My favorite games of all time, the story of Carmageddon part 3...

Carmageddon would never have been developed by any major studio in the ‘90s. No AAA team would  approach the idea. Management would fire anybody that had pitched something similar. Decades later some of the biggest games revolve around sex, guns, violence, and fast cars. Studios are falling over themselves to corner the mature market. The biggest of the mature titles is the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series. GTA V has made Rockstar Games an unbelievable amount of money. Disney, and 20th Century Fox tout the billions made by Avatar, and the Avengers. When it comes to a return on an investment nothing comes close to GTA. Avatar for example made $2.8 billion, on a budget of $237 million. That’s impressive but GTA V made $6 billion on a budget of $265 million. Even if you factor in marketing costs the numbers are simply unbelievable. When GTA was first released in 1997 it was nowhere near as notorious as Carmageddon. I would often have a laugh when people would ask “if you love Carmageddon, why don’t you like GTA?” Back then the camera was top-down, and the game play didn't compare. I would sometimes move the camera to top down in Carma, and say, “there, now it’s GTA.” To be fair there was one other major studio that beat both Stainless Games, and Rockstar to the punch. That was SingleTrac, and their breakout hit Twisted Metal, which was published by Sony.

It was not surprising that Sony published Twisted Metal. They understood that the audiences growing up on consoles were getting older. They were targeting the families that already had a Sega, or Nintendo system. Most of those kids had outgrown Sonic, and Mario. They wanted a game with more blood, and action.  If it wasn't on the Sega, or Nintendo machines, they were willing to switch. The wave of violent fighting games, and 3D shooters in the early ‘90s, such as Atari’s Primal Rage, Rage’s Killer Instinct, Midway’s Mortal Kombat, and id's Doom were proof that mature titles were selling. Aside from fighting games where else could the genre incorporate violence? David Jaffe and his team at SingleTrac melded vehicle combat, with a first person shooter. Throw in an over-the-top story involving a tournament, and you’d think that Stainless Software was poaching the concept. The ideas featured in Twisted Metal, and Carmageddon actually came from many different places. Vehicle combat was nothing new, and had roots in traditional tabletop gaming.

Steve Jackson Games was responsible for publishing dozens of original tabletop gaming systems. Those are the ones that require dice, some miniatures, and a score sheet. One of the more popular titles was Autoduel. This role playing system from 1985, received a PC game by Origin Systems in 1987. The rules of Autoduel would eventually become standardized in GURPS, the Generic Universal Role Playing System, which was first published in 1986. These systems, and games were based on an even older Steve Jackson game. Car Wars the tabletop game series first published in 1980. It has always remained popular in the tabletop gaming community. The sixth edition was published in 2019. The newest tabletop game to join the genre was called Gaslands. It was released by Osprey in 2017. Games Workshop released Dark Future in 1988. It faded in popularity over the years but was brought back as a PC game with Dark Future: Blood Red States in 2019, by developer Auroch Digital. All of these titles had a hand in influencing the creation of the vehicle combat genre. 

Video games would bring the tabletop experience to life. I already mentioned Twisted Metal, however the ‘90s, and ‘00s saw the genre grow. Twisted Metal received a number of sequels. I will talk about the varying quality of those later. Other publishers knew the trend was coming, and had their own games lined up. One of the more stylish entries was Interstate ’76 by Activision. The game came out in 1997 same as GTA, and Carmageddon. Its physics engine was amazing, and stylish polygons gave it a retro feel. The combat mechanics found the line between Twisted Metal, and Carmageddon. The sequel was Interstate ’82, which came out in 1999. The series also inspired the Vigilante 8 games, which were designed with consoles in mind rather than the PC. Rogue Trip Vacation 2012 was a spiritual successor to Twisted Metal by SingleTrac. It came out in 1998. David Jaffe wouldn’t touch another vehicle combat game until 2007, when Incognito Entertainment released Calling All Cars! Not to be outdone Slick Entertainment released Scrap Metal for Xbox Live in 2010. All of those aforementioned games had tremendous planning, and lots of market research. This ensured the publisher could have a game delivered on time, and on budget. Carmagedon wasn't the result of spreadsheets, and data analysis. It came about more by accident.

