My favorite Games of All-Time #5: Carmageddon - Originally published on 1UP - July 21, 2006

Carmageddon is the most vile and repulsive game on my list. It makes State of Emergency look like a walk in the park. My brothers were shocked to see how high it ranked on my list, more so when they found out that I ranked it above Burning Rangers. Carmageddon fills my criteria of a great game so perfectly that it is amazing I didn't rank it higher. If I were ranking games based on total time spent playing then Carmageddon is a top-three game.

I had to rank the games based on their importance to me. If I could only play one game for the rest of my days which one meant the most to me? Which game is my absolute favorite and which ones come close? Carmageddon is the closest game that any non-Japanese designers have ever designed. It is in the top-5, it is in a place of great distinction.

Carmageddon was inspired by the classic cult movie Death Race 2000, featuring David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone. If you can get the game to crash the error screen says "Terminate Death Race." There was also an arcade game called Death Race way back in the late 70's. The arcade game had nothing to do with the movie, it was a hot rod race around a cemetery where you ran over pedestrians and tombstones popped up. These peds were also called "gremlins" in some literature. The original arcade game was so repulsive that it was banned from most establishments. About 30 years later the legacy continued when Carmageddon was released and Australia banned the import and sale of the game.

Carmageddon (Carma for short) is repulsive and vile. It came out at the height of a congressional inquiry into violent videogames. Grand Theft Auto and Mortal Kombat were the other big games being dissected at this point. Carmageddon showed up and the debate exploded. The content and purpose of the game could not be argued. You were the participant in a death race, you acquired time and points by running over pedestrians.

After all, look at the play screen. All of the important information appears on screen. There is car position and lap position, in case you really were paying attention to the race. Number of opponents wasted, time, profits and pedestrian kills. You could finish the stage by either winning the race, destroying all of your opponents or killing all of the pedestrians.

The gore was through the roof in this game. Points were rewarded for how many people you could take out in a combo. If you clipped a ped and sent them spinning you might have gotten an artistic bonus, if you plowed through them you might have gotten a splatter bonus. Blood was everywhere and the image of the driver (Max Damage) in the upper left corner sums it up. He seems to derive pleasure from the violence. Congress was in a fit, they had all the evidence they needed to condemn videogames. Only real sickos could find any pleasure in this game.

Seeing as how 1UP is filled with murderous sickos then I feel right at home. After all, those that have been playing videogames for any amount of time are surely riding an immoral path. If you've played Silent Hill and are longing for a giant butcher knife with which to skin people alive then please raise your hand. If you've ever played Mario Bros and have taken magic mushrooms that allow you to throw fireballs then please... raise your hand.

Congress, and many people that "don't get it" see only the surface level of a videogame. They don't understand that the good majority of gamers know the difference between right and wrong. We know the difference between what we see on the screen and our actions in real life. This isn't a case of monkey see, monkey do. This isn't a case of de-sensitation to violence. Violence has been around for as long as human kind has, we don't have the luxury of blaming videogames for the wars we have engaged in. Some of us choose peace, and would rather play games with action or violence than engage in the real deal.

The first two Carma games were made by the people at Stainless Games over in England. SCi published the titles. The people that worked on this game seemed to be out of their mind while they were developing the title. With the debate raging in congress they had the audacity to not only create but market this game as the goriest title ever

While in development Stainless went to extremes to capture the sights and sounds for the game. Polyphony is famous for recording the engine sounds of more than 400 cars for Gran Turismo. On the other side of the planet Stainless participated in demolition derbies to get the authentic sounds of cars crashing. Then they recorded the cars getting hit by bats, bricks and cinder blocks. In order to get an authentic sound of hitting pedestrians they got a good friend, Tony Taylor, the actor that plays Max Damage, to put on a helmet and let himself get hit a couple of times by a slow moving car. Then they took a bat to his helmet and recorded those sounds as well. Some people suffer for their art, none more than those at Stainless.

The plot of the game was set, you started off as either Max in his Eagle, which was a take on a car in the Death Race. Or as the female counterpart, Die Anna, in her faster car, the Hawk. Carmageddon was a sanctioned race taking place all over the world. Anything was legal in this race, including taking shortcuts, running over opponents and pedestrians. There were temporary power-ups scattered over the map and many secrets to discover on the massive maps.

The opponents and cars in the game were all unique. Depending on your rank you could sometimes win their car if you destroyed it in the middle of a race. Each car had different strengths and weaknesses. Some were dainty and some were unstoppable. These cars were designed for the various styles of drivers. All of the cars could be upgraded, money won from the races could be used to purchase extra armor or horsepower.

Carmageddon was the definition of the impossible racer. The physics were good. The cars all handled realistically, more or less. It was what the cars that were capable of that made the game so much fun. The cars were almost indestructible. In any other game a car that hits a wall at 300 mph would explode. In this game it would just wreck the body a little. The cars behaved like Hot Wheel toys on some of the most fantastic tracks ever designed. These tracks had tunnels, massive jumps and drop offs. The cars could even operate under water, in acid, toxic goo, snow and lava. Some tracks were on raceways and others were on rooftops of massive skyscrapers.

