Attention all competitors: This is your one minute warning. I repeat, one minute until race commencement.

June 1, 2011 3:28 PM

The Carmageddon brand has been reacquired by the team that developed the original PC titles Carmageddon and Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now. Stainless Games today announced that a new title is in early development, called ‘Carmageddon: Reincarnation’.

Carmageddon was originally released on DOS in 1997, with ports to Windows, Mac, PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color, with over 2 million copies sold. Carmageddon 2 and Carmageddon TDR2000 were both sequels released in the series. The series has not had a new title since 2000. Carmageddon 4 was to be released in 2005, but was placed on an indefinite hold by maker SCi, and later Eidos.

The goal of Carmageddon was to win by one of three methods: win the race, waste all opponents or kill all pedestrians. The original game was subject to censorship due to its graphic nature. Brazil banned it outright. Germany had the human pedestrians replaced with zombies and robots (with green blood and black oil respectively). The British Film Classification Board even banned it for awhile. Previouslyish

"Carmageddon: Reincarnation will feature the same black humor and comic violence that made the original game such a success," said Stainless Executive Director and Co-Founder Neil Barnden. "All the laughs, the crazy power-ups, and extreme destruction will return. We will make sure the existing fans get what they want and expect from a Carmageddon game, and a new generation discovers the delights of sliding into a Cunning Stunt."

Also: Previously

posted by Mister Fabulous (66 comments total)

This is kind of a press release for a not-too-great game, isn't it?
posted by empath at 3:34 PM on June 1, 2011

Oh man, I was reading about this earlier today. I only have vague memories of the first game but I remember it being fun as fuck. Plowing into pedestrians every which way. Did anybody bother actually racing?

And there were mods you could get to turn the pedestrian sprites into Barney the Purple Dinosaur and such. (Remember back when hating Barney seemed to be half the Internet?)

Good times. I hope the new entry lives up to my memories. The new MK has been a blast, maybe another old franchise can get a good revival.
posted by kmz at 3:35 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Carmaggedon: The Reincarmaggedoning
posted by dirigibleman at 3:35 PM on June 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

This is what GTA is for, isn't it?
posted by Hoopo at 3:36 PM on June 1, 2011

20 points!
posted by PenDevil at 3:36 PM on June 1, 2011

I'm actually excited about this due entirely to nostalgia. I know that this concept has been done so much it is even appearing in bad movies that *aren't* based on video games.

Still, carmageddon was by far the most fun of these, at least in my mind.
posted by poe at 3:36 PM on June 1, 2011

If it makes it out here I'm getting it. Along with the first GTA it was a game I only needed the demo for. Besides the fun of plowing into pedestrians the deformable car physics were great.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 3:37 PM on June 1, 2011

I look forward to this being banned in Australia. I spent a lot of time with the original Carmageddon. Hell, I spent more time with the demo of the original Carmageddon than I have with any number of full-price Xbox 360 games. Mad fun. Two of my buddies would come around - I was the only fellow with a grunty enough PC, which I think was a Pentium MMX 166Mhz, 32MB of RAM - and we would smash pixel-people for hours and hours. Just the demo for crying out loud!

Of course, the second game was pretty ordinary. This new one will probably be pretty stale as well.

But the first? Holy shit. If you haven't played that sucker yet, you need to track yourself down a copy ASAP. Not one of the best games I've ever played, but easily one of the most fun.
posted by tumid dahlia at 3:37 PM on June 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

My last memories of this game involve secretly installing it on the Macs in high school. I can't remember if it was one of those rare few games with a dual-use install disc (like Warcraft 2), or if we had a legit Mac version. Either way, great game, and this news couldn't have come at a better time -- as I bash through FFVI on my DS, in full-on nostalgia mode.
posted by Dark Messiah at 3:38 PM on June 1, 2011

Help me out, was this the one where you could turn on jelly shocks and moon gravity and make it basically unplayable?
posted by poe at 3:40 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

a not-too-great game

Hey now, them's fightin' words.

Carmageddon is GTA without the obnoxious plot elements.
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:40 PM on June 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Oh and that Fear Factory soundtrack was badass. Speaking of game soundtracks, the soundtrack for Mechwarrior 2 played off the game disc on a normal CD player, and I played the fuck out of it while reading whatever the hell I was reading.
posted by tumid dahlia at 3:40 PM on June 1, 2011

Carmageddon: now with even more Carmen Electra!
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:43 PM on June 1, 2011

the soundtrack for Mechwarrior 2 played off the game disc on a normal CD player,

Yep, games pre-mp3 had Red Book audio. Quake had a soundtrack by NiN you could listen to this way as well.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:43 PM on June 1, 2011

I uhh...must have had a "faulty" copy of Quake, I guess.
posted by tumid dahlia at 3:45 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is kind of a press release for a not-too-great game, isn't it?

