Planet of Death
Planet of Death ( POD) is a racing game from Ubisoft. It offers the OEM version 12, in the standard version and 16 in the Gold version 32 futuristic tracks. In addition, numerous other routes can be downloaded from the Internet.
The background story is about a virus called Pod, which is released on the hitherto prosperous planet Io through a mine disaster. The planet is evacuated then, however, some people are left behind, either because they did not want to or because they had no choice. To get the remaining space in the last shuttle, the player must compete with seven computer opponents in various races.
As special features the game offers a surrealistic graphics, precise handling of the race car and winding routes with many dead ends. Per network, Internet, modem or split screen can compete against each other up to eight riders. Using the " Game Service " it was POD players are able to compete on the servers of Ubisoft against each other. However, this is now no longer possible.
Since one of the first games supported the MMX instructions, it was settled as an OEM version of many computers with Intel MMX processors. However, the OEM version offered no support for 3dfx cards and no network mode.
About a year after the release of POD Ubisoft brought out an extension under the title "Back to Hell". She offered 19 additional routes, which, however, were mostly already available through the Ubisoft server. Later, Ubisoft released another gold version with 32 tracks.
POD was one of the first games that has been optimized for graphics cards from 3dfx. This initially affected only the Voodoo1. A little later, Ubisoft brought out a patch for the Voodoo2, a Force Feedback patch and a Direct3D patch.
On modern hardware the game is running is often not since it is incompatible with Pentium 4 processors. Using the Glide wrapper dgVoodoo and a Pentium4 patches it can be played on modern PCs, however, again.
Ubisoft released a sequel in late 2000 under the title " POD: Speed Zone ". However, this was only available for the games console Dreamcast.
The end of 2011 POD Gold was re-released. In this case, the game was adapted to current hardware and Windows 7, the game remains the same.