Carmageddon

Carmageddon is a racing game series whose parts for MS- DOS, Windows, Mac OS, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, Gizmondo, iOS and Android have been released. Designed, designs and develops, the first two parts Carmageddon by Stainless Software ( Stainless Games today ). The third part developed Torus Games. Distributors were all three parts of SCi Entertainment.

Spiritual Fathers of the series are Patrick Buckland and Neil Barnden, which are also the founder of Stainless Games.

Gameplay

Generally

As in a traditional racing game there is in Carmageddon While the opportunity to win the race by starting from checkpoints and laps before the time runs out. However, there are still alternatives to the one hand, the game can be won by the Broken down enemy cars and the other by driving over all creatures in play. These mostly include people, but partly also animals such as dogs and deer. The gameplay provides in this respect that the player rams the driver or other creatures overruns, to replenish his expiring term account. Be rewarded additionally particularly spectacular maneuvers or collisions. Furthermore, the player can collect by driving over boxes and tons of extras that affect the environment, the vehicle, the creatures or the enemy either positive or negative.

Modes

The player learns the game in the first place to know about a career mode. He begins to rank 99 and must work your way to Rank 1. He switched routes free and earns play money. With the money the player can upgrade their car and pay necessary repairs.

The second part of the game contained so -called Challenges, which meant a significant innovation. The player is not completed more race to race, but had to now and then ( leave all checkpoints in a given time to find particular objects or destroy, etc.) by special tasks his qualification for a higher racing class purchase.

Routes and environment

The routes are marked within a freely navigable environment through checkpoints. The themes of landscapes encompass all areas of human civilization, to include cities, industrial and mining areas, rural areas, tourist destinations as well as snow and desert landscapes. In the first part of the scenario of the game was settled in the future and therefore also offered extremely futuristic factories and inner cities. From the second part of the scenes, however, were designed much more realistic.

Protagonists

The main role of the game takes over in all three parts of the Carmageddon - 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, Anna (pronounced Diana ), driver of the Yellow Hawk. In the first part, and add-on doing the " Pratcam " will be used. Here, in the upper left corner of the image window is displayed, which represents the respective portraits of Max and Anna and their reactions to the game play. To use this get filmed and post-processed animation real people, probably they are employees of the development studio.

Music

Typical of the Carmageddon series, the subdivision of the soundtrack is in two parts, the one - Metal songs by bands like Fear Factory or Iron Maiden, on the other dance tracks from Utah Saints or Sentience.

Parts of the series

The series currently includes three games for PC:

• Carmageddon - Go to hell! (1997 ) also appeared in late 1998 with the Splat Pack an official add-on (among other things with 3dfx patch )
• Carmageddon II - Carpocalypse Now (1998)
• Carmageddon TDR 2000 (2000, also known as Carmageddon 3: TDR 2000 or Carmageddon: The Death Race 2000 in reference to the eponymous film )
• Carmageddon: Reincarnation (announced for Q1 2014)

And three games for consoles:

• Carmageddon64 (1999 ), a the N64 adapted and slightly modified version of Carmageddon II
• Carmageddon ( PSX ) (1999 ), a slightly modified version for the PlayStation
• Carmageddon (GBC ) (1999 ), Carmageddon for the Game Boy Color. Story completely by Carmageddon 2. Only new levels and a few cars missing.

For 2005, a new version of Carmageddon was announced, but now Eidos announced that development has been suspended. 2011 announced Stainless Games that they have the rights to Carmageddon recovered and started the development of a fourth part.

Since October 2012, the game for the iOS platform is available, an implementation for Android was released on 9 May 2013.

Controversy about the gameplay

Carmageddon has both legal terms and in terms of the media attention that has been given to this game, a sprawling history. In many TV reports that deal with the issue of " violence in computer games ," Carmageddon was the time mentioned (besides Doom and Manhunt ) as a model for violent PC games. This attention from the media made ​​the game so only known and meted him increased attention.

The developers have been sued several times for the game and brought out many new versions that weakened the degree of violence of the game through the use of zombies, androids, aliens or green blood. For the toned down versions However, there were so-called Blood patches to the game could be restored to their original state. In Germany only the disarmed versions of the game are available. The original English versions of Parts 1 and 2 are on the index of the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young.

Here, the gameplay was not fundamentally new. The first arcade game in which you have to run over living things, was Death Race ( Exidy, 1976). This was based on the film Death Race 2000 ( in Germany under the titles " Frankenstein's Death Race " resp. " Ruler of the road " was published ). Later, with Speed ​​Racer (T & F Software, 1983) for the Commodore 64 was released another game in which the crossing of pedestrians was essential game content. As one of the first video games it was indexed by the then Federal Review Board fonts.

Racing games, which are based on violent actions against counterparty, also have a long tradition. This began in 1982 with Spy Hunter, known representative of these types of games on the PC was the appearance of Carmageddon, the Destruction Derby series.