Blind intersections where two cars could collide at high speed and send one of them flying a few hundred feet straight up were the rule, not the exception. This helped create a breakneck (no pun intended) pace for gameplay. Drivers and opponents were always willing to go full-tilt at each other or even at the police that patrolled the race because the cars would mostly survive the wreck.

Carmageddon is a great stress reliever. The more people you can get to join in a lan game the better it is. Within a few minutes any person that I've introduced the game to had the car up and running and was shouting "holy shit" at every crazed jump and high speed wipeout.

People often say that Carmageddon would be perfect if only it had weapons like Twisted Metal. I say that they are missing the point. The cars are the weapons. In Twisted Metal the cars don't behave like cars at all, they behave like FPS characters. The mass and momentum of real cars is lost in that game because the designers don't want it to weigh down the gameplay. Carmageddon is a pure game, the car is everything and it is the only thing. There is no more rewarding experience than catching up to a race in progress and wiping out the lineup with a runaway plow. Or dropping down on an unsuspecting opponent that is hobbling on his last three wheels.

Here's the part where you ask "well if this game is so great how come I've never heard of it?" Hell if I know. Stainless made this game back in the day when you could fit a Windows and Mac version of the title on one CD. Most reviewers that played the first fell in love with it. The game was mad hijinks and word of mouth helped it spread quickly.

A large community of gamers became dedicated to the game. Stainless released tool kits to let gamers make their own skins for the cars. The code for some cars that weren't finished with the release of the game were left on the CD. Budding programmers and modelers were allowed to finish the work of Stainless and were fully supported for example with patches that allowed gamers to play in ED-101's flying concept car.

The congressional hearings only helped make Carmageddon a more desirable game by all audiences. As the saying goes "even bad publicity is better than no publicity at all." Despite the negative attacks, magazine editors and gamers both agreed that this game was pretty damn good.

Stainless helped keep the momentum of the game going by releasing the "Splat Pack" shortly after the original was released. The new tracks and cars helped round out the overall experience. The Splat Patch helps cement this game in the top-5.

If this game was so great what happened? The sequel "Carpocalypse Now" was a fun game. The cars were far more detailed and could be pulled apart, pedestrians were no longer sprites but three dimensional models with their own weight and mass. Power ups were more weapon like now. The levels were just as massive and as interactive as they've ever been.

However the experience was less enjoyable the more realistic the game became. Cars could be destroyed far more easily. Some blind hits or explosive barrels could take you apart quickly. This turned a former full out crash and smash title into a delicate shadow of its former self. Realism is not meant for every game and definitely not this one.

Carmageddon 2 was good but not great. The third in the series was absolutely horrid. SCi had just acquired the rights to the Death Race 2000. The official name for the next title would be Carmageddon 3 TDR 2000, SCi figured that they could save some money by giving the game to a new developer and took Stainless off of the job. The game that came out was absolutely horrid.

Everything that was good in Carma 2 was gone. Any remnants from the original game were in name alone. TDR 2000 was panned by gamers and critics and a legacy that could have been was buried some years ago.

I still find the time to play the original game, although OSX on the Mac is making it harder to launch these days. The game holds up very well, even more against a human opponent. My brother was always a fan of Grand Theft Auto and Twisted Metal. There was one game that was more pure and enjoyable than either of these. I hope you get a chance to play it before your computer can no longer run it.

I’d like to hear your personal top-10, top-20, top fighting games, top sports games, or top games in any genre. Let me know in the comments section please. As always 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!

My favorite games of all time, the story of Carmageddon part 8...

I went from computer lab tech to Instructional Associate II during my time in college. Getting to eventually run a lab, and classroom. The Mac lab was where I started a daily blog on 1UP. It was there where I made many lifelong friendships, and even met the woman that I would marry. The Mac OS had gotten to the point where it would no longer support old games. It had been years since we last played Carmageddon there. Roger, one of our friends in IT, made an image in an emulator for us in case we ever felt like firing it up. It just wasn’t the same without my old coworkers. My time at school was coming to an end, and I needed a better job with benefits. So I would commute to JPL part-time, and eventually work there full-time. There was no game playing at JPL, as you could imagine, but the boss didn’t mind if I updated my blog during my lunch break. That was how I kept my daily posts going. Things had pretty much settled into a routine, until April 2012 when the news dropped. Carmageddon would be getting a reboot, or rather, a Reincarnation. I just about lost my mind.

We all knew that Square Enix would never bring back the title. It turned out that the studio was selling off some old IP that belonged to Eidos at the start of the 2010’s. Stainless Games found out about it, and fought hard to get the rights back. They were in a bidding war against an unknown company. Thankfully they won, but the money they had went into acquiring the rights took a big bite out of the studio. They needed more cash to actually start developing a new game. Stainless Games senior members: Patrick Buckland, Ian Moody, Steven Haggerty, Neil (Nobby) Barnden, Russell (Rusk) Hughes, Kev Martin, and Will McCourt looked at their options. They saw that crowd-funding had been successful for other companies, why not give it a shot here? Most developers asked for a few thousand, but Stainless had an ambitious goal. They wanted to raise $400,000 in a month. They made the announcement, and thankfully just about every gaming site spread the word. The most controversial game of the ‘90s, was coming back! Nobby became the spokesperson for the reboot, and would post video updates on their Kickstarter page. The studio raised additional funds by selling limited edition tees on their store, plus they set up a way to donate on Facebook.

