Carmageddon

Carmageddon
Logo of the first Carmageddon part
developer	Stainless software Torus Games
Publisher	SCi Games
Designer	Patrick Buckland Neil Barnden
First title	Carmageddon (1997)
Last title	Carmageddon: Max Damage (2016)
Platform (s)	MS-DOS , Windows , Mac OS , Nintendo 64 , GOG.com , Game Boy Color , Gizmondo , iOS , Android
Genre (s)	Racing game

Carmageddon is a racing game series whose parts have been released for MS-DOS , Windows , Mac OS , Nintendo 64 , Game Boy Color , Gizmondo , iOS and Android . The first two Carmageddon parts were designed, conceived and developed by Stainless Software (now Stainless Games ). Torus Games developed the third part . All three parts were distributed by SCi Entertainment .

The intellectual fathers of the series are Patrick Buckland and Neil Barnden, who are also the founders of Stainless Games .

Gameplay

General

As in a traditional racing game, in Carmageddon there is the possibility of winning the race by completing checkpoints or laps before the time runs out. However, there are still alternatives: On the one hand, the game can be won by crashing enemy cars and, on the other hand, by running over all living beings in the game. This includes mostly people, but also some animals such as dogs and deer. The game principle provides that the player rams other drivers or runs over living beings in order to top up his expiring time account. Particularly spectacular driving maneuvers or collisions are also rewarded. Furthermore, by driving over boxes or tons of extras, the player can collect extras that have a positive or negative influence on the environment, the vehicle, the living beings or the opponents.

Game modes

The player gets to know the game primarily through a career mode. He starts at rank 99 and has to work his way up to rank 1. He unlocks routes and earns play money. The player can use the money to upgrade his car and pay for repairs.

The second part of the game contained so-called challenges , which meant a major innovation. The player no longer completed race after race, but had to acquire his qualification for a higher racing class every now and then through special tasks (driving through all checkpoints in a given time, finding or destroying certain objects, etc.).

Routes and surroundings

The routes are marked by checkpoints within a freely navigable area. The themes of the landscapes encompass all areas of human civilization, including cities, industrial and mining areas, rural areas, holiday regions as well as snow and desert landscapes. In the first part, the scenario of the game was set in the future and therefore also offered extremely futuristic factories and inner cities. From the second part onwards, however, the scenarios were designed to be significantly more realistic.

Protagonists

The main role of the game is played in all three Carmageddon parts by the driver Max Damage with his vehicle, the infamous Red Eagle . In parts 1 and 2 there is also a selectable second protagonist and rival of Damage, Die Anna (read: Diana), driver of the Yellow Hawk . The Pratcam is used in the first part and add-on . A window is displayed in the upper left corner of the picture that shows the respective likeness of Max or Anna and their reactions to the course of the game. Filmed and post-processed animations of real people are used, presumably they are employees of the development studio.

music

Typical of the Carmageddon series is the division of the soundtrack into two parts, on the one hand metal pieces by bands like Fear Factory or Iron Maiden , on the other hand dance tracks by Utah Saints or Sentience.

Parts of the series

The series currently consists of five games:

• Carmageddon - Go to Hell! (1997), at the end of 1998 an official add-on was released with the Splat Pack (including a 3dfx patch)
• Carmageddon II - Carpocalypse Now (1998)
• Carmageddon TDR 2000 (2000, also as Carmageddon 3: TDR 2000 or Carmageddon: The Death Race 2000 in reference to the film of the same name)
• Carmageddon: Reincarnation (2015)
• Carmageddon: Max Damage (2016)

and four games for consoles:

• Carmageddon64 (1999), a slightly modified version of Carmageddon II adapted to the N64
• Carmageddon (PSX) (1999), a slightly modified version for the PlayStation
• Carmageddon (GBC) (1999), Carmageddon for the Game Boy Color . Story completely taken over from Carmageddon 2. Only new levels and a few cars are missing.
• Carmageddon: Max Damage (Xbox One, PS4) (2016)

A new version of Carmageddon was announced for 2005, but Eidos has since announced that development has been discontinued. In 2011 Stainless Games announced that they had regained the rights to Carmageddon and started developing a fourth installment.

The game has been available for the iOS platform since October 2012, and an implementation for Android was released on May 9, 2013.

Controversy over the gameplay

Carmageddon has a long history, both legally and in terms of the media attention the game has received. In many TV reports dealing with the subject of " violence in computer games ", Carmageddon (alongside Doom and Manhunt ) was mentioned as a prime example of violent PC games. It was this attention from the media that made the game so well known and given it increased attention.

The developers were sued several times for the game and brought out numerous new versions that weakened the level of violence of the game through the use of zombies, androids, aliens or green blood. For the defused versions, however, there were so-called blood patches , with which the game could be restored to its original state. For a long time only the defused versions of the game were available in Germany. The English original versions of parts 1 and 2 are on the index of the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People .

The game principle was not fundamentally new. The first arcade game to involve running over living beings is Death Race ( Exidy , 1976). This was based on the film Death Race 2000 (published in Germany under the title Frankenstein's death race or "Ruler of the Road"). Later another game appeared with Speed ​​Racer (T&F Software, 1983) for the Commodore 64 , in which driving over passers-by was an essential part of the game. It was one of the first video games to be indexed by what was then the Federal Testing Office for writings harmful to minors.

Racing games that are based on violent actions against opponents also have a long tradition. This began in 1982 with Spy Hunter , the best-known representatives of this type of game on the PC were the Road Rash and Destruction Derby series when Carmageddon was released .

Web links

• Carmageddon series at MobyGames (English)
• Carmageddon at MobyGames (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.gog.com/game/carmageddon_tdr_2000?pp=d051bf1ddf82f79c6af34f7f4e59707f081296ad
2. ↑ www.carmageddon.com ( Memento of the original from April 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Official site operated by Stainless Games for the development of the fourth installment of Carmageddon 
3. ↑ Thomas Freund: Carmageddon: iOS version available free of charge in the App Store. In: Netzwelt . October 17, 2012, accessed December 26, 2014 . 
4. ↑ Chris Davies: Carmageddon smashes onto Android after Kickstarter success. In: Slashgear . May 10, 2013, accessed December 26, 2014 .