Spirit of Speed 1937 Dreamcast/PC, its history, its development and the Broadsword Interactive archive
One of the best-selling genres in the video game market today is car racing, whether it is rally or circuit style. In the circuit racing format, there is the closed saloon style (touring cars) and the open style (Formula 1). In 1998 and still today, the market was flooded with F1 titles.
Spirit of Speed 1937 was intended to be an original racing title that would take the player out of the classics and into the mythical races of the 1920s to 1939. Broadsword Interactive, the studio in charge of the game, hoped to compete with Grand Prix Legends, which took place in the late 1960s.
At that time, the cars had poor handling and a lot of power. They didn't run around the circuit as if they were on rails, they drifted on four wheels, which was the norm at the time, the norm at the time. Driver safety was not a concern, neither for the drivers nor for the general public. Accidents were spectacular.
Early prototype video Dreamcast
The adventure of Spirit of Speed by Broardswords Interactive
Spirit of Speed 1937 Dreamcast is the last game credited to LJN, a video game publisher reduced to a simple logo after being bought out in 1990 by Acclaim Entertainment (special release of 80 prototypes). The LJN trademark was mainly used by Acclaim to get around Nintendo's restrictions on the number of Nes titles a publisher could publish in a year (5 unless I am mistaken).
3D Studio Max 2.5
Although LJN is listed in the credits of SOS 1937, the real development studio in charge of the game is Broadsword Interactive based in the UK. Founded in 1995, the small UK company was originally a subsidiary of production company Broadsword Television. At the time, BI was to provide resources for a TV show mixing virtual reality footage with live action. The show, known to the British as Knightmare, aired between 1987 and 1994.
Spirit of Speed was the first original game created by Broadsword Interactive. The idea for a historical car game set before the Second World War came about as, years before, David Rowe drove past the famous Brooklands circuit in England every day long before joining John Jones-Steele in setting up Broadsword Interactive in Wales. During a brainstorming session, he reminisced about the old circuit and the cars that ran there and this triggered the whole idea. Prior to this, the team had been involved in the conversion of Wipeout PC in support of Psygnosis.
The PC version of SOS was to be financed by Microprose. In 1998, the American publisher ran out of cash and sold its catalogue to Hasbro, a company mainly known in the toy world. The MicroProse brand would still be used, but it would now be controlled by the toy manufacturer. The complications were just beginning for Broadsword. The development of the game was going to be affected by this handover from the owners of SOS 1937. For the Dreamcast version, Acclaim would take care of its distribution after having bought the rights from Hasbro.
Two or three producers, all with different visions of the game, went back and forth during the creation process of the title. One wanted a racing game with arcade style gameplay, the next wanted a more realistic driving experience. The physics of the vehicles kept changing, and in the end SOS 1937 suffered from poor handling. Hasbro had the last word with what they considered to be a suitable approach to marketing the game. The Broadswords team, with its hands tied, could do nothing!
The engine used by SOS 1937 was called BORIS (Broadsword Object Rendering and Interaction System). Other technologies such as Glide, Direct3D and EIDOS Escape/DirectSHow were used by the game development team.
3D Studio Max 2.5
Physic schemes
Gravity schemes
Marketing campaigns being non-existent on Dreamcast, MicroProse, now a label of Hasbro, had organised events to present Spirit of Speed 1937. One of them took place on August 2nd 1999 in the prestigious Silverstone circuit. The press was invited to discover "The Spirit of Speed" (the old name of the game) during the "Coys International Historic Festival".
Plagued by catastrophic development and pressured by Hasbro to release the game, the end result is clear : SOS is unfinished and suffers from numerous defects. However, Broadsword's desire and ability to market this mediocre game!
Structure of a car
Let's not even talk about the Dreamcast version which will be destroyed by critics. Sales did not follow with 16,255 copies sold in the US. According to Mike Phelan of Dreamcast Junkyard, only 39 Japanese copies were sold in the land of the rising sun. Why did Acclaim insist on releasing it in Japan?
Playing the game
Have you ever wondered what it was like to drive the huge racing cars of early motorsport? Speeding around steeply banked circuits like Brooklands or Monza, clinging to a steering wheel one metre in diameter on solid tyres less than 15 centimetres thick? What about the brakes? What brakes? SOS 1937 would allow players to experience these sensations...
The challenge of driving the cars of the 1930s is incomparable to that of driving today's Formula 1 cars. Yet the men and women who drove these cars are still considered the greatest pioneers and heroes of their time. If motor sport has become more democratic, it is partly thanks to them.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, motor racing was mainly a hobby for the wealthy, but for many it became an obsession, an addiction to speed. Fortunes were won and lost, as well as many lives. The search for the adrenaline rush was more important than anything else, these early racing drivers lived for speed.