When the developers at Stainless would get bored with racing games, they would turn around, and see what chaos they could create by driving head first into traffic. They saw that most games handled collisions poorly, if at all. Some didn’t even allow you to turn around completely. They were fans of Banger Racing. It was a sort of demolition derby-style race that had a following in Britain. They knew that there was a market for a game like that, and started putting together a prototype. The work they were doing would influence a generation of game developers. These included Criterion, famous for the Burnout series, Evolution Studios which created MotorStorm, Black Rock Studio which developed Split/Second, and Rockstar which created GTA. Fellow UK developer Reflections Interactive actually beat them all to the market. They released Destruction Derby for the Playstation in 1995. For a console game the physics engine was amazing. It gave a real sense of weight, and speed to the cars. Vehicles were deformed in pileups, this was the opposite of Gran Turismo, where Sony promised the manufacturers that their cars would never so much as be dented in the game. This focus on realism was also very noticeable when compared to Twisted Metal. The engine Reflections built got better in the Driver series, and Stuntman for the Playstation 2, both of which added different types of vehicles.

Destruction Derby, and Twisted Metal helped put the Playstation on the map in 1995. Stainless had started working on their own vehicle combat system in 1994. One of the things they were trying to figure out was how to avoid pedestrians in their open-world game. They decided they should make running them over a part of the game play. There weren’t any publishers willing to take the call to talk about their idea. Fellow Brits at Sales Curve Interactive (SCi) had worked with Stainless in the past. Having the studio adapt PC games for the Mac. They decided to take a chance on the game. To increase the odds of getting published they were looking for a license to attach the game to. One of the front runners was the Mad Max series. The trilogy by George Miller started in 1979, and had sequels in 1981, and 1985. The films had a cult following the world over. The title character fought roving gangs in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is entirely possible that Max Damage was named after Mad Max. At the very least some of the “Auto Scum” gang members in Carmageddon could be traced to designs featured in the Miller films. The series was big enough to be recognized, but not so big as acquiring the license would be wildly expensive. SCi had difficulty finding out who owned the rights to the property. Since Miller had made the films in Australia, different studios in the US, and the UK were responsible for rights, and distribution.

SCi hit a literal dead end trying to get the rights for Mad Max. They didn’t pull the plug on Stainless. They kept them in business by assigning them other projects in the interim. While doing research SCi discovered an even older cult film revolving around cars, and violence. This film had even more in common with what Stainless was going after, including awarding points for killing pedestrians. Death Race 2000 had been released in 1975. Featuring David Carradine, an actor that became famous from the TV show Kung Fu. As well as a young Sylvester Stallone before he created the first Rocky movie. The characters were very crass, and over-the-top. Carradine played two-time winner Frankenstein, “who lost a leg in ’98, an arm in ’99, with half a face, and half a chest, and all the guts in the world.” His face was covered by a rubber mask, and he sported a helmet similar to Darth Vader’s two years before Star Wars premiered. Many people noticed that Kutter from Carmageddon looked very similar to Frankenstein. Stallone played mob enforcer Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, his moll Myra was played by Louisa Moritz. These were not unlike Alfonzo Spaghetti, and Madam Scarlett respectively. There were many more such characters in the film, such as Nero, Calamity Jane, and a Nazi named Matilda the Hun. Each character  had an outlandish supercharged race car, covered in spikes, horns, and even teeth. The Hawk, and Eagle from Carmageddon were undoubtedly based on The Monster.

In the film the high-speed cars run a transcontinental rally, rather than just around a city. The rule changes for the year 2000 were explained in the film; women are worth 10 points more than men in all age brackets. Teenagers are worth 40 points. Toddlers under 12 are worth 70 points. Anyone over 75-years-old was worth 100 points. The movie featured nudity, sex, drug use, vulgar language, and misogyny, on top of all that violence. Of course audiences accepted that this was a dark comedy set in a dystopia. Many films from the ‘70s were about exploitation. Death Race 2000 had shlock value like other titles from that era. With the fancy sets, actual race car props, and various locations used, it was essentially a polished “grindhouse” movie. A full year later the video game industry had its first controversial game. The title was called Death Race, it had nothing to do with the movie, you could imagine that many people assumed it did. Exidy had released its first title Destruction Derby (no kidding!) in 1975. Their follow up was Death Race, in which the Grim Reaper in a hot rod drove over “gremlins,” and not people. Each time players ran over a character there would be a scream, followed by a tombstone left on the screen. The game made headlines as parents were upset with the content, trying to get arcade operators to pull the cabinet. Reporters were shocked as well, and published brutal reviews. This negative publicity of course increased orders through 1977.