I just want to respond that this announcement gives me the same kind of butterflies that the Portal 2 announcement gave me. I friggin loved Carmageddon when I was a teenager. I have actually been dreaming about a redone Carmageddon with updated graphics, etc.

My hope is that they keep true to form: blood and guts, silliness, arcade-style that is smooth. This also has the possibility of some truly kick-ass multiplayer. I will, however, be pissed off if it incorporates a legitimate "plot."
posted by Mister Fabulous at 3:45 PM on June 1, 2011

Yep, games pre-mp3 had Red Book audio.

Remember when you were playing Mechwarrior 2 or Quake or whatever and you're right in the middle of a thrilling firefight, down to your last notches of health, and the track changed? Ffffffuuuuuu-
posted by tumid dahlia at 3:47 PM on June 1, 2011

I like this bit from the concept are section:

Nothing to see here… yet! But keep coming back and prepare to be AMAZED! Well, prepare to be mildly interested. That way you’re less likely to be BITTERLY DISAPPOINTED!
posted by Hicksu at 3:47 PM on June 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

What I remember most about playing Carmageddon is how it left me completely unable to drive after a session. I'd get behind the wheel of my real car to pick up the kids from preschool or run to the store to get a quart of milk and all I wanted to do was run over people and bash into other vehicles. It jacked my natural aggressive tendencies up to 11. Fun times, fun times.
posted by mosk at 3:48 PM on June 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

This is what GTA is for, isn't it?

GTA IV is one of the most gelatinous games I have ever played. Seriously, I really miss the action of the Carmageddon games. Nothing has taken its place yet, at least for me.
posted by griphus at 3:50 PM on June 1, 2011

I want this to be good, I want this to be good, I want this to be good....


Seriously, no game has ever done this as well as Carmegeddon did back in the day. And I'm not normally a nostalgia gamer.
posted by lumpenprole at 3:50 PM on June 1, 2011

Yeah GTA IV is like driving through a big cake.
posted by tumid dahlia at 3:51 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Love the Carmageddon - 1, 2, and TDR. All tons of fun, though of course the racing was secondary and the gameplay decisions were questionable. But ramming another car so hard that it splits in half down the middle, or zooming down the street with lightning bolts destroying every pedestrian within 50 feet? Brilliant. Can't wait for the new one, though of course I don't expect much.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:52 PM on June 1, 2011

Oh, man, those bright red tire tracks really bring back the memories.

Carmageddon had a wonderful car-damage model that somehow looked awfully realistic while actually being completely ridiculous: "my car is now about 17 inches wide... and yet it moves!"
posted by gurple at 3:53 PM on June 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Am I the only one who read the last line of the post as "..discovers the delights of sliding into a Stunning Cunt"?
posted by double block and bleed at 3:54 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Am I the only one who read the last line of the post as "..discovers the delights of sliding into a Stunning Cunt"?

No, I think that was an on purpose rhetorical device.
posted by Hicksu at 3:56 PM on June 1, 2011

Just you and their marketing department, double block.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:56 PM on June 1, 2011

This is what GTA is for, isn't it?

No way, man. GTA has a plot. The plot to Carmagaddeon is GO FORTH AND KILL AND RUN SHIT OVER.

The physics in that game were incredible. Yeah, you could screw with the physics in all kinds of screwy ways, but it was literally the first game to have deformable objects and that used a "sprung object" in the physics.

It was kind of glitchy but you can actually load/unload the corners/tires of your vehicle when braking through turns. You'll spin out just like real life if you load on one of the front wheels too much, losing traction with the rear wheels.

And as dumb as that game was it had insane reply value. Just cruising around and trying to climb the mountains and roam the worlds was so much fun. It's not even about the running over pedestrians, or the insane weapons, or even the physics. Something about the game was just really, really fun to play. It was very enjoyable.

Update that with larger maps to explore, better cartoon physics, more terrain and maybe a way to import custom vehicles and you're talking about the best game since... well, Carmaggedon.

I'm way more excited about this than any game I've seen in the last ten years. Forget GTA. Forget Duke Nukem Forever. A new Carmaggedon is just what the gaming world needs.