As with other Kickstarter campaigns there were multiple tier levels for audiences. Anywhere from $1, to $10,000 was available for backers. A few of people actually took advantage of the $10,000 level! They also set up stretch goals. If it passed a certain amount Stainless would see to getting a build on Linux, and the Mac. I was pretty sure that my old Mac at home would not run it, but I believed enough in the project that I was in for $150. My future spouse wanted to surprise me for my birthday by also pledging $150. I also ordered a shirt, and made sure that all of my friends online knew about the campaign. I provided updates as they happened on 1UP. They were several of my last blogs before the site closed down. Nobby made all of us believe in the campaign. He did so by appealing to our nostalgia for it. The studio wanted to bring back all of the elements that made their games work. It turned out that no detail was too small, and no callback was too dated. In fact he asked old friends Tony Taylor, and Faye Morey to do a little promo work for the studio. The pair had played Max Damage, and Die Anna in the Prat Cams some 15 years earlier. Seeing their pictures instantly aged me. Tony now had wrinkles, and gray hair. Faye was all grown up. Audiences learned via the Kickstarter blog that she was only 14 when first played the character! 

Although the new game would not use Prat Cams, it was the fact that Tony, and Faye were referenced that made fans celebrate. The studio was going deep into their history. Doug Telford the artist who helped with the promo art, and original concept art for Carmageddon returned for the project as well. He created new driver, and car renderings. They kept their look for the most part, with some updated details. His renderings for Max, and Die Anna set the tone for the rest of the cast. They weren’t as cartoony as the driver profiles were in the first game. They were serious, but not dark, or grim like they were in Carmageddon TDR 2000. Max sported a new robotic arm that was made partly of old car parts. Plus he seemed to have a cybernetic red eye. The past decade had taken its toll on him. Die Anna on the other hand looked fantastic. A face texture of the adult Faye actually appears on the new Die Anna model. She has officially been immortalized in 3D form.

Stainless promised to bring back a lot of the classic opponents as well. They too received new art, and updated vehicles. Of course Stainless made sure that they didn’t stray too far from their original looks. In an early update Mr. Telford created a new rendering of Screwie Lewie that looked on point with his original design, as well as the Twister, a sports car on monster truck wheels. Screwie always looked like a crazed pilot, only now he was legless, and using a four wheeled, drill enabled mobility scooter to get around. Just like Max there were many things that had happened to him since his last appearance. At some point we’d see other changes to the rest of the cast. Concept art was one thing, but the modelers at Stainless were showing off how much more detail the new vehicles had. They recreated The Bear, the Russian off-road car used by Ivan the Bastard. The new rendering was amazing. It captured the look of the original perfectly. It also showed how much more powerful the 3D tools were for this generation. Audiences knew that this was not the final design of the updated Bear, but it was hard to contain our excitement with the news.

It wasn’t the biggest reveal that Stainless dropped on the community. The Eagle would get a complete redo by Terry "Tez" Lane. The new eagle was still red, and had the classic blade running down the center. Only now all of its body angles were much sharper. From the headlights, to the rear bumper, every edge looked just as lethal as the blades up front. When it came to specific references it looked as if Terry had found the sweet spot between the first design, and the bruiser that was in the Splat Pack. It certainly undid the mess that was the Eagle in Total Destruction Racing 2000. Tez actually worked from original concept art from the team, as well as feedback from Nobby.  With that said however I would like to think that the new design was heavily influenced by the Spectrum Patrol car. It was featured in the Gerry Anderson show Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. 

Gerry Anderson had tremendous success overseas with his marionette shows including Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray Thunderbirds, and Terrahawks. Even his live action shows grew a cult-following. The vehicle designs from his studio were a study in science fiction coolness. Whether it was a spy car, monorail, spaceship, tank, submarine, or rocket jet, there was nobody creating models from the late '50s through the '80s that were half as brilliant as those coming from Anderson. He undoubtedly influenced several generations of artists the world over. The split window, sharp angles, and scoop above the cockpit of the Spectrum Patrol were touches that could be seen in Tez's design. The final version of the new Eagle was not far removed from the concept rendering revealed on the Kickstarter blog.

The studio would refine the model to fit in the game. They would extend the blades up the windshield, and roof as they finalized the body. The game engine allowed blades to work as scissors on the hood. This was a feature on the Shredlight, a sports car driven by Madam Scarlett. The studio made the hood blades oscillate on the Tez Eagle as well. Nobby reached out to his team with a crazy proposal. Something he’d always wanted to see the blades double as a chainsaw. Specifically on the Eagle. Was it possible to get that working in the new game? The staff had always been good at figuring out new ways to get things done with a game engine. Before too long they figured out that they could animate all the blades. They turned this feature into a reward for backers. Donate a certain amount, if I remember correctly it was over $100, and you would get a code that allows you to have the exclusive model in your garage. Imagine how jealous other people online were of this ride. You can bet that my tier included this upgrade!

