August 21, 2009 - At Gamescom in Cologne, Germany this week, third-party publisher Bethesda revealed that it had picked up the rights to release Archer MacLean's Wheel Spin, a Wii racer, in Europe. For you American readers, the title is known as Speed Zone and handled by another publisher stateside, where it just shipped to retailers.
The title features a wide variety of futuristic race tracks and vehicles and is played simply by holding the Wii remote sideways and tilting left and right to steer. To gain speed, you run over speed pads placed about tracks. The controls are sensitive and take some getting used to, an issue compounded by the fact that it's all to easy to take a corner too loosely and send your vehicle flying off the course and into thin air.
Wheel Spin / Speed Zone runs in 480p and is supposedly locked at 60 frames, although we spotted several points during the Gamescom demo where the fluidity dipped below that with multiple cars on-screen.
Although the game features an eight-player local play mode, no online play is supported.
The title will ship in Europe this autumn.