PLEASE DON'T SUCK. PLEASE DON'T SUCK. PLEASE DON'T SUCK.
posted by loquacious at 3:59 PM on June 1, 2011 [10 favorites]

As long as the Electro Bastard Ray Gun is included, I'll be happy.
posted by lampshade at 4:01 PM on June 1, 2011 [4 favorites]

Help me out, was this the one where you could turn on jelly shocks and moon gravity and make it basically unplayable?

Racing Destruction Set, one of the all-time best games ever for Commodore 64, had gravity options that made some tracks a lot of fun. Plus landmines and oil slicks.
posted by usonian at 4:05 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Meh. It would be nice if someone were to make a good game based loosely on Steve Jackson's Car Wars instead, in a Mad Max / Road Warrior-style future.

Search, cannibalize parts & find fuel, design and arm vehicles, win fights and duels, gather refugees, build a base, trade, do quests, etc.
posted by markkraft at 4:05 PM on June 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

Yessss!!! I think I'll fire up my old "windtunnel" G4/1Ghz and play a game of Carma right now. That's why I keep it in running condition, it's the last Mac that will boot OS9 native. Time for some Beef Curtains!

I remember inviting a friend over to play when I first got the game. I told him I kept running out of time, I could never finish the race, I ran out of time after a couple of laps. He fired it up and started smashing up everything, running over people, hey, that's not what you're supposed to.. oh.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:09 PM on June 1, 2011

Just cruising around and trying to climb the mountains and roam the worlds was so much fun...

Remember the day you got your first police APC? *tear*
posted by tumid dahlia at 4:12 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

They must keep the cows. MooOOO*SPLAT*
posted by Blue Meanie at 4:13 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

It would be nice if someone were to make a good game based loosely on Steve Jackson's Car Wars instead, in a Mad Max / Road Warrior-style future.

Well, there is always Darkwind.
posted by adamdschneider at 4:33 PM on June 1, 2011

Man, it's been years since somebody made a good demolition-derby game.
posted by box at 4:40 PM on June 1, 2011

Two weeks ago today I was playing a pre-release version of Carmageddon 3. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it's like the Sims only instead of helping little computer people decorate their apartments, you run them over with a truck. About ten minutes into it, I yawned. I only planned to execute a regular yawn, but to my surprise it turned into one of those open mouthed, full bodied, eye-fluttering sighs that anyone who's played the lead role in a movie or play about Caligula will recognize as a good way to express how jaded you've become about everything. That's when it hit me: I live in the future, I own the most powerful electronic brain money could buy nine months ago, I'm using it to accurately simulate a murderous rampage, and I'm still bored. -- Old Man Murray
posted by straight at 4:42 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm betting on a plot + cutscenes.
posted by Artw at 4:46 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Meh. It would be nice if someone were to make a good game based loosely on Steve Jackson's Car Wars instead

Autoduel and DeathTrack not enough for ya?

(I'd love to see DeathTrack updated to today's standards)
posted by hanov3r at 5:05 PM on June 1, 2011

I had a feeling this may happen soon. Nice post.
posted by Leisure_Muffin at 5:06 PM on June 1, 2011

This is one of those games that will be nearly impossible to screw up.
posted by GilloD at 5:51 PM on June 1, 2011

Just you watch!
posted by tumid dahlia at 5:56 PM on June 1, 2011

I played *alot* of Carmageddon, and like mosk above, I had to fight the urge to smash into things if I got into a real car shortly thereafter. My wife still says "goddamn mutha" to me periodically in the voice from the game.
posted by roue at 7:04 PM on June 1, 2011

I remember playing Carmageddon in the office of my parent's house when they were having a 'business party'. My Dad came in to get something, and one of the guests looked in and saw what I was playing.

Within ten minutes or so I had several senior managers and at least one vice president of one of Canada's largest banks crowded around my 14" monitor cheering every time I smeared a pedestrian across the ground.

When I rolled into the football stadium and started smashing players in formation they went apeshit.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 7:17 PM on June 1, 2011 [7 favorites]

The timing of this is either fortuitous or evil, coming right on the heels of my decision that I don't owe enough to my teenaged self to buy Duke Nukem Forever since it's done nothing but be a disappointing anachronism in every preview I've seen for this iteration. Maybe Carmageddon 3 can fill the nostalgia void I've created with this betrayal. Like a whole bunch of people have already said here, the demo of that fucking game was probably more fun than any game I actually spent money on between Warcraft II and Portal.
posted by Copronymus at 7:57 PM on June 1, 2011