Spirit of Speed offers a unique and exciting driving experience for driving game fans. The game features legendary cars from the pre-war era, which were very powerful but unsafe. This was the most dangerous period in the history of motorsport!
Meticulously selected tracks, ranging from high-speed concrete ovals like Brooklands to challenging country circuits like Montlhéry, from the desert heat of Tripoli to the urban circuit of Pau, are designed to offer a challenging variety of environments that will test the skills of even the most hardcore racing fans while maintaining the interest of the casual player.
In-game objective
You start your career in the Decade Challenge as a novice driver with the ultimate ambition to reach the top and gain public recognition as a world-class racing ace. You must first establish your credentials and status as a driver by qualifying for international events. To do this, you compete in races on your local circuit to win prizes and win bets against your rivals.
The more money you earn, the better the choice of car you get. These cars are classified according to performance bands, A, B and C. After a modest qualifying period, the race schedule for the year's race series is published. The order is completely random and will be different each time the game is played.
Your opponents in the Decade Challenge will also have developed their skills on their local circuit and will be entering the first race of the season with the car of their choice. It is recommended that you start as a novice with a C class car. Experienced players may opt for a higher difficulty level and a higher class car or a modified version if they can afford it
As you progress through the season, you can take on a particular opponent for a bet in a head-to-head challenge. This can be a good way to raise money, but it comes with risks. You too can become the subject of a bet. Bets appear at the bottom of the screen in the form of a telex message that scrolls from right to left.
As the years pass, new tracks are built and existing circuits are modified. The tracks then become available for the season of the corresponding year and for the following one.
Progress is presented after each race in the form of newspaper headlines and at the end of each year in the form of old film clips
Characters
Each character is fully modelled in 3D and textured. They age as they complete the decade-long challenge. The modelled heads have animated expressions and gestures that allow them to have a range of pre-defined interactions with other drivers, particularly in the head-to-head challenge.
The characters appear in the "choose a driver" section of the homepage as cigarette card caricatures and, once selected, they transform into a full 3D version.
Manager Character - Wally
Czechoslovakia
USA
Germany
Italy
United Kingdom
Belgium
France
The characters, once animated, blink, have a questioning expression etc. before returning to their initial positions. Each individual behaves differently depending on whether they are intimidated (unconfident) or confident (presumptuous)).
Beginning of character modelling with different expressions
Example storyboard
The opening cutscene first storyboard:
The opening scene begins in a cinema. It's a posh place. The people sitting there are fidgeting slightly, some of them are smoking. The projection screen is covered with a scalloped silk curtain. Suddenly, an image and a logo appear behind the curtain before it rises. The image and logo give way to a video of car racing from the 1930s in front of the astonished audience. The style of the projected film is very vintage.
The camera slowly approaches the projection screen so that the image is full screen. The video of the car race slowly fades to the Brooklands circuit as it is today. The track is overgrown with weeds and abandoned. The camera slowly descends to the road and almost lands on it, looking through the weeds. An empty packet of crisps falls to the ground, silence reigns except for the increasing sound of wind and leaves blowing across the tarmac.
The shot fades into a view of the same section of the circuit, the weeds and decrepitude of the place disappearing as a shiny, well-maintained track comes into view and a heavy race car speeds towards us with an ever increasing din.
The opening cutscene second storyboard :
You are in a gloomy workshop. A single lamp illuminates the engine compartment of a racing car. The rest of the car glows softly in the ambient light. You can barely make out the chaotic interior of a typical 1930s garage. Mechanics work feverishly on the engine and wheels.
The camera rotates slowly as it gets closer to the car. The mechanics finish their work and retreat into the shadows leaving the driver to start the engine. The car roars and the lights in the workshop come on, casting hazy rays of light on the car and the driver.
The large sliding doors of the garage, made of dark green enamel, rumble open, throwing the reflected light of the summer day outside. The camera pulls back, the car begins to move slowly forward. The vehicle moves from darkness to sunlight producing bright reflections on the car's paintwork and deep, dark shadows below. The camera rises as the car turns sharply and heads towards the starting grid to join the other competitors who are queuing up.
Some Cutscene with explanation
The Newspapers:
The first pages of the logs that appear at the end of each race need to be very structured to take into account the number of variations that need to be take into account the number of variations that need to be implemented.
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Title Section : This area contains the title "The Motor Gazette". It alternates with "Motoring Magazine" to the right. This section is fully localised and contains the magazine titles for the country concerned.
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The titles section : This area contains the following titles: "**** wins ****" (eg Fabrizio wins Pau). The second title is "****S BRILLIANT VICTORY" (for example, BUGATTIS BRILLIANT VICTORY). The logs reflect the actual result of each race.
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Black and White Photograph : This section contains a black and white photograph of the winning driver.
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The date : This date will be scheduled to be the publication date after the race.
