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Games Entertainment

Carmageddon Careens Back Onto Radar 40

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to GameSpot's report that a new version of gory driving title Carmageddon is listed for release in 2005 by publisher SCi. This highly Death Race 2000-influenced franchise often got in trouble with censors for "sequences in which pedestrians are run over by the player", and despite suffering diminishing returns for the sequels, was a fiercely addictive title (especially in the original's rarely-tried LAN multiplayer modes.) However, there's no word yet on platforms or gameplay details for this new title.
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Carmageddon Careens Back Onto Radar

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  • LAN game was buggy (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kuad ( 529006 ) <demento@fuckyou . c o . uk> on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @12:55PM (#6234620)
    especially in the original's rarely-tried LAN multiplayer modes

    That's because although multiplayer Carmageddon was fun, it was a bitch and a half to get running!! You *needed* to drive around killing people after the frustration-fest of setting up a LAN game.
    • it was even tougher on the Mac since the manual was for PC. The piece of information I needed was that it would not run over TCP/IP, only IPX which didn't come with a default Mac OS 8 install. After I figured that out it ran great. Carma2 was a much better game than the original(3D peds), and it runs great on my Pismo Powerbook. A gamepad is essential though, playing Carma on a keyboard just hurts after awhile. I would love a Carma2 remake for Xbox with upgraded graphics and Live support.
    • We got it going fine at Psygnosis when I worked there. Used to play it every lunch time and every night. It was so popular that we had up to 4 servers running at once with 8 players on each. Every one had "Fox and Hounds" on it. It is just the best game ever made. Single or multi-player. Instant replays on single player are hilarious, as was when, during a LAN game, everyone would be chasing the fox down a hill when someone would skid causing mayhem and cars would fly over your head. Marvellous.
  • that full-sized bus with only room for a driver as the rest of the thing is filled with a rocket engine....as soon as you can afford that bad-boy, it was no longer a race: it was an annhilation!
    something so huge and heavy shouldn't be allowed to travel so fast, but there you go. =)
    man that game was fun!
  • Step 1: Make fun game.
    Step 2: Having made lots of money on game, make new version with better gameplay and graphics.
    Step 3: After making even more money on second game, make horrid piece of crap that looks like previous games, but which fans hate.
    Step 4: Beat dead horse?

    (Sarcasm aside, I truly hope this is better than TDR2000. I would like nothing better than to see this franchise restored to it's former glory.)
  • Times have changed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ColonBlow ( 120356 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @01:17PM (#6234832) Journal
    I doubt they'll get much reaction about running pedestrians over after the GTA3 phenomenon. They better focus on the fun action, and not the gore level, since, as SOF II and Postal proved, you have to have a good game as well.
    • If the origional Carmagedddon wasn't "Fun Action", I don't know what was. That game is defeniatly on my "Top 25" list of games. Not just because you could mow down pedestrians, but because...well..I don't know, there was just some magic about that game that made me stay up until 2 o'clock in the morning playing it back in the day.

      Not even the second game did it for me like the first one did.

  • by scootr1 ( 159749 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @01:23PM (#6234895)
    How do you tell people that you are going to have a game out in two years? Is it being designed for today's equipment? Tomorrow's? Equipment two years from now?

    My gut says that either it'll never come out, or it'll be so out of date by the time it does that nobody'll buy it (*ack*Daikatana*ack*)
    • by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @02:43PM (#6235672) Homepage
      Well, maybe you should go look at id Software, or Epic, or Valve, or Origin back in the WC days, or... well... any successful design company.

      These companies, of course, push the bleeding edge with their games -- they talk to video card makers, CPU makers, etc. and guess at what features will be available in N years. They then target those features for the high end of their game engine (or in the case of Origin in its hayday, target beyond those features...) while making sure that it's playable with current technology (or in the case of Origin, blatantly ignore current technology).

      And, somehow, they're successful. Not to say it's perfect, not by any means, but they've generally done quite well. Better yet, while the game may want the bleeding edge hardware to run at top performance with all the visual toys turned on, other developers can license the engine and be relatively safe in knowing that when they release their game in 18-24 months those bleeding edge features will be much, much more common place.

      As far as Carmageddon is concerned, are they trying to be one of the bleeding edge companies, or are they just trying to make a buck? The make a buck companies usually just use the stock engine, maybe a couple modifications, but nothing really big. There's also the middle ground - companies that license existing engines and then modify the hell out of them (like Valve did with the Q1 engine and HL).

      Being on the bleeding edge is dangerous - if you mis-estimate where the edge is you can either come out with a game that requires more hardware than is available at release time, or you can come out with a game that already looks outdated (Daikatana managed to do both at once, plus be full of bugs and poor design decisions). Being on the other end can be dangerous too -- anyone coming out with a Q3 or Unreal engine based game is going to look very dated once HL2, D3, DE2, etc. come out.
  • by N0decam ( 630188 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @02:12PM (#6235388) Homepage
    I've gotta say that Carmageddon is the one game that, while fun to play, seriously affected my driving for hours afterwards.

    It was very tough to not swerve onto the sidewalk on my way home after a day-long Carmageddon session at a friend's place. Seriously.

    But I didn't do it, which is why I'm not currently in prison or the loony bin.
    • I'm sure I read - years ago now - about people having similar problem with arcade games of the '80s. Such as Defender/Asteroids addicts reaching for the smart bomb or hyperspace button when they were about to hit another car. Scary.
    • I've gotta say that Carmageddon is the one game that, while fun to play, seriously affected my driving for hours afterwards.

      I used to get this after playing lots of Crazy Taxi too... especially when an Offspring song came on the radio. Luckily I was driving a Metro at the time, so I probably couldn't have jumped a curb even if I tried.
  • by JRAC ( 525882 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @02:12PM (#6235392)
    SCi has filed a law suit against Grand Theft Auto publisher, Rockstar Games.

    SCi claims parts of GTA contain ideas and concepts - such as pedestrian death by motor vehicle - originally developed by the company in their Carmegeddon System V software, have been illegaly incorporated in to Rockstar Games' products.
    SCi has revoked Rockstar's IBSL (Innocent Bystander Squishing License) and has also sent letters to over 1,000 GTA owners warning them of the possible copyright infringement.

  • Sure enough, with a little bit of digging, I found my carmageddon 2 cd. I tried to install it, but sadly it doesn't seem to play nicely with win2k. oh well. Those were some good old days of using the pedestrian magnet powerup and then the omni-directional pedestrian launching springs to send hundreds of peds skywards.
  • Aren't the "pedestrians" in carmageddon reffered to as zombies? I wonder if this tactic would've helped GTA and postal. GTA and Postal people would be called "slaves of Bill Gates" (or SOBs) which would provide perfectly good motivation for you to put them out of their misery.
  • Because now, when I run over someone in GTA3, I keep expecting to get extra points for "artistic impression".

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