Pixel Ripped 1995 – The Interview – All The PlayStation You'll Ever Need.

In this issue of Mr. PSVR’s Interview Corner, we get a closer look into ARVORE’s Pixel Ripped 1995 with creator and Director, Ana Ribeiro, and talk more about the series for Virtual Reality.

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Interview with Ana Ribeiro of ARVORE Immersive Experiences

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Welcome to the PlayStation Brahs. Can you please introduce yourself and what you do at ARVORE?

“I’m Ana Ribeiro, the creator and Director of the Pixel Ripped game series.”

With the success of Pixel Ripped 1989, was there always an idea for a sequel, and was there a special reason for 1995?

“Yes, in fact, back in 2014 when Pixel Rift (later changed to Pixel Ripped) was my graduation project, my goal was to create 5 levels, each one happening on a different year of the games industry. But the idea was too ambitious, so I decided to do a vertical slice and focus on making a demo of the game just containing level 3, which was focused on the year 1989. Later on, and due to the success the demo got among the VR community, I decided to release 1989 as a separate episode, leaving the other 4 episodes planned to complete the whole series: 1978, 1983, 1995 and 1999. So after 3 years working on the project, I joined ARVORE, who published and co-developed Pixel Ripped 1989. After the success of 1989 we continued the partnership releasing now 1995. We chose this year based on the results of a poll system we implemented into Pixel Ripped 1989 game ending, which gathered all the data from our users responses, in which they were asked on which year they preferred the next part of the series to take place.”

Pixel Ripped 1995 has finally released and I know everyone must be excited with your hard work. Can you give us some of the backstory that players will get to experience?

“Our game is a trip to the history of gaming and more importantly a trip into peoples childhood memories as a gamer. Players experience the transition of the 2D games to tridimensional worlds and the technical struggles attached to that, the 16 bit console wars era, etc. We reference many games like Zelda, Castlevania, Streets Of Rage, Donkey Kong, Road Rash, Sonic, Castle Of Illusion, Metroid, Mario Kart, Star Fox and other great classics from that period. Players tell us how much nostalgia they felt revisiting a rental store, playing against other kids in an Arcade and trying to hide from their mother while playing games at night.”

Is there something you learned from Pixel Ripped 1989 development that you either tried something different that didn’t make it into the final game and you tried it with Pixel Ripped 1995? or was it more of this is a working formula so let’s see what else we can do type of feeling?

“Some things like the water mechanic for example, were not possible to be added on time for 1989 so we saved those ideas for 1995. Funny enough, there are many ideas saved for the next Pixel Ripped game which we couldn’t add into 1995. But apart from that, we tried many different changes into this game, like the narrative for example which was the main evolution comparing both games. We had a narrative designer added to the team, Barbara Framil, who really helped bring the narrative to another level. Giving to Pixel Ripped 1995 a much deeper connection between the 2D game character and the real world ones. You also get to be more involved with Dot and Cyblin Lord. The more elaborated narrative has been the attention of the positive reviews we got from our fans.”

Good things most of the time can come in threes. Are there any plans or ideas for a Pixel Ripped 20XX?

“Not yet, but we are open to change the upcoming episodes we had previously planned, so we never know. But one thing I can say for sure, there will not be an episode set in the year 2020.”