Nostalgic Games: Carmageddon
It can be very difficult to explain to a person who does not play games that they are not only cruelty and murder, but also real art, generating the most beautiful virtual worlds, interesting plots and deeply thought-out characters who are simply impossible not to empathize with. The thing is that such products are not particularly known to the average person unfamiliar with virtual universes. And projects like Mortal Kombat, Postal, Carmageddon and GTA are on everyone’s lips because of the rather high level of violence that feeds hundreds of different talk shows, under-lawyers who want to drink highas well as scandalous news releases.
Today I want to talk about Carmageddon, a game that not only made a small revolution in the racing genre, but also became the culprit of various scandals and bans in many countries, and also drew public attention to the cruelty in video game entertainment. But this series was famous not only for scandals! It was a really interesting racing project that captivated from the first minutes, forcing you to run your favorite tracks again and again and leave only a mountain of bent metal from rival cars.
I started my introduction to the series on the Sony PlayStation, enjoying the later port (the original game came out in 1997, and the Japanese port in 1999). But the article will be mainly about the computer version, since it is, in my humble opinion, the best in the series, despite the outdated graphics and low draw distance. Today I will try to explain why I think so.
Before moving on to the description of the game itself, I want to share a rather pleasant nostalgic memory associated with it. I remember that I had a GameGuru disk, which contained walkthroughs, as well as saves for games, including hacked ones (for example, with infinite lives). Playing this CD and trying to find saves for Carmageddon, I heard a song by an unknown artist in the main menu. Years later I found out that it was a song The Chemical Brothers – Hey Boy Hey Girl. It happens that some kind of accident can shape your taste, habits, or even further life, and this GameGuru introduced me to the work of The Chemical Brothers. Since then, the work of this group has not only become loved, but also associated with this game.
Who
The British are responsible for the development of Carmageddon Stainless Games, which, apart from the games in this series, did not particularly distinguish themselves. Is it the fans KKI may be familiar with their PC versions of the popular card game Magic: The Gathering.
The company was formed in 1994 and was originally called Stainless Software. Starting out by subcontracting a 3D engine for Argonaut Games and developing medical multimedia games for the Times-Mirror Company, the company has been building its own game in parallel.
It was their love for car simulators and a specific style of play that prompted them to develop survival racing, because they quickly got tired of riding “by the rules”, and the future Carmageddon developers began to ram everyone and go in the opposite direction. Having decided that there are very few competitors in this genre (I personally remembered only Destruction Derbywhich is familiar to many PS1 players of that time, yes Quarantine, which is much less popular), the guys set about developing their own project. After creating a demo version of the future game and unsuccessful meetings with numerous publishers, the British still managed to get acquainted with the Sci company, which agreed to publish their product. True, Stainless Games had to make concessions and change the concept a bit.
Initially, a regular racing derby was planned, but Sci were afraid to take risks with a new franchise, so it was decided to create a movie-licensed game. All attempts to negotiate with the creators “Mad Max” turned out to be a failure, as they simply could not contact them. After which their attention was drawn to the 1975 film “Death Race 2000” With David Carradine and starring Sylvester Stallone, for which a modern sequel was planned. Unfortunately, after a while it became known that there would be no new film in this series, the license to create the game was lost. It was pointless to continue creating the game, sharpening it for this universe. The developers began to shift the game to the realities of the new universe, but it is important to understand that it was Death Race 2000 that had the maximum impact on the future project, which the whole world would later recognize as Carmageddon. If you watch the movie and play Karma, you will see a huge amount of design elements, style and even logic of the world that have been borrowed.
During the development process, the creators received angry letters from people shocked by the level of cruelty of the future project. The topic of violence in games in general and Carmageddon in particular was raised regularly in the newspapers or on the radio. Some of the team members even had to participate in radio debates in an attempt to defend their project. Moreover, they refused to assign an age rating to the game and allow it to be sold. It was only through the courts that they managed to break into the stores, and in 1997 the project was published, receiving high marks from both the players and the press. All this hype around Carmageddon contributed well to high sales, even interested gamers who did not originally plan to purchase.
