Saturn Homebrew Title ‘Kid Racers’ Is in Development

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 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.

According to NaiSan, the team is aiming to release Kid Racers for both “Sega Saturn and Mega Drive 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.

You can keep up with MemoriaPixel’s effort over on their website, via NaiSan’s YouTube channel, of through Kid Racers’ dedicated Instagram!

The Memoria Pixel is the same team behind the recent Dreamcast homebrew title Metal Canary, and the highly anticipated Dream Color Plus Dreamcast controller hardware mod.