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The general design : It faithfully follows the style of the publications of the time, both in terms of graphic design and printing technology (monochrome, spot colours, three-colour process, etc.).
Getting kicked out of the car after an accident:
For very serious head-on collisions, which occur only very rarely, we switch to an FMV (pre-recorded video) of a driver being blown into the air after a terrible crash. A cloud of smoke disperses beneath him. As he hovers, a wheel passes over his head and a muffler underneath him.
The tracks
All tracks are built in 3D Studio Max (see SOS 1937 documents). The track building process was split between building in 3D Studio and analysis in the game engine. Instant feedback of the track's appearance in the game was crucial to maintain efficient production. There was no specific polygon budget for the entire circuit, but the number of polygons drawn per frame in the game engine should ideally not exceed 2000.
Circuit Stige
All textures were created in Adobe PhotoShop, and tended to be hand-painted or derived from photographs and 3D renderings. The size of a single texture was limited to rectangular dimensions of 2n pixels, and alpha channels were allowed at 1 or 4 bit resolution.
Several processes were involved in the construction of the tracks, which could generally be divided into several stages :
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Construction of a base track.
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Construction of the surrounding landscape.
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Trees, fences, hedges and other objects associated with the loft in the background.
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Introduction of buildings, stands and other objects of interest.
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Placement of trees and vegetation in the custom editor.
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Final adjustments, fine-tuning and adding additional details.
The game includes 12 tracks. Each has been chosen to offer a wide variety of terrain and track types while taking into account the representation of tracks for each of the game's marketing territories.
Compilation of circuit presentations
The circuits are as diverse as the desert track of Tripoli, the concrete oval of Brooklands, the massive and spectacular mountain circuit of Targa Florio in Sicily, the tight urban circuit of Pau in south-west France and Avus with its two straights that allow you to see your pursuers coming on the other straight.
You will feel the change in the time of day with shadows lengthening, lights changing and, during the races that go on into the night, flame burners on the edge of the track that illuminate the circuits :
The Tripoli track and its development:
This famous and popular track was used between 1925 and 1940 near Mellaha, south of Tripoli in Libya. In 1933, the site was moved and the length of the race was shortened to 13.10 km from the previous 26.20 km. This modification of the Grand Prix, with a specially built grandstand and timing tower, was modelled by the Broadsword Interactive team.
Despite being exposed to high winds in places, the event became famous for its high speeds. The fastest top speed ever recorded is 229, 234 km/h, a record set in 1937 by Hans Stuck in an Auto Union.
The track was drawn on a sheet of paper after studying the contemporary plan found in the book "Grand Prix Tripoli". This allowed the layout of the circuit to be drawn as accurately as possible, while being limited by the requirements of the polygonal budget. As the physical size of the circuit was quite large, the decision was made early on to reduce all the 'near straight' sections to 'straight lines' which required a minimum number of polygons. This allowed for a greater number of polygons, and therefore more detail and smoothness, in the curves.
An area had been 'wooded' to get a sense of the juxtaposition of the track and the trees. This was a set of trees following the path of the runway at the furthest distance, with simple 2D meshes modifiable as clumps of trees in the middle of the distance. 3D trees constructed as three inverted triangles in a "Y" plane view were placed against the track. The three 'levels' of trees gave a sense of depth, necessary to give the illusion of geography and speed.
The Pau track and its development:
Pau, in southwest France, is still used today as an important track for Formula 3000. The very first local race took place in 1901. This urban circuit was inaugurated as an international event in 1938. It was 2.769 km long and snaked around the eastern end of the old university campus, bypassing the Parc Beaumont and the Casino Municipal. The stands were located at the southern end of the track, near the railway station
Although it covers a small area, the track has many hairpins and tight turns on the hillside. Simple planks, hay bales and elevated viewing points are enough to protect spectators from the speed of the cars.
The track in Pau was first sketched out. The main grooves were elevated to match the impression of the hillside relief. Secondary roads were built as "offshoots" to give an impression of locality and depth as if the roads within the circuit could be used as "shortcuts".
And many other tracks!
The cars
Spirit of Speed 1937 includes 15 vehicles including the first supercharged single-seater, the Alfa Romeo P3. Among the cars available, the player can choose, for example, the ERA Remus with its 1500 cm3 engine that accelerated from 0 to 97 kph in just under five seconds. Not to be forgotten are Mercedes models such as the Benz W125 or the terrifying single-seater, the Napier Railton, which could reach a top speed of 270 km/h.
All cars have a detailed 3D cockpit. The driver is animated and reacts to the forces exerted on the car. Each vehicle has its own cockpit model for the interior view and has two mirrors. The latter can be deactivated in the front menu system to improve the frame rate.