In 1998, a sequel was released, in which the engine was finalized and the graphics improved. The game again collected positive reviews from everyone who played it, and just like the first part, it sold well. True, this did not prevent the publisher (Sci), being the owner of the rights to the series, from giving the development of subsequent parts to other studios. Only in 2011 did Stainless manage to regain the rights to the brand and launch a fundraising campaign to create a new game in the series called Carmageddon: Reincarnation, as well as release ports of the first part for iOS and Android platforms. And if Reincarnation was scolded by both fans and ordinary players, especially for its technical component and a lot of bugs, then the mobile ports of the series were amazing. The author of these lines literally played Carmageddon on his Ipod Touch to the holes))
After the release of the ideological continuation of Reincarnation – Carmageddon: Max Damage – which had mixed reviews among gamers, the franchise was sold to THQ Nordic. At the moment, there have been no new projects in the series yet.
Plot
Until the time of writing this article, I didn’t even know that the project had a plot. For me, it was a crazy race in which dozens of psychos are trying to destroy each other, earn money and stay alive! But the plot was about the same as in the movie “Death Race 2000”, and in many other games of that time like Unreal Tournament (which I wrote about here): there was an ecological disaster on the planet, many people died, others turned into zombie. The government decided to arrange deadly competitions, thus trying to give the population spectacles! Luids could cause chaos on specially prepared tracks: in mines, factories, in the city, in the desert, at a winter resort and many other places. While some citizens are trying to win the race, others are watching it. Thus, they let off their steam instead of getting busy overthrowing totalitarianism and establishing a more just and humane society. As a reward, the winner is promised the opportunity to get to one of the islands, not affected by the past cataclysm, where you can live and enjoy life, but … in the final game, you will find out how it all ended.
The player (optionally) controls two characters: the daring Die Anna and the insane Max Damage (I think even without a high level of English, you can understand this pun). Each of them has its own car with unique characteristics like weight or speed, but in general you will not notice much difference between them.
Gameplay
Carmageddon is an arcade racing game that lets you choose your means to win the competition. In addition, players and critics of the time praised the rather advanced physics engine, spacious maps, and the car damage model. But first things first…
All cars have different characteristics and handling. There are both fast racing cars (not very strong and quickly skidding), and heavy well-armored cars that are better off out of sight when they fly along the road at the maximum available speed. Successfully completing races, earning money and destroying enemy vehicles, you will unlock new vehicles and be able to choose a car to your liking. And for your hard-earned money, any car can always be upgraded a little – increase speed, armor or striking power.
The game had a sufficiently detailed (for that time) damage model, which made it possible to visually see the results of any collision in the form of dents or flying parts. In 1997, seeing this in a racing game was pretty rare.
Like many races of that time, at the start of the race you have a timer that forces you to finish the race as soon as possible. But believe me, this is not a problem at all, as there are many ways to increase the time. Various bonuses are scattered on the cards. Some of them add additional seconds to the completion of the race, while others give a variety of buffs and debuffs that affect the car or the world around. There are really a lot of options. This is a chain lightning that kills all people who are not lucky enough to be near your car, and reduced gravity, which greatly changes the control of any vehicle on the map, and pedestrians that become giants, and the acceleration of your racing vehicle, and its instant repair – you can list for a long time !
While driving, constantly colliding, flying up and overturning, you will be able to observe the reaction of the rider thanks to the camera located in the corner of the screen, broadcasting the driver’s face. In order to make it look as realistic as possible, live actors were invited. Max was played by one of the employees named Tony, but the role of the girl went to the actress, who at the time of filming was only 14 years old. This fact added fuel to the fire even more, allowing various moralists to endlessly complain about the game.
Interesting fact: Tony, the guy who played Max Damage, also volunteered for the filming of the pedestrian collision animation. Yes, he was literally a living dummy that the guys at Stainless Games were hitting with their Chevrolet Chevy while recording it on camera! One time after his goading “Get on the gas!”, Tony was hit at a speed of about 60 km / h! On other days, random onlookers, who did not understand what was happening, called the police, saying that people were being run over in the parking lot! The ironic ending of the story was the realization by the guys of the fact that the film was exposed and not suitable for further work, which means that almost all of this was in vain…
You will face various racers with their background, car and avatar. And even though the level of intelligence of computer dummies is rather low, battles with them are still a pleasure. By the way, I never noticed, but the car of one of the riders named Ivan the Bastard (Ivan the Bastard) is very similar to a converted one for off road Zhiguli, and he himself quite strongly resembles Khrushchev.
The game has several options for completing the race. You can, like in any other project of this genre, go through all the checkpoints and complete the race, having overcome the required number of laps. Boring? Indeed, this is not what you expect when you install such a scandalous game! Another opportunity to win the race will be the total murder of all life on the map. In the upper right corner of the screen, the number of living creatures that are left to kill for victory is indicated. It can be both ordinary people and animals like cows. Well, the most optimal and interesting way to complete the race is to get rid of all competitors. To do this, you must help the enemy car turn into a pile of metal by regularly ramming them, slamming them into walls or pushing them onto mines, which are found on some tracks.
