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By Brian Ashcraft

"For the first few months of working here, my old boss at Lionheads Studios thought I was working with Mizuguchi," says Q-Games planner Rhodri Broadbent, lounging on a sofa in the developer's third floor Kyoto office space. There's a hi-def TV playing their latest, PixelJunk Racers. Whenever Q-Games is first mentioned, Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q? Entertainment is usually as well — though Q-Games had the "Q" before Mizguchi left SEGA to set up his boutique studio. Sure, Q-Games may not have Miz, but it does have Dylan Cuthbert, who helped create Star Fox while working for Nintendo, and Kenkichi Shimooka, who developed Ape Escape for the PlayStation. Dylan has the chicken pox and couldn't make it. Kenkichi? No clue where he is.

I'm in a white meeting room, waiting for the interview to start. I peer down the street still slick with rain. There are traditional Kyoto-style houses across the street from the modern office building. In the meeting room, there's a clock, a white board (fitting) and ping pong nets. When not used as a meeting room, it's converted into a ping pong room. Well, that's what the recruitment brochure tells me — and the drawer of ping pong equipment doesn't lead me to believe otherwise. A trio of developers enter, trade business cards and speak in British and North American accents. Almost half the office is foreign. These devs sitting across from me were instrumental in bringing Q-Games first game label PixelJunk title Racers to the PlayStation Network.

Q Games—no relation to Q Entertainment—will release PixelJunk Racers for the PLAYSTATION 3 this week, reports IGN, joining High Stakes on the Vegas Strip: Poker Edition for the week's downloadable titles. Q Games is responsible for handheld hits Digidrive and Star Fox Command and promises that the high-speed top down racer is the first in a series of PixelJunk branded games scheduled to hit the PS3.

PixelJunk Racers Release Date [IGN]

PixelJunk Racers didn't get much attention at Sony's E3 2007 press conference, but the game has a pedigree that might interest a few PLAYSTATION 3 owners. Developed by Q Games (a separate entity from Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment) PixelJunk Racers is a top down PlayStation Network title from the team that created Digidrive for Nintendo's bit Generations line and Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS. The game looks like a high def Championship Sprint, but with added car combat and dozens of non-playable competitors. It's the first in a series of games from Q to be released under the PixelJunk brand. We're looking for more information from Sony on the quietly revealed PS3 game soon, but 8 new screens of the game are in our gallery below.