As a sign that the studio was in it for all the right reasons. Stainless released an HD remaster of the original game for the iOS once they hit their stretch goals. It was actually free to download for 24 hours. It brought back all of the sights, and sounds of the game exactly as I had remembered them. Plus the graphics had a greater fidelity than they did on the Mac 15 years earlier. Who would have ever thought that a mobile game would be better than the PC version? Critics, and fans seemed to agree. Slide to Play gave it a 70, Quarter to Three, and Pocket Gamer UK both gave it an 80, and AppSpy gave it a 100. The aggragate score on Metacritic from fans was 8.4 out of 10. This release was a thank you to the people that believed in the game enough to back it. The Kickstarter campaign ran during the month of May, 2012. Stainless Games was diligent about updating the public each time the developers hit a milestone, whether it was a technical one, or one that revolved around the amount that the backers donating. The updates were sometimes funny, sometimes candid, but always interesting. 

At the end of the month they had crushed their goal. They raised $625,143 from 15,736 backers. This was a quarter million dollars over their original target! Stainless Games was back in business. They would keep fans abreast of all the news over the next few years. There was a long way to go in completing the Reincarnation, the technical heights that Stainless was shooting for had never been tried before in vehicle combat. We will look at this 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!

My favorite games of all time, the story of Carmageddon part 2...

When the final version of Carmageddon was released in February 1997 it was so much greater than I could have anticipated. I brought the box purchased from CompUSA (ask your parents) into the computer lab early on a Saturday. I didn’t normally work weekends, thankfully we were only open for a half day. After we rushed the last student out we locked the lab doors, and fired it up, sitting through the opening cinema and getting hyped. The intro animation was burned into the memories of a generation. So much so that a fan recreated the opening using the in game camera of the latest version of the game. You can watch the original intro below, be forewarned, it mirrors the dark violence of the series.  

 

It turned out that not all of the cars, and features were available from the start. Which bummed us out, we were ready for multiplayer madness out of the box. It made sense from a game play standpoint. What was the point of playing if you had access to every level, and every car right away? You had to earn everything, as it was with all great games. It made me appreciate having to grind through the experience, and sharing everything I earned with the staff. I would gladly go through the game on breaks, and after work. Mastering every stage, and vehicle along the way. I even wrote up a 70-page strategy guide for my coworkers by taking screenshots, and writing tips for each level. I even included bios, and maps. I’m sure it’s saved on some Zip drives in my garage (again, ask you parents). If you’ve never played we should begin with the stars of the game. The biggest titles always had some sort of main character, or mascot that they could build a franchise around. Carmageddon was no different. Even though it was about vehicle combat the game had two stars; Max Damage, and Die Anna. Each with own signature car, the Hawk, and Eagle respectively. Think of the relationship between the characters, and their cars just like the stars in the Twisted Metal series. They were interconnected.

Max, and Die Anna were seen on the “Prat Cam” it was supposed to be the drivers in the cockpit reacting to the race. The two would laugh like maniacs as they ran over people, whip their head around after getting in a wreck, scream as they fell off of a building, and even swear under their breath. It gave a lot of personality to the characters, and added another layer of dark humor to an already absurd premise. At the start of the game the cars were nowhere near as fast, or as powerful as they were in the demo. They were easy to wreck, and could be pushed around by opponents, and police cars alike. Earning enough credits to power up the vehicles, and unlock opponents would test my patience. It turned out that the demo stage, and cars were approximately where the cars would have been at about 90% through the game. Their armor, their offense, and their engines had been heavily upgraded by that point. There were many miles of virtual racing to actually get to this point in the full release.

The game began with you ranked 99th in a tournament. Your goal was to finish every race in the series, and become #1. There were almost 40 levels in the game in which to accomplish your goal. Players could skip ranks depending on how many points were earned during each level. It was not uncommon to jump 7 ranks or more for a particularly violent contest. The specific how, and why the Carmageddon tournament was created was never fully explained. This was perfectly fine, as audiences were left to fill in the blanks. Between the opening cinema, and clues picked up from the races we could gather all the information we needed. The tournament was held all around the world, and only the most dangerous racers were invited. These included murderers, celebrities, gang members, cops, and even robots. When races took place in a city, the outskirts, and main roads were walled off. Anyone that remained inside was left to fend for themselves. Other stages were set on an island, or enclosed circuit. This was also not a post-apocalyptic race for survival. You could never mistake the locations for the wastelands of the Mad Max universe. The Carma world was set in living, breathing factories, towns, and vacation resorts. The tournament was a violent satire of the real world. Take it as a futuristic gladiator battle, broadcast to the masses to appease their blood lust.