The game not only gives you opportunities to achieve victory, but also in every way encourages such ways, extending the check-in timer and rewarding you with money for each destroyed opponent or downed pedestrian! Moreover, you will be credited with various bonuses for an “artistic” fall that fell under the wheels of a poor fellow or for hitting a blind man. There is generally quite a lot of dismemberment and cruelty, of course, adjusted for that time. Knocking down pedestrians and running over their bodies, you leave bloody tire tracks and, sliding on their blood, continue your rampage, destroying all life in your path. Isn’t this the dream of any anti-social personality?!
Agree, after a couple of races in Carmageddon you just want to get behind the wheel of a real car and start making mayhem on the streets? In some countries, the game was censored, so the pedestrians had to be replaced with either black-blooded robots or green-blooded zombies. But personally, I don’t recommend such versions of the project, because after them the desire to become a death machine that arranges hell on the roads somehow immediately disappears))
Sound accompaniment
The musical accompaniment is instrumental versions of the Fear Factory tracks, in particular the songs Demanufacture, Zero Signal and Body Hammer. Racing under the vigorous metal rubilovo, what could be better? I don’t even remember the last time I heard a similar soundtrack in modern games. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an inveterate oldfag who thinks that everything was cool before, but now it’s bad. But music like in Quake II and Carmageddon, I have almost ceased to hear these days.
Why play?
To enjoy driving rides to cool music, setting up an apocalypse on the streets of cities and destroying everything that comes in your way! Races give incredible emotions, as they look very spectacular and spectacular, and the ability to turn on video replays at any second allows you to enjoy the moment even more. This game has inspired many other developers to create similar projects and is a milestone in the gaming industry that everyone should check out! And a large fleet, which can be gradually opened and collected, will not let you get bored, allowing the player to choose a new car each time with a different behavior on the road.
Re-releases and ports
The very first re-release was the Carmageddon Splat Pack. It is this addition that is considered by many to be the best part of the series, expanding and supplementing the game with details. In fact, this is an independent game based on the original. New tracks, cars, Easter eggsdestructible objects on the map, as well as 3DFX support and higher screen resolution.
Two years later, a port of the game was released on the Sony Playstation 1, which is, in fact, an independent project. Since by that time the continuation of Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now had been released on the PC, the version for the console is a kind of mixture of the first and second parts.
Released in 2012, the port to mobile phones from Apple, and six months later to devices with Android, in my opinion, is perhaps the best. It was in it that the interface was pulled up, making the game more pleasing to the eye and convenient for the modern player. And no matter how negatively I felt about gaming on touchscreen phones, ten years ago I played a lot of hours in this version. But the problem is that these days the game does not support modern versions of Android, so even with workarounds, I could not install it. Although initially I had a desire to add it to the download assembly …
So that you do not have to search for and install the project, in the Telegram-channel “Oldfazhny Gamer” i uploaded the archive, which contains both a fully installed game and separate installer files (in case you want to install it yourself). Additionally, I installed the newest version of nGlide (the game sometimes slowed down with the old version) and added a crack (optional). Despite the fact that I got acquainted with the series on PS One, and the article was written about the PC version, I will still post it in the Telegram channel both of these versions. Take it if I managed to awaken nostalgia in you.
Minuses
At present, the game has rather outdated graphics, wooden physics and stupid bots. But! It doesn’t stop you from enjoying it at all. Perhaps this is something wrong with me, but it comes to me even more than the new parts of the series released in 2015 and 2018, and all its disadvantages do not spoil the overall impression of such a cult project.
Outcome
She has a huge list of advantages listed by me in the article, but the main thing, why it is worth playing it, I will say right now – it’s just fun! The years have not greatly affected its essence. Yes, if the visual component is important to you, you will have to get used to it at first, but the basis of the game has passed through the years, continuing to delight and allow you to enjoy. Try to shake the old days and plunge into those times when the grass was greener, there was less censorship, and we are younger!
I’ve been playing games for over 25 years and remember them exactly like that: heartfelt and addictive, with fun mechanics and interactivity, no in-game currency and no attempts to be anything but a game. In my Telegram channel you are waiting for not only reviews of games, but also current news, as well as discussions about game development. Subscribe, it will be interesting!
