Black Cats & Chequered Flags celebrates the lifetime of considered one of System 1’s earliest champions utilizing VR and blended actuality.
Directed by Elisabetta Rotolo and Siobhan McDonnell, Black Cats & Chequered Flags is an interactive VR and MR expertise centered on Alberto Ascari. Profitable each the 1952 and 1953 championships with Ferrari, this tribute to Italy’s most profitable F1 driver appears again at his relationship together with his father and childhood, his superstitious nature, and his rise to fame.
I went hands-on with this 20-minute mission throughout Venice Immersive 2025, the place it has instantly grow to be considered one of my highlights. As a long-suffering Ferrari fan in System 1, having the prospect to discover Ascari’s life via an immersive expertise required little convincing. After getting right into a classic pit crew uniform, myself and two others took our locations throughout a big room.
This begins with a enjoyable little blended actuality mini-game the place you and your co-op companions are tasked with finishing a 50s-style pit cease, no ridiculously easy tire modifications needing lower than two seconds right here. We needed to swap out the tires, hammer the brand new ones in, refuel the automotive, and provides it a fast clear too utilizing hand monitoring. Nothing groundbreaking and we did not beat the quickest time, however it’s a superb icebreaker earlier than the principle occasion.
This quickly transitions into the VR facet of the story, which is not vastly in-depth whereas nonetheless capturing key moments of Ascari’s life. We witness the defining affect his father, Antonio Ascari, had on his life earlier than Antonio’s premature dying in a racing accident. The ever distinguished black cat highlights Alberto’s superstitious nature, providing an intriguing perception into his life I wasn’t beforehand conscious of.
That is all portrayed via immersive environments with sadly restricted interactivity, letting you decide up digital images or a trophy however not rather more. The presentation can really feel barely tough at factors with jagged shadows, although there’s character to those stylized visuals that makes this simpler to forgive.
Sequences typically throw in real-life archive footage from these occasions too for comparability, which is a welcome contact. One section showcases the horrifying incident on the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix, the place Ascari crashed on the Harbor Chicane, ending up within the harbor together with his Lancia automotive however miraculously surviving. This makes the expertise really feel virtually like a museum.
Nonetheless, this leaves sure facets of his racing profession unexplored, and that is reasonably disappointing. Past a quick point out, Black Cats & Chequered Flags does not actually contact upon his well-known rivalry with Juan Manuel Fangio, the five-time champion whose information remained unsurpassed for many years till Michael Schumacher got here alongside. To see that in motion could be improbable; it is a missed alternative.
Nobody from the crew was current throughout my demo past occasion employees, so I could not ask if a house launch is ultimately deliberate. I definitely hope in order regardless of some tough edges, I loved my time with Black Cats & Chequered Flags. It is a transient but compelling window into the legacy of considered one of System 1’s biggest drivers, exploring an period not often touched upon in fashionable media.
