Split Second Box Art Revealed

Disney Interactive Studios has released the box art for its highly anticipated racer, Split Second. Split/Second is set within a reality television show, in a made-for-TV city rigged for destruction, and is an intense action racing game in which competitors can trigger events that take out opponents or completely change the track as they compete to become the season’s champion.

The developer, Black Rock Studios, is also the studio behind the critically acclaimed 2008 action sports game PURE. PURE won numerous awards, including the Game Critics Award for Best Racing Game at E3 2008, and was named among the top ten video games of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly.

Split/Second places players inside a fictional television competition, with each race functioning as an episode within a full season. Rather than simply crossing a finish line first, drivers build up a meter called Power Play by drafting close behind rivals, drifting through corners, catching air off jumps and pulling off near misses. Once charged, that meter can be spent to trigger scripted, environmental explosions along the route – a fuel tanker detonating, a crane dropping a shipping container across the road, or a section of elevated track collapsing entirely. A fully charged meter can unleash a much larger event capable of reshaping the route itself or eliminating several competitors at once, giving the racing a rhythm built around timing destruction rather than simply outpacing the field on raw speed alone.

Black Rock Studio, based in Brighton, England, was previously known as Climax Racing before adopting its new name, and the developer had already built a reputation for arcade-style racing rather than simulation. PURE, its 2008 ATV racing game, was praised for its sense of speed and its trick-based scoring system, and the studio carried some of that same emphasis on spectacle and momentum into Split/Second’s design.

Split/Second went on to release in the spring of 2010 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, arriving in a crowded racing field that also included long-running franchises built around licensed cars and closed-circuit racing. Its emphasis on scripted destruction and made-for-television presentation set it apart from more traditional arcade racers of the era, and the game’s structure – with named “episodes” building toward a season finale – reinforced the reality-show framing described in its story.

Box art like the piece revealed here typically arrives well ahead of a game’s release, giving publishers an early marketing beat to build anticipation before screenshots, trailers and reviews follow. For a title built so heavily around spectacle, that first look at the cover art also set expectations for the tone of the game itself, hinting at the mix of high-speed racing and large-scale destruction that would end up defining Split/Second once it reached store shelves.