game, seen below. NaiSan said that “seeing two consoles from different generations playing together over the internet is already a huge milestone for the project” and we have to agree.
The visual similarities are a result of the development process. NaiSan said on the SHIRO! Discord in August that the Mega Drive version of Kid Racers was developed first and functions as “the base” for the Saturn and future ports. However, this does not mean that the different versions will not be necessarily identical. NaiSan assured us that the Saturn version — and presumably future ports — adds “more effects, colors, etc.” The Saturn port is being developed using the Jo Engine.
The game is still in development with regular updates being shared online. Since its July announcement, the team has added English language support, additional songs, new sound effects, “secret cars” and even new gameplay viewing angles.
SHIRO! reached out to NaiSan with a few questions regarding his team’s process and progress.
When asked if AI tools were used in the creation of Kid Racers, NaiSan responded:
“For the first demo we brought to Retrocon this year, we still didn’t have any music ready, so we created a few samples using AI just to have something to present at the event. Nowadays, the soundtrack is already being composed by an artist.
So, in areas we don’t specialize in, such as music, we initially used AI for prototyping. But now, all the artwork and programming are being created from scratch, and we always make a point of showing the development process.”
Below is an example of Kid Racers’ soundtrack development shared by the Memoria Pixel team.
When asked about when fans can get their hands on Kid Racers and whether physical copies are being planned, NaiSan confirmed that the release window mentioned in their social marketing was accurate. So Memoria Pixel is planning to release both the Sega Saturn and Mega Drive version of Kid Racers at “next year’s Retrocon” — referring to the annual Brazilian retro enthusiast event that takes place every July. The game was available for public playtests at this year’s Retrocon — demo footage from the event is below.
NaiSan continued:
“We’ve already found a publisher for the Mega Drive version, and the game needs to be released at Retrocon. The Saturn version is currently at exactly the same stage of development as the Mega Drive version, but we still haven’t found a publisher for it. The main reason is that no publisher wants to release a game that requires an Action Replay cartridge to run, so we’re currently exploring the possibility of creating a dedicated cartridge for the game.
We really want to have a physical release.”
You can keep up with Kid Racers‘ development over on the Memoria Pixel website, via NaiSan’s YouTube channel, of through the game’s dedicated Instagram!
For those curious about Memoria Pixel’s other forays into the retro gaming space, know that this the same team behind the recent Dreamcast homebrew title Metal Canary, and the highly anticipated Dream Color Plus Dreamcast controller hardware mod.
Wow, this is awesome!
I rrally hope they find a publisher for the Saturn version.
On that note: I feel like more people have Action Replay carts these days than any given publisher would initially imagine;
maybe they could do a poll with potential customers, and show the results to any potential publishers? (assuming the results show a good percentage of AR owners)
Either way, very cool stuff, and also great work with Metal Canary & the Dream Color Plus!
Those are definitely on my list as well