The rules for the tournament were simple. Each race could be won in three ways, you could complete the required laps, destroy all of the opponents, or kill every pedestrian on the map. The third was the most difficult, but also potentially worth the most points, and prestige. The opponents themselves were a cross section of archetypes, and stereotypes from pop culture. You can imagine that the Black community did not like the representation in the game. There was the pimp-coded Otis P. Jivefunk, and his leopard print top “Caddy Fat Cat.” To be fair the Caddy Fat Cat was the car I used most often in the game. It was fast, heavy, and could take a lot of damage. Then there was the former football star-turned-murderer OK Stimpson, driving a “Fraud Broko.” For those that don’t know the story he was based on; former pro football star O.J. Simpson killed his ex-wife, and her boyfriend in 1994. He was caught in a Ford Bronco during a slow speed pursuit as he tried to flee the country. I would argue that Stainless Games wasn’t making fun of one ethnic group as much as every person in the game was an ugly parody. Also Stainless admits that they pre-censored themselves. They had men, women, cops, and elderly people that you could run over in the game. Artist Terry Lane put his foot down when they said pregnant women should be pedestrians too. They were also mindful that if they had Black pedestrians the racists would go out of their way to only run them over. So they made all the pedestrians white in the first game. They wanted audiences to know that all pedestrians were equal targets in their world. Black, and brown pedestrians, as well as better Black driver archetypes would appear in the sequel.

These drivers, as offensive as they were, and their respective vehicles did not all show up right away. As with all great game design, the opponent rides were equal to, or slightly better than the Hawk, and Eagle at the start of the game. Early races were long, drawn out battles. Opponents smothered players at every turn. Throw in the police which were randomly dispersed through each stage, and the car battles became harder. Only by winning races and increasing your stats could you hope to make the later stages any easier. To balance out the game more difficult opponents would join the tournament as players increased in rank, and as their car became faster, and stronger. Every opponent vehicle had its own strengths and weaknesses. Some were blindingly fast, some were heavily armored, but all could potentially be unlocked. In order to do so you had to outrank your opponents, and destroy them in the level. Once acquired you could drive that specific car, and also increase its armor, offense, and engine. Every vehicle in the game was unique with the exception of Halfwit Harry, and his sister Burly Shirley. Harry, and Shirley had a respective green, or pink Hummer-type off roader. In any instance the diversity of vehicle types, the way they controlled, and benefits really gave Carmageddon a lot of replay value. Some of the cars were labeled Cheat, not necessarily because they had an outright advantage, but because unlocking them seemed to be more random than other cars.

The full version of the game also meant that we had a soundtrack to play along with. Original music was one one of my elements of great game design. Carma did not disappoint. So what kind of music went well with all of that mayhem? We needed something that could get the adrenaline pumping right away. So it was heavy metal of course! Not just any type of metal, but industrial, and electronic. The tempo, and riffs hit like a punch to the chest. They seemed to go very well to create an aggressive, yet also futuristic atmosphere. The biggest name on the soundtrack was Fear Factory. Three of their songs appeared in the game, including Zero Signal, which was also on the Mortal Kombat movie soundtrack. Composer Lee Groves had several tracks as well, which complimented the themes of the major areas of the games. These included “industrial, coastal, desert, and winter wonderland.” Stainless sound designer, and composer Chris Melchior had a few tracks, including music on the expansion as well. The music, screaming peds, explosions, and collisions all blended perfectly. They audibly brought audiences much deeper into this world.

The sudden increase in car types, and multiplayer game modes went over great at work. The other lab techs also began using their break time to get better at Carma, and learn which cars were most advantageous. We began setting parameters on which vehicles were allowed in certain game modes. Some cars were banned outright because they were simply too powerful, or because they had some other unfair property. Stella Stunna for example, a rubber-clad sadist, drove “Electric Blue.” Her car had a built in Electro-Bastard Ray. This was normally a power up that only lasted for a few seconds in other cars. For Stella it was permanently enabled, and could zap pedestrians with a bolt of lighting from up to 10 meters away. This meant that she could easily rack up points in multiplayer games, and power up her vehicle on the fly. This left no pedestrians for the rest of the players.

The other car that was banned from competition was The Suppressor. In the game, as in real life, the cops had access to the biggest and baddest vehicles. The squad car in Carmageddon weighed almost 3 tons, and could go 150mph. It much closer to a supercharged armored personnel carrier rather than the traditional cop car. A group of them could turn any stage into a nightmare, With about 90% of the game complete players would have earned heavy-hitters that could eventually take out a squad car. However the supreme heavy hitter in the game was called The Suppressor, piloted by Police Chief Biggun. It weighed 5 tons, and could reach 250mph. The first time I saw it was actually on the stage featured in the demo. You can imagine my surprise. I was going through the route that I had raced hundreds of times before. I reached the top of a skyscraper, and it was waiting where no cops were previously. I had a fraction of a second to ask myself “what the hell is that?” Before it ran me off the roof and destroyed me with a couple of hits.

I fought tooth and nail against the Suppressor again, and again with different rides until I was able to unlock it. My favorite heavy-hitter was the Plow, a four wheel drive bulldozer formally piloted by Don Dumpster. I used that to great effect against the cops in the game. In LAN matches when using the Plow I would sign in as El Don. Once the Suppressor was in the garage the rest of the game played relatively easily. Again traditional game design dictated that the best weapons were only accessible near the end of the title, otherwise the experience would have felt cheap. The team at Stainless Games knew what they were doing. They even went so far as to highlight it as the vehicle you were rewarded with in the final game cinema. During the awards ceremony the organizers of the tournament are presenting a trophy to an unknown driver. Then in the dark a six-wheeled beast rides up the podium, and flattens everyone, including the cup. I suppose the lesson for Carma was never was about becoming the best, it was about the enemies killed along the way... We were having an absolute blast at work. With the exception of Stella, and Chief Biggun, all of the cars were fair game in multiplayer modes. Depending on my competition I would choose the car that would be the biggest nightmare for them. This frustrated my coworkers to no end. For every one game they won I would often win the next eight. 