SCi had no luck with the owners of Death Race 2000 either. They were afraid that a video game allowing you to run over pedestrians was too controversial. It would bring down the value of their film. Yes, the same producers that had no problem with Sylvester Stallone punching his girlfriend in the face, a man getting stabbed in the crotch by a bumper-mounted knife, a Nazi expounding the values of the master race, and Frankenstein assassinating the President of the USA was okay. A video game with only a fraction of that content was simply too much! The talks seemed to be going well for Stainless, or so they thought. The studio didn’t even get a chance to change the program name before the it was published. If the title managed to suddenly quit on the Mac, or PC it would say that “Deathrace” has crashed. This did not deter the team from putting their efforts into making the best game that they could. That was easier said than done. No other studio had attempted what they were going for. Stainless didn’t really work from a template, they literally made things up as they went along. Part of this meant doing research on actual car crashes, as well as running over pedestrians. No, really!

On an earlier blog I mentioned that Tony Taylor played Max Damage in the “Prat Cam.” He was a general handyman, and a friend of the team. He was also a sort of amateur stuntman. When the studio was recording footage for the Prat Cam he yelled, and jerked himself around as if he was in the Eagle. In order to get the shot of him getting crashed into from behind he had the team hit him as hard as they could in the back of his head with a pool cue. Thankfully he was wearing his helmet at the time. It was only the beginning of his exploits. I think the statute of limitations has expired on the things that Stainless Games had gotten away with during the development of Carma. Frankly it’s a miracle that nobody was killed! We will look at what the creative, and physical risks the studio took in the next blog. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Building a gaming legacy, the Games Workshop series, part 11...

A few blogs back I mentioned that Adeptus Titanicus, the system created by Games Workshop to introduce Titan warfare to the public was a response to the wildly popular Battletech system by FASA. It wasn't the first time nor would it be the last time that Games Workshop had to cater to the trends in tabletop gaming. Another system that Games Workshop studied was among the oldest car combat systems around. In 1980 Steve Jackson Games released a system called Car Wars. It was set in a dystopian future where vehicular combat was the norm. People specialized in combat, offered their services as patrol officers, mercenaries, transports and assassins. Car combat had become so popular that it was even organized at the professional level and turned into a sport. Steve Jackson was a well regarded developer of many gaming systems. He and his team would create games on a variety of topics. They would develop clean and simple rules and release the games in hobby stores.

 

The genius of the Steve Jackson Games was in the designs themselves. Steve was a master of clean design and trusted his audience to fill in the details with their imagination. The majority of his games and components could be printed on paper or cardstock. This kept the prices low and allowed him to sell bundles of games and expansions in small plastic sleeves, no bigger than a deck of playing cards. The audience only needed some dice and a pencil to handle the combat and management system of the games. Car Wars and the reviewed version known as Autoduel would be no different from his other systems. Players could use small tokens to represent their cars or even model some Micro Machines for the job and keep them in the case. Each expansion that Steve developed helped flesh out the world of Car Wars. There were scenarios that could be explored, including the ever popular escort missions. New vehicle types would be added, new weapon rules would be created and there was a solid sense of balance between the heavily armored trucks and the small motorcycles. Best of all Steve would continue to support the system in the pages of Autoduel Quarterly. The small magazine introduced more scenarios, weapon types and vehicles. On the back page there were templates for roads, hazards and obstacles. These could be photocopied and cut out to keep the game fresh. The Steve Jackson Games were among the first to permit some of the content to be copied and distributed. We take it for granted these days thanks to public licenses and internet distribution but this was a revolutionary concept back in the '80s. Since every company was struggling to make a profit it didn't make sense to give away some of your best ideas. That was what made Steve Jackson such a respectable developer and helped spread his games through the community.

I enjoyed Car Wars for the world that Jackson had created. It was not as bleak as the world of Mad Max or The Road Warrior, the 1979 film and its 1981 successor. The George Miller films were the basis for just about all modern car combat franchises. Instead Car Wars had a sense of futurism. Cars were computer piloted, had engines that ran on diesel, gas, rocket fuel, batteries or hybrid technology. GPS navigation, camera systems and self-healing tires were standard. His team predicted everything that DARPA, Tesla, Google and the other auto manufacturers would dream up 30 years later. The art that was featured in the pages of Autoduel Quarterly were heavily influenced on manga designs. The vehicles were not quite mecha and not quite hot rod cartoon but something in between. There was no doubt that Car Wars set a standard that would be copied by the video game industry.

