Disney gets dirty

When Disney gets sensational it's usually with a song, but it'll be the engine note of quad bikes the company hopes to drive sales this Christmas.

Disney is publishing a rip-roaring new game for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC this weekend. If you were to guess at what this might be you'd wager something to do with its blockbuster movies; another Pirates of the Caribbean adventure, or High School Musical performance perhaps. Although you can bet on the latter arriving sooner than later, what we're getting right now is an off-road racer: Pure.

As you may have experienced playing the download demo, Pure is an exhilarating extreme sports racer. Riders take their quad bikes to seven exotic world locations and race full throttle while performing death defying stunts to earn magical boost power for more speed and yet more impossible tempts of fate.

It's a formula made famous by such games as SSX Tricky published by EA, and the ground work for Pure was pursued by its development team Black Rock Studio in the fan favourite ATV Off-Road Racing for PlayStation 2 earlier this century. A little out of character for Disney though.

So we approached Game Director of Black Rock, Jason Avent, to explain how Disney came to publish such an unlikely candidate while at the same time giving his team freedom to produce the racer of their dreams.

Yahoo!: Pure feels like a rollercoaster at times, as opposed to a straightforward off-road racer. Was this always your intention?
Jason Avent: Well actually not at the start, no. We were going to build the most authentic ATV game ever when we began development. However we steered a different course after a few months. We realised that Disney could give us the freedom to be more brave and do something new in the genre. We decided we'd have more fun making a fast arcade game so we changed direction. I'd say we've been consistently on that course for the past eighteen months or so though.

Y!: Now that Pure is nearing release, what aspects of the game do you feel we should be especially excited about?
The massive air and incredible vistas; the Vertigo Rush moments in the game!

Y!: Were ATVs the obvious choice for the vehicles?
JA: Yep. We have experience of them and there has never been a trick-racing game in an arcade style. That was a good opportunity to exploit.

Y!: What is it about ATVs that leads to a visually impressive videogame? Why not monster trucks for example - or why not a variety of rides, bikes etc?
JA: Very simply, quad bikes are unique because they have four wheels so they have familiar car-like handling but riders can also jump hundreds of feet in the air and pull tricks. Our game is about tricks all of the time. Monster trucks can't pull tricks!

We're revving up our review of Pure, which is released this Friday, 26 September.