   

The end of the semester tournaments were even more exciting now. Not only that, but as our computer lab expanded, we had more hires that were becoming solid players. The bigger labs also meant that we were getting more attention from other departments looking to create their own computer labs. Carol was our Dean, and would show our labs off to other college admins. This included the VP, and President Carol stopped by for the end of the semester party one year. She was always a bubbly presence, and welcome whenever she visited. She wanted to sit in on our tournament, and see what the fuss was about. The boss lady Alison wasn’t too sure about it, but I insisted. Carol gasped when she found out the game was about racing, and running over pedestrians. After the initial shock wore off she asked, “is it okay if I try it?” We had her sit down, and watched as she drove around the virtual block a few times. She screamed when she began running over pedestrians, “oh no, oh no!” Then she began giggling as she started running into other drivers. After a few minutes she was red in the face from laughing at the mayhem she had participated in. She assured Alison, and even Phyllis our department head, that the game was as much fun as advertised. From that moment on we would be sure to invite her to the tournament each semester. She would decline, but asked that we enjoy ourselves. I can’t imagine that any other college had an administrator that was half as cool. Carol eventually became a Dean at an even bigger college. She retired years ago, but we stay in touch on Facebook.

It turned out that as other departments opened up their own computer labs they were eager to hire our staff. In a few instances they had poached talent from our labs. Carol, Phyllis, and Alison met with the other departments. They said they did not mind sharing talent, or having lab techs train alongside us for a few weeks so they could get up to speed. Poaching our team was not a good look. I remained with our department because as I discovered from my friends in IT that the other labs had far more restrictions than we had. They had their computers on lock down. No games, no demos, no fun. The IT department mostly left us to our own devices because we were good at maintaining our own systems, updates, and security. When I wasn’t playing the game I was researching it. I learned lots about Carma from the game forums, including how it was made. It turned out that there was a huge challenge in trying to get it published. It made me appreciate it that much more. We’re going to look at why nobody was willing to sell Stainless a license in the next entry. 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!

My favorite games of all time, the story of Carmageddon part 1...

I was reminded about one of my favorite games of all time recently, and I decided to do a blog about it. As I started to think about what to say it dawned on me that the game deserved so much more than a single post. A lifetime ago I created a series on 1UP covering my favorite games. Each Friday for 20 weeks I unveiled the most important games to me. The criteria was simple. If I was stuck on a deserted island, and could only play one game for the rest of my days which one would it be? Most of my friends, and family knew what the number one game was. The fun part was guessing what the other nineteen would be. Instead of just reposting the series here, as I had with other classic entries, I decided to review the list. Perhaps it was time to rewrite it, change the order of games, or even replace some entirely. I would be starting in the middle of my list, game #5 to be precise. It was important to do a deep dive, and put this game in context rather than just highlight a few points with some screen shots. I think that is something that is missing with a lot of games journalism. Many are quick to drop a review, or do a making-of series, but they don’t put the game in context. I think it’s important that people know about the market, what their contemporaries were doing, or even what was happening in the world at the time. I plan on doing the same for all the other games that I consider my favorites. So let’s get into it.

Chances are you’ve heard of the game Carmageddon. Maybe you’ve played it, maybe you even have a mobile version on your phone right now. Or maybe you weren’t even born when the series came out. Anything is possible, so let me try to explain why this game was special to me. I have a list of Four Elements that make a great game, if you can hit all four points simultaneously then you have the perfect title. My four rules are: Control is king, Create an Immersive World, Make this an Original Experience, and the Music must be icing on the cake. The first rule is simple, you can have a game with so-so graphics, and art design, but if the control is rock solid then I am in 100%. The visuals aren’t as important to me. Creating an immersive world means just that. Show, and don’t tell me about this world. Can I pick up clues about this world just by looking, and exploring? What shaped it, how long has it been there? If the game can do this without having it explained in lengthy cut scenes then I’ll fall right into it.

Another important question I ask about the title. Is this an original experience? Is the game doing something that has rarely, if ever, been attempted? To put it in other words, does this have original game play? Lots of games try new material, and fail. It’s hard to get publishers to take a risk on a new idea, rather than a sequel. When the studio tries something new, and gets it right however, the whole world pays attention. Lastly, does the music, and does the sound design help with the experience? Having a bunch of songs from pop artists, or celebrity voice actors in a game does nothing for me really. Sometimes original music, or non-mainstream music gets the most effective response. Every game on my favorites list has these four elements, the degree of how much each element comes through helps make a good game become excellent. Carmageddon does a smashing job (no pun intended) of getting all of the elements right.

