The essential idea of this track was to reimagine my first shot at a custom RR track and pepper it with a few more things to make it more dynamic, not just after a whole year of the game being out and having that concept be good enough to try get back into mapping, but also because I remember one playtester from back then feeling the original was a bit basic...which is why I threw in quite a few more turns and nuances.
The very first preview of this track, before it even was revealed to be a Grit Mountain remake, wasn't even textured - but was a good showcase not just for the people that watched it but also to myself in showing how effective this new layout was even in its gridboxed state.
The first song I was thinking to use, mainly to differentiate it from the original, was initially Gaia (Earthquake's theme) from Samurai Shodown, although I was also thinking whether to use another ManxTT Superbike song or a Fighting Vipers song, but for the preview above I was using Speed Nation from Ridge Racer 64 as a placeholder.
I think it was while I was working out the texturing, which this time around had a fair amount of leverage coming off Hardhat Havoc's textures this time around (but with the walls of the outside still being Rumble Ridge), that while trying to think of something that could fit the frantic speed I wanted to have but was a longer song overall than any of ManxTT's, I eventually remembered Billy Kane's theme from KOF98 - London March.
There's more that I still have to polish out before calling it finished, but big thanks to Craggy for providing quite the useful feedback on a few places to iron out (signage, item set location) in the first Beta version I shared for testing, and YoshiTheMage for giving it a bigger crack with a few things to address with the second beta I had prepared.