Remember '90s Arcade Racer? Back in 2013, it showed almost limitless promise, and was successfully crowdfunded and lined up for release on modern systems, including the Wii U.
Described by developer Antonis Pelekanos as a love letter to Sega's Daytona USA, '90s Arcade Racer never met its proposed launch window, and would eventually change its name to '90s Super GP, dropping Wii U support and focusing instead on Switch, PS4 and Steam.
Back in 2019, Nintendo Life reported that Pelekanos was no longer involved with the game and that publisher Nicalis had sole ownership. The '90s Super GP game page is still live on its site, with Switch, PS4 and Steam listed. The "Soon!" icon has been present for quite a few years now. The game remains unreleased.
It would seem that '90s Arcade Racer is well and truly stuck in development hell, as record label Scarlet Moon has decided to release two musical tracks from the game after getting fed up of waiting for it to materialise.
Entitled 'Racing Music', presumably to prevent any issues with Nicalis, the two-track single includes Burning Clutch and Thrill of Speed. Both tracks were composed by the legendary Vince DiCola (Transformers: The Movie, Rocky IV) and his writing partner, Kenny Meriedeth.
According to Scarlet Moon's Jayson Napolitano, he held a meeting between Nicalis's Tyrone Rodriguez and DiCola (who Scarlet Moon represented at the time) some years ago at a past E3 event. Rodriguez, like many people who grew up in the '80s, is apparently a fan of DiCola's work, and a deal was struck for him to pen the music for '90s Arcade Racer. Scarlet Moon would be able to release the soundtrack when the game launched. "That hasn't happened nearly ten years later, so we wanted to make the single available to fans," says Napolitano.
Back in 2019, Nicalis boss Rodriguez was accused of ghosting development partners, using racial and homophobic slurs and mistreating his staff.