I also played a lot of Carmageddon, but it wasn't to kill people etc. It was to generate the most laughs from everyone else playing, all six of us in one large room. We played the "Fox and Hound" variant in which one person runs and the remaining players chase. If I remember correctly, fox gets a map, the hounds see the fox as a moving dot on a blank display. There was one game in which the fox at the time had stopped somewhere, and all of the hounds converged onto a road that corresponded with his y-axis ... so obviously he was on the same road, waiting to be tagged for some reason. Maximum speed. Five abreast, racing. We hadn't played this map very much, but we had him. He actually had us: he was parked on the road, but just low enough beyond a slight dip. He watched all five of us barely clear his roof and into a steep ravine just across the way. We were laughing/screaming in disbelief the whole time. No one ever topped that move.
posted by user92371 at 8:00 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm betting on a plot + cutscenes.

You shut your greasy, flappy piehole, mister!
posted by loquacious at 8:11 PM on June 1, 2011

Also for the gentlefolk, parents and children who may be following along at home - Carmageddon isn't actually about the mowing down, mulching, splattering or otherwise folding, spindling or mutilating.

Sure, that part is funny but it's just Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny funny, really. The running people over part wasn't very realistic at all. Like the racing in the game the splattering of pedestrians is just sort of... there. Maybe?

Ok, maybe it is about running over cartoon people and leaving tire tracks of blood on sidewalks. It's part of the purile comedy. But you can also turn all that stuff off or change the red blood to green, or turn off the blood or pedestrians entirely. There were a variety of ways to modify the game play, and many were built in through the use of simple cheat codes.

But the part that made this game not only fun - but also a legitimate work of art - is the play value and design. The cars were fun to drive. The environment was fun to drive in and explore. You didn't have to race or rack up points running over pedestrians.

I played plenty of games where I tried to desperately not hit anyone while exploring the maps and terrain, looking for secret areas or weird glitches. (And this was almost impossible because often pedestrians would run right into your car. But it could be done sometimes.)

The point being is that it had a really open-ended sort of gameplay, not unlike something like Minecraft has in feel, or other really good, fun games where you just find yourself exploring and messing around with the environment and worrying less and less about the overtly stated goals, story and intent of the game.

There were plenty of gore and spatter games from the same era as Carmaggedon, plenty of combat, plenty of more realistically violent games. But Carmaggedon had something that almost none of the other ones did, and that was this really cool, fun, engaging and interesting game play that never seemed to get boring no matter what you were doing or how you were using it.

As others have pointed out in the thread it was often repurposed for hide and seek or capture the flag style games, or just doing stunts... etc.

I hope Stainless reads this thread or others like it and stays true to the original form. The game was fun because it wasn't overdesigned, didn't have much of a plot and wasn't bogged down with cutscenes. It was just fun game play.

Heck, they could do the same or similar physics engine and game play and turn it into a safe cartoon kiddie version like MarioKart64 and I'd still want to play it.
posted by loquacious at 8:25 PM on June 1, 2011

If you take out an out an enemy car there will be a slow-mo "fatality" animation that you will have to watch before it gives you control back.
posted by Artw at 8:26 PM on June 1, 2011

Threadshitters leave. This is amazing news. Between this and Duke Nukem Forever, the second decade of the new century is already a gigantic improvement over the first.

Now all I need is someone to bring us No One Lives Forever 3.
posted by Pants McCracky at 8:50 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you take out an out an enemy car there will be a slow-mo "fatality" animation that you will have to watch before it gives you control back.

I loved this feature in Burnout 3.

What's the best way to play Carmageddon now? Hopefully they'll release it for XBLA. Or do what Rockstar did for the first two GTAs and just give it away.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:55 PM on June 1, 2011

loquacious has it, or has my take on it at least. loquacious should come and join us at Gamefilter. So should the rest of you, too!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:10 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Remember the day you got your first police APC? *tear*

APC, hell. The Plow or The Plow Mk II could eat a triple stack of APCs for breakfast. Once you get either of The Plows, you are even more nigh in-fucking-vulnerable than the Tick hisself.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:32 PM on June 1, 2011

Oh man. I can remember playing the single-player against the giant armored police tanks, seeing how many I could destroy with my tiny red sports car. Hilariously unrealistic but oh so entertaining in its design. There were levels where you'd find all kinds of items on rooftops; the only catch would be figuring out how to ramp onto the buildings. The minefield levels were hilariously like those cartoons where a cat enters a room full of mousetraps - you could catch some serious air as you mutilated your ride.

