While I can add new details after this, I recently rediscovered a text file of mine from back in April 8th 2022 talking a bit about the development of this track - which summarizes well what I remembered along with a detail or two [an earlier name] I didn't remember.
Latest track of the pak, which is why I wanted to write first about it considering that its pretty much fresh from having made it. The name actually came from someone describing a screenshot from how it looks now as "like those good liminal space games from itch.io", at first thinking "Velocity Vortex Zone" [2025 EDIT: I could find the original message and it was RoyKirbs - thanks kirb :D] until I kept checking on my folders, stumbled upon that song by VLIF that I had downloaded along with others, and listening to it again instantly made me pick it as the final music for the track, after deliberating between GTR Attack from Contra Hard Corps, or Spin on the Bridge from SOR2 before the aesthetic was set in stone. And even then, before it had that done and was just the layout development as the whole part of the "april fools chaos map" idea, that came to me while thinking on the Stadium Rave music in Spongebob...so there's that too; before that changed I was thinking about using KFAD's remix of the song considering the original might have been prone to copyright strikes.
...Wow. I REALLY didn't remember that I was also considering GTR Attack [which I was thinking to use for Ridge Turnpike before choosing Last Bronx] or Spin the Bridge [which I eventually used for Red Rage Highway...around 3 years later] - although a variation of Stadium Rave would totally track with the initial April Fools nature of the track I indeed remember.
I unfortunately DON'T have any old videos of pre-release versions, so I'd have to see if I scrounge up old screenshots from Discord, but if you can entertain using your imagination to try and picture how it was...imagine the track is entirely walled, doesn't have the pink lightning and had a lot more sneaker panels..and A LOT of item boxes. That was basically the first draft of the layout - and the sneaker panel/item box excess was part of it being an April Fools track in the first place.
Scratch that - I found a VERY early screenshot before using palette textures that, as part of the joke, had a line full of Arid Sands Toad NPCs [the ones you could ram and send flying into an explosion] at the start with the caption [today I'm waging war] lmao
And pair that alongside a tweet with four screenshots with the palette textures partially done but retaining the sneaker panel/item box madness in its fully glory...while saying that I was likely going to rework the track into being a legitimate one. Note that at this point, it already had no walls, although unsure if I did that just for track visibility or if I was just starting to take it to that new direction.
April 1, 2022 TweetThe reason why it did NOT turn out into an April Fools track though is because...I started warming up to the layout legitimately after applying the palette textures on the road you see now, as those originally started as a placeholder until I thought that they just looked nice. Once the pink lightning was applied, it was only a matter of time with ironing out the checkpoints and eventually adding a few structure decorations for extra flavor.
The port process to Ring Racers was...I think it took a few days but was somewhat straightforward - again, tracks with sneaker panels have the bonus of the new sliptide, and the layout worked smoothly with the new controls. The biggest adjustment was to make that one shortcut path wider and have it fenced to not make it a crapshoot to use [Monkey Mall I'm looking at you] as it had to be behind a tripwire now.