Although cars were made from very strong metals, they were still susceptible to damage, particularly to the wheels (if one of the front wheels was bent, for example, the vehicle would have difficulty being steered). They suffer damage in real time that will affect their performance. This can range from dents in the bodywork to an engine explosion, and damage of this magnitude will mean that the driver will be forced to abandon the race.
The generic table below shows the body parts and penalties that will be incurred. In addition, the costs of all repairs will be charged after each race.
Compilation of cars with character sketches
The Alpha Romeo P3:
The P3 was the first true single-seater racing car. It was powered by an eight-cylinder engine built around two four-cylinder blocks, each fed by its own supercharger. One of the engine's main strengths was its low-end torque. Power to the rear wheels was transmitted by two driveshafts which allowed the driver's seat to be placed lower in the chassis.
The original leaf spring suspension was replaced in 1935 by a Dubonnet independent front suspension. The complete car weighed only 1,625 pounds and, without its cast iron block engine, would have weighed much less.
The Mercedes 154:
The Mercedes W154 was built in response to the new formula for 1938 which specified a maximum capacity of 3,000cc for supercharged engines and 4,500cc for normally aspirated cars, with a sliding minimum weight scale.
The original leaf spring suspension was replaced in 1935 by a Dubonnet independent front suspension. The complete car weighed only 1,625 pounds and, without its cast iron block engine, would have weighed much less
The new chassis is a few centimetres shorter than the W125, but the offset of the engine and transmission from the car's longitudinal axis places the propeller shaft next to the driver. This results in a lowered driver's seat which, together with the lower body shape, gives the new car a pronounced lowered appearance
And many more cars!
The studio archive
This 3GB archive comes from the development studio "Broadsword Interactive Limited". 90% of the data is for the Spirit of Speed Dreamcast and PC game. It contains a lot of game design documents, conceptual materials, development tools, PC/Dreamcast buils of SOS 1937 and even Windows CE source codes of various games like the Unreleased version of Spirit of Speed 2002.
In the SOS 1937 data, two tracks not included in the final version are present. These are "Isle of Man" and "Spa Francorchamps" (to be confirmed)
The source codes
Source Code Archive
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Sifting : «It seems that Spirit of Speed 1937 and Ballz/Moho are the only Dreamcast games. The others seem to be Pocket PC games, with no reference to the Dreamcast in the source code. Yet they run on Windows CE and have targets for SH4, so the groundwork is there to port them.»
Asset archive
«It seems that SOS 2002 is indeed something new. However, it's not a Dreamcast game; the graphics engine even uses shaders. The good news is that it should be easy to compile, but I'm not sure if the game data is in the archive. It's the same with the Pocket PC games - there doesn't seem to be any game data for them either.»
«The code for the graphics, controls and sound all need to be adapted to port each Pocket PC title to Dreamcast. The data files for the games must also be found as well.»
Cancelled tracks
Some examples of documents
Technical Review document
3D Studio Max 2.5 Document
Registry data document
Front-end Documentation
Car Physics Document
Millestones Document
Directory Structure Document
Design Document
Dreamcast and PC builds:
Ian Micheal : «I managed to get the SOS 1937 build going, there are errors on the track but it's playable, the controls in the menu are weird like that but it works...»
The research done on this archive is from early 2020. We have never created a GDI of the repaired SOS 1937 Dreamcast builds listed above.
Development tool
Ian Micheal : «I think the tools and editors for SOS 1937 are very interesting, I was able to run them and load the models then the textures etc.»
«One cool thing is that all the tools for SOS 1937 like the track editor and textures etc. really allows you to model the game.»
The sources of a strange Game Boy tool can be found in the archive. Perhaps it was to be used for the eventually cancelled Spirit of Speed 1937 version on Game Boy Advance?
You can download the Spirit of Speed archive (and others) below:
Archive Windows CE de Broadsword Interactive (release compromised)
One of the Backup.iso files was too big for Github. It is only copies of what is already in the archive. However, you can download it here:
Please note that the assets cannot be used in any commercial game. The cars in particular were licensed from Mercedes, Alfa Romeo, etc. They could only be used in Spirit of Speed, because they wanted to support a small independent Welsh company!
We decline all responsibilities in case of use other than for Spirit of Speed.
Important :
The license owner of Spirit of Speed, John Jones Steele of "West Coast Software Limited", has given his permission to release it. We can only thank him, it is rare to get permission to put such an archive online.
I would also like to thank the owners of The Dreamcast Junkyard for putting me in touch with John Jones-Steele.
Sources :
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Exciting article on SOS 1937: https://www.badgamehalloffame.com/spirit-of-speed-1937/
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Game Design documents from the archive
Special thanks to :
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LemonHaze, Ian Micheal, Sizious, and Sifting for working on and analysing this archive.
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The owner of the archive for sending it to me.
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Hicks for the correction of the article in French.
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Vince for the correction of the article in English.