I would have laughed if you told me while I was growing up that one of my favorite games of all time would be on the PC. It was an impossible idea. Nobody in my family, or extended family owned one. Computers were for rich people. My brothers, and I were mostly console players. Our parents made just enough to afford a small apartment, and get a console every few years, and a handful of games which we all had to share. Like many Gen-Xers we grew up at the literal dawn of the console. Our first system was the Atari 2600. This was followed by the NES, Genesis, SuperNintendo, Nintendo64, Saturn, GameCube, Dreamcast, Playstation, Xbox, Wii… well you get the idea. We had almost all of the major consoles at one point, or another, including several portable systems. We also had a local arcade so we considered ourselves well-rounded game players. The one thing we never had was a PC. Those were for our rich friends. A $1000 PC was simply out of the question for a family of modest means. Thankfully when we visited our friends in middle school, and high school we got a chance to try out the hottest PC games. When we entered college it was the first time that computers were freely accessible to us. That was the moment that everything changed for me as a game player.

I spent a lot of time in the computer lab doing tons of writing for my history, English, journalism, anthropology, and creative writing classes. The lab techs were mostly in the university, and working part-time in the computer lab as well. They showed me how to use the PC, and Mac computers. Each day my head was overflowing with new ideas. My teachers were amazing in class, but I’d learn a lot of new things from the computer techs as well. The lab coordinator was an amazing lady named Alison. She would see me there every day doing homework, and she noticed that I’d help the people that came into the lab that didn’t know how to work a computer. I had such a natural calm disposition that she offered me a job. I thought she was joking, until a few months later when she asked me again to work for her. I couldn’t believe I was being offered a part-time job to essentially do my homework, and help the occasional student with questions. I accepted, and it was a crash course in learning the other programs on the Mac, and PC that I would have to help with. Over time my brothers were also hired in the labs. One of my favorite resources was a magazine called MacAddict. It wasn’t as stuffy as the other Mac magazines. It was definitely written for my demographic. It helped me learn the ins-and-outs of the system. Plus it came with a demo CD. Each month I’d get to check out some tools, and apps. Some were useful for work, most were garbage. Of course the best part were the game demos.

My world of gaming had expanded exponentially thanks to the lab. Mac, and PC demos were now available to my brothers, and I. We learned of new titles months in advance, we got hands-on time with games that helped shape various genres. Including what we thought were smaller studios that would eventually change the world. One of those was a company called Bungie. People were familiar with the first person shooter (FPS) thanks to games by id studio. Titles like Wolfenstein 3D (1992), and Doom (1993) were familiar to us. My brothers, and I got to play the PC versions when we visited our friends in high school. After high school, as the FPS genre evolved we were able to try out demos, and eventually full titles for games like Marathon (1994), and Quake (1996) in the college computer lab. Sometimes we’d get the console version, and sometimes we were content that we got to experience the computer-exclusive. Our friends that were console purists had no idea what they were missing out on. We had friends that swore up, and down that Nintendo was the only company that could make great games. We had Playstation fans that pledged allegiance to Sony, even though they had barely entered the market. My brothers knew that the world of gaming was so much bigger than they could have known, if only they tried out all of these awesome games. Oni, also by Bungi was one of the last demos we played. Most of the lab techs finished university, by 2001 or had transferred. Halo was originally announced for the Mac, which made us happy. When Microsoft bought out Bungie, and made Halo an Xbox exclusive we knew the console wars of our adult years would never be the same.

In the mid ‘90s there wasn’t a Steam Store, the internet was restricted to dial-up modems at home. Rich kids maybe had fiber, or ISDN so their dad could work at home. So there was not really a way to download game demos. Physical media was important, and demos came on CD which were included with most magazines. This was true for console games as well. I remember when the college was connected to the internet, starting with the library, our building. That was another momentous change for my gaming experience. But I digress… One of the MacAddict issues had a demo for something called Carmageddon. I ran it on one of our computers after the lab closed, and I was hooked right away. As a console player the game pad was everything. I was never used to keyboards to control the action. Even games that used a joystick connected to the computer seemed awkward to me. In a matter of moments I got familiar with driving the car in the game, and even moving the camera around without a game pad. The 3D in the game was revolutionary at the time. Yes, the Playstation, N64, and Saturn were already out. They were doing decent 3D games, but the Mac, and PC were on another level. The complexity of the models, the textures, physics, lighting, and effects were well above what home consoles could do at the time. As much fun as I was having it was also maddening playing the demo. Like most demos it was timed. After 4 minutes the game would exit back to the main menu. I reloaded the demo again, and again, hour after hour, day after day. I played the demo more than any other preview we had gotten at the time. I got my brothers, and coworkers hooked on it as well. We all knew that when the game was officially released we would be getting it.

It seemed like forever until the final game did come out. Until then I scoured the internet for anything I could find on the game. Thankfully there was a website, and news on the game. I researched everything I could about the title, about the studios creating it. I had never heard of the developer Stainless Software, or the publisher SCi. I began visiting game forums, and seeing the reaction of other players. It seemed that those lucky enough to get the demo were having a blast as well. There were many countries that hadn’t gotten it yet, because of the violent content. They were eager to see what the fuss was about. One the forums I found showed players how to make an image of the demo off of the CD, and save it to the computer. Even better there was a way to disable the time lock. With this knowledge I ended up making copies of the demo for my coworkers, and they happily installed it on all the systems in the lab. Now we could play on any computer we wanted, as much as we wanted.