 

In 1985 Origin Systems released an Autoduel PC game. It was a top-down perspective game that predicted the format that would be used by the original Grand Theft Auto. However it was the vehicle combat games that followed in the '90s that owed a bit more to Steve Jackson than Mad Max. In 1995 the Playstation debuted and solid 3D games on the home consoles were a possibility. SingleTrac released Twisted Metal, it set a new standard for violence and depravity. It had a dark sense of humor too that appealed to the Gen X gamers. That same year Reflections Interactive (which would develop the Driver series) released Destruction Derby. It had impressive vehicle physics and models for the time. A few years later Activision released Interstate '76 and Stainless Games released Carmageddon. Whether the world was retro or futuristic, there was something for every fan of the genre. Cars, guns, crashes and violence was an industry all to itself. The themes explored in each of the titles had been featured in Car Wars many years prior.

 

Games Workshop had been following the trends and thought that they could create a superior vehicle combat game. In 1988 they came out with Dark Future: The game of highway warriors. Like the other self-contained games from GW they made sure to include rules, templates and hobby pieces that would help create an unlimited amount of scenarios. It was one of the rare entries from the publisher that was not connected to the Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40,000 timelines. Games Workshop had been paying attention to the elements that made Car Wars work and scaled up the experience. The vehicles and roads in Dark Future were larger than Car Wars, about 1/64 scale or roughly Hot Wheels-sized. The game included rules for certain vehicle types and weapons but where it really set itself apart from any other game was the emphasis on gangs and gang warfare. These were the sorts of collaborative experiences that Games Workshop would revisit in Necromunda.

The developer went all in with the system and began supporting it in unique ways. Novels on the Warhammer Fantasy and 40K universes were sporadically released however Dark Future had an entire library of books published shortly after its release. It was as if Games Workshop were trying to catch up to the adventures printed in the pages of Autoduel Quarterly. Fans of the various systems had always wanted to see more stories, comics and graphic novels featuring their favorite characters. Games Workshop did honor the various IP in their magazines and even comic book runs but for some reason Dark Future got a very hard push when it was released. I was certainly surprised with the coverage, hobby tips and articles on all things Dark Future in the pages of White Dwarf magazine.

 

Players were encouraged to develop their own gangs and vehicles for use with the system. In White Dwarf we could see various Hot Wheels and Matchbox toy cars being used as the basis for some amazing conversions. There were police officers, armored corporate goons and rebel alliances featured throughout the various articles. The pages of White Dwarf dedicated to the hobby elements were known as 'eavy Metal. This was of course because miniatures had been cast in lead for years and years. Thankfully when Games Workshop started to go after a more mainstream audience the studio began to focus on plastics. For the more dedicated hobbyists the studio switched to pewter and resin miniatures. The cars in Dark Future were mostly plastic with a few motorcycles being published in plastic.

 

Dark Future did get a sizable following and the system stayed in circulation for a few years. However the popularity of Car Wars remained. At independent game conventions you could still find hobbyists organizing Car Wars tournaments. The best part about the system was how scalable it was. Just because the original system was designed to fit in your pocket it didn't mean that it couldn't work in a larger scale. Hobbyists would build elaborate models for their games and invite new as well as veteran players to see why the system was still fun after 30 years.

Dark Future was eventually scrapped, along with the other great GW systems like Man 'O War, Battlefleet Gothic and Necromunda. Yet Car Wars remains in publication. You can even find it in the board game section of your local Target!. Steve Jackson Games still offers the original version, now known as Car Wars Classic and a newer version designed for the CCG audience known as Car Wars the Card Game.

 

Just like the other games I have been mentioning over these past few weeks, it turned out that Games Workshop was breathing new life into classic systems. It was announced that Dark Future would receive a video game as well. Dark Future: Blood Red States was announced at the end of 2015. It was being developed by Auroch Digital and the details on the game remained hazy. Hopefully there would be enough of the classic system in the new game so that players could see why it was so popular in the late '80s.

 

There was a system that Games Workshop developed in the '80s that stayed red hot for more than a decade. Of all the self-contained experiences there was one game which was possibly the most popular and filled with the most potential for a video game adaptation. It was none of the games that I have mentioned so far but it was connected to a part of the established universe of Games Workshop. We'll take a look at this game and the legacy it created on the next blog. Until then I hope you are interested in checking out some classic systems or mobile versions of these great games. As always if you enjoyed this blog and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!