Hooked on Cel-shading

Cel-shading is a constant source of perturbation around here. After the enormous success of Jet Set Radio, developers around the globe have been copying and banking on the technique. Oddly enough, none of the staff here found the cel-shaded House of the Dead screenshots all that interesting, and cel-shaded lightgun games are fairly moot, too. One game that has tickled our fancies however is Capcom's recently announced Auto Modellista for the PlayStation 2. Whether it's nostalgia (we're all big Saturday morning cartoon fans) or just curiosity, a cel-shaded driving game has done what none of its counterparts could; caught our attention. The game features licensed (and toon'd) cars such as the Toyota Celica SS-II, Nissan Skyline GT-R and plenty of others, and its own Gran Turismo-style garage mode where players can customize to their heart's content with new parts and a sprayshop. In a demo shown at the recent Tokyo Auto Salon 2002, journalists at GameSpot caught a glimpse of the game. "The playable demo of the game only allowed users to drive around a simple oval course for two laps and did not provide access to other game modes. Although the game may have a somewhat unrealistic anime-like visual appearance, as a whole, it is a solid simulation-style racing game in the mode of such titles as Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo series," writes Yukiyoshi Ike Sato for GameSpot. Auto Modellista is due out in Japan this year, but Capcom hasn't announced the game in the US yet. We spoke to Capcom Eurosoft recently, and they had no idea whether the game would be released in Europe, or indeed the USA. When questioned about the game, they pleaded ignorance, but you could tell they were all playing it. We're already planning articles called "Whatever Happened to Cel-Shading" for publication in a couple of years time, but if Auto Modellista lives up to its billing, it could persuade us to puts our pens and erasers away for another few. Or at least until we've played the damn thing.

Source - GameSpot