The demo gave players just enough time to do a lap on “Blood on the Rooftops.” One of the latter stages in the game. I got to the point where I could run the entire course very quickly, and didn’t have to waste my 4 minutes. Without a time limit I ended up exploring every square inch of the map. Learning where all the streets, and alleys intersected. I learned which ramps could take me to the tops of every skyscraper. I managed to reach the elevated train track, that I had thought was impossible to access before. I memorized every group of pedestrians, every power up on that map. These were important because in the actual game you only started with a minute, or two on the countdown clock. The only way to earn more time was to run over pedestrians, about 15 seconds per person. The old joke between teenagers driving, and saying that running over this person was worth so many points had come true. Wiping out a group earned a bonus multiplier, as did creative ways of splatting pedestrians. Dropping on them from above, smearing them against a wall, scaring them with a horn honk before the kill were all rewarded behavior. It was raucous, and everyone in the lab that tried it loved it despite the dark material.

The control was rock solid, capturing one of the important elements that I had talked about earlier. If I had to describe the actual game play I would say that Carmageddon was the definition of the impossible racer. The physics were groundbreaking. The cars acted as if they had weight, and heft, especially at speed. They all handled realistically, more or less. It was what the cars that were capable of that made the game so much fun. The vehicles were almost indestructible. In any other game a car that hits a wall at 300 mph would explode. In Carmageddon it might just crumple the body a little. The vehicles behaved like Hot Wheel toys being thrown around a freshly mopped kitchen floor. Ram them as hard as you want, and they’ll keep coming back for more. Instead of orange plastic tracks, or a stack of books acting as a ramp the game featured some of the most fantastic levels ever designed. These courses had tunnels, massive jumps, chicanes, and drop offs. The cars could even operate under water, in acid, toxic waste, snow, and lava. Some stages were on raceways, and others were on rooftops of massive skyscrapers. Blind intersections where two cars could collide at high speed, and send one of them flying a few hundred feet straight up in the air was the rule, not the exception. This helped create a breakneck (no pun intended) pace for gameplay. Drivers and opponents were always willing to go full-tilt at each other, or even at the police that patrolled the race, because the cars would mostly survive the wreck.

Carmageddon, many fans shortened it to “Carma,” is something that seems to be universally appreciated by people that tried it. The more people you could get to join the game the better it became. Within a few minutes any person that I introduced the game to was shouting "holy shit" at every crazed jump, and high speed wipeout. People often say that Carma would be perfect if only it had weapons, like the Twisted Metal series by Sony. I say they are missing the point. The cars are the weapons, the diversity of cars you can drive, are akin to the different guns in any first person shooter (FPS). In Twisted Metal the vehicles didn’t behave like cars at all, they acted like FPS characters. They bounced around the screen, automatically flipped themselves over, and did lots of impossible things. The mass and momentum of real cars took a literal back seat, and that was fine. The designers at SingleTrac didn’t want to slow down the game play with the experience they wanted to capture. Carmageddon is more focused on the vehicles. The car destruction is everything, but not the only thing. There is no more rewarding experience than catching up to a race in progress and wiping out the opponents with a runaway plow. Or dropping down on an unsuspecting rival that is hobbling on its last three wheels.

There was much more to Carma than a demolition derby. There were the power ups to learn about. Scattered all over the stage were red, blue, yellow, and black barrels. If you ran over them they rewarded you with a random power up. Some only gave you extra points, or time. Some made pedestrians explode, or go blind temporarily. Other barrels changed the physics, and behavior of your car. For example some made it so your wheels had no traction, as if they were coated in oil. Some made your car as dense as granite so that even the smallest car could send opponents flying. Other power ups changed the physics of the world, so all of the cars floated as if they were on the moon, or they scraped the ground as if they were rolling on the surface of Jupiter. Again, these power ups lasted only a few seconds so that they wouldn’t kill the experience. Even better, they would regenerate after several minutes. Learning the placement of specific barrels would become critical in multiplayer games. The original game did not support online play, like most of its PC predecessors multiplay was achieved via local area network (LAN).

I ended up hosting Carmageddon LAN parties in our computer lab even before the final game was released. I would buy little prizes through the semester, and at the end of the quarter would host a tournament. Using the demo we would  go to one of the available computers, and all start at the same time. We would have a race to complete the required laps. I would run my computer on the projector, so everyone could see where I was at any point. Later on as the technology in the lab changed I could broadcast random players on the screen. The winners would get a gift card, music CD, or Hot Wheels car to celebrate the occasion. This was on top of the soda, and pizza provided by Alison. Did I forget to mention what a great boss she was? It was a great way to let off steam after a season of hard work, as well dealing with rude teachers, and students. I often took myself out of the competition because I was too good at the game. All that extra time I put in with it really paid off. My coworkers said that would change once the final version was released. I looked forward to the challenge.

Our world was about to change when the full version was released. Would our boss, and even department head allow one of the most controversial games of all time continue to be played at school? What would happen when the Dean of the college found out what we were up to? I will talk about all that in the next blog. I hope to see you back for that! 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!