But the level I played most was one where there was an incredibly long canyon where you could build up serious speed, and a small ramp on the shoulder halfway down. I'd ramp it as fast as possible, trying for a chance collision at the far end of the canyon with an oncoming car. Hard to do but that's just the sort of thing you could obsess over and still find it hilarious after trying 19 times then succeeding on the 20th; the payoff was that good.

It was the only game that I ever created a special PC for; when systems got into the GigaHertzes it started messing up (some DOS games didn't do timing to account for such fast processors) and so I dedicated an old PC with a DOS boot CD just for that one game. Fingers crossed that the revival is even half as good as the first.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:45 PM on June 1, 2011

What's the best way to play Carmageddon now?

If you happen to be on a Mac, there's a Cider port of Carmageddon 2 floating around the usual seedy internet back-alleys. (I tried to find a legit version, but was unsuccessful.)

It plays beautifully, except that the timer counts down too quickly, making some of the missions impossible, so you have to cheat the timer away. (LAPMYLOVEPUMP to activate cheats, F8 to turn off the timer.)
posted by rifflesby at 10:27 PM on June 1, 2011

I remember playing the timed demo and then finding a patch that removed the timer. The demo never got boring! I bought that game soon after. Great soundtrack, gameplay, level design, and physics (in service of LOLs).
posted by zippy at 10:28 PM on June 1, 2011

Fuck, I thought I was the only one who thought this was one of the best games of all time.

Here's what they need to do to the sequel.

Copy the first game completely. Give it better graphics, more deformable physics, update the audio. But keep the exact same gameplay.

Oh add internet multiplay I suppose. If you have to.
posted by schwa at 11:28 PM on June 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

This is utterly awesome. I bought my first 3D graphics card explicitly for Carmageddon. About the only other reboot that could possibly get me this excited would be an Internet-multiplayer-capable version of Descent...
posted by Lazlo at 12:17 AM on June 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

Mkay, my greatest Carmageddon memory EVAR was of the physics engine...

I'm racing, concentrating on just that, when there's a gentle curve going down hill and the left side of the curve is the curved facade of a building. I start down the hill, someone clips me way hard, and next thing I know, my car is tooling along the inside of the curved building facade. Apparently I was tooling along fast enough for the physics engine to decide I had enough centrifugal/centripetal (always confuse the two) force to stick to the wall over gravity.

I reveled in the awesomosity, then frowned as there were no pedestrians standing sideways on the building exterior.

I also think a great part of the charm will never come back. Back then, you COULD make a game with potty jokes and vehicular carnage. Today, however, our more enlightened citizenry would shake the pillars of heaven to get such a game's very existance erased irrevocably from the annals of the multiverse.
posted by Samizdata at 5:37 AM on June 2, 2011

Threadshitters leave.
posted by Kurtwood Smith at 10:50 PM on June 1 [+] [!]
posted by adamdschneider at 7:14 AM on June 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

I also think a great part of the charm will never come back. Back then, you COULD make a game with potty jokes and vehicular carnage. Today, however, our more enlightened citizenry would shake the pillars of heaven to get such a game's very existance erased irrevocably from the annals of the multiverse.

Um. You should play GTA/Saints Row...
posted by stenseng at 12:06 PM on June 2, 2011

It was the only game that I ever created a special PC for; when systems got into the GigaHertzes it started messing up (some DOS games didn't do timing to account for such fast processors)

There are programs that slow your processor (CPU killer is one I remember though I think there's a better one; I need to check my laptop). I have used them to play games that were running to fast and they can often solve the problem.

Speeding up and flying through a ramp on top of a building and then executing a series of jumps to go to places you didn't think you should have gone too was a great feeling. I don't really like racing games but Carmaggedon was quite something back then.
posted by ersatz at 5:49 PM on June 2, 2011

So glad this thread was posted, and not at all surprised to see the love for the original from fellow MeFites. I've spent the better part of the morning playing it.
posted by SpiffyRob at 8:37 AM on June 4, 2011

"It’s scripted up the wazoo" - someone actually plays the new Duke Nukem.
posted by Artw at 8:51 AM on June 4, 2011

Well, no, somebody plays the demo, which (despite the fact that it has pretty much nothing to do with this thread I will say that) I have also done, and I am here to tell you: it's crap. It's not 'fine', despite what the RPS guys says, it's just terrible.

You can thank me later.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:34 AM on June 5, 2011

I ended up with a copy of this when I bought one of those vinyl foldout "software packs" - anyone else remember those? I loved, loved, loved it. A friend and I played the hell out of it. I really hope they don't screw this one up. To hell with DNF, I want a well done Carmageddon.
posted by menschlich at 6:53 AM on June 22, 2011