Information AboutCarmageddon |
''Carmageddon'' is the first of a series of graphically violent driving-oriented Video Game s produced by Stainless Games , published by Interplay and SCi . The story of ''Carmageddon'' is based on the 1975 cult classic movie '' Death Race 2000 ''. The film, which stars Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine , takes place in the (then future) year of 2000, and tells the story of a race in which points are rewarded to drivers who hit pedestrians with their cars. The cars in the movie were also fitted with weapons such as Tommy Gun s and Blades that extended over the length of the car body. This also spawned a short lived Comic Book of the same name. HISTORY The game that became Carmageddon started out as "3D Destruction Derby", a banger-racing (stock-car) sim prototyped by Stainless . This was signed by SCi in 1995, but the banger-racing angle was soon dropped and for a while the game was to use the Mad Max license. This fell through, and was replaced by the Death Race 2020 license, as a sequel to the original film was at that time planned. This introduced the running-over of pedestrians into the game. When this license also fell through, SCi and Stainless took the decision to proceed with the game anyway, without a license. The name 'Carmageddon' was coined, and development proceeded with the designers allowed unusually free reign with regard to the content of the game. DESCRIPTION In ''Carmageddon'', the player races a vehicle against a number of other computer controlled competitors in various settings, including city, mine and industrial areas. The player has a certain amount of time to complete each race, but more time may be gained by going through checkpoints, collecting bonuses, damaging the competitors' cars or by running over pedestrians. Races are completed by either completing the course as you would a normal racing game, wasting all other racers, or running over all pedestrians on the level before anyone else. In many countries (including Germany and, for a short time, the UK ), the game, when released, contained Zombie s or Robot s instead of people, as running over the Undead was considered more acceptable by their respective ratings boards. In some countries, the game was banned completely, including France and Brazil. In Australia the game was passed completely uncut with a MA15+ rating.http://refused-classification.com/Games_A-D.htm#carmageddon The game was notable for its realistic and ground-breaking physics and for its in-game movie making features. It was also one of the earliest examples of go-anywhere 3D driving games, and may have influenced other later games including and Grand Theft Auto III . The game featured a music score version of Fear Factory 's album '' Demanufacture '', with "Zero Signal" as the opening theme. The instruction manual for the PC CD-ROM version included a Tongue-in-cheek dedication on the first page, which read as follows: ''The founders of Stainless Software Ltd, Patrick Buckland and Neil Barnden, would like to dedicate this game to their wives, Janet and Pauline, and to Patrick's children, Julianne and Sean, who all suffered from the hours needed to put this product together. However, dedicating something so sickly depraved and violent as this diabolical piece of soul-poison to them just wouldn't seem a very nice thing to do. So we won't.'' PORTS ''Carmageddon'' was originally released on the PC (for DOS ) in 1997 , but was eventually Ported to Microsoft Windows ( 1997 ), Macintosh (1997), PlayStation ( 1999 ), Nintendo 64 ( 2000 ) and Game Boy Color ( 2001 ). The PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions of ''Carmageddon'' are more similar to ''Carmageddon II''. EXPANSION PACK AND COMPILATION ''Carmageddon Splat Pack'' is an official expansion pack released in 1997. The expansion pack included new tracks, vehicles, environments, network levels and 3Dfx support. ''Carmageddon Max Pack'', also released in 1997, bundled the original game and its expansion pack into one package. As a bonus, it also included a strategy guide, mousepad, and a leather car key chain with Carmageddon's logo on it. SEQUELS This game was successful enough to spawn several sequels. The other games in the series are:
SERIES DOWNFALL SCi had originally planned Carmageddon 4 for a late 2005 release, but later postponed it indefinitely. Little to no news was released about the game prior to the announcement of its cancellation, with Eidos (whom SCi recently gained ownership of) putting development on hold for unspecified reasons. Rabid fan sites and discussion boards for the series retain a majority of information available on the game, however most amounts to nothing more than mere speculation. The fate of its development is unknown, as no new press releases or information have surfaced since its cancellation, with SCi and Eidos currently focusing on other projects.1 SEE ALSO
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