The Making Of… Carmageddon

“We needed a reference for what someone getting run over looked like, so of course he was the volunteer nutcase and I was driving a half-ton Chevy station wagon at the time. There was a car park outside the office, so we went out there and drove into him repeatedly: he had a piece of cardboard stuck up his shirt, as if that would help. At one stage, Neil was driving, and Tony asked if he could floor it and hit him harder so he could clear the roof. Neil hit him at about 35mph and he went clear through the windscreen! The police turned up because they’d had reports that someone was being run over in a car park, but when they saw the camera and stuff they headed off.”

Who knew making video games could be so dangerous.

For those who still can't forget that sound effect, Patrick was the author of Crystal Quest.

I dimly recall turning up for a meeting just as the infamous station wagon/windscreen/police incident was winding down, and the reason they were going faster and faster was that the "stunt man" was finding it easier to roll over the car.

With a fair speed, lots of jumpers, and a well timed jump & turn, he could neatly roll up and over that car and tumble off the back (until the windscreen let go.)

Carmageddon was my first exposure to what I would call "tinkering" with games. I was amazed at the things you could get the cards to do by changing the cars' config files for speed, weight, wheel diameter and etc. I credit this game and "reverse engineering" Geocities sites as what sealed my fate in being some sort of developer or programmer. Not to mention it was a terribly fun game to play, regardless of the customization ability. I knew it had some controversy when it came out, but it's interesting to see just what they went through in getting it made.

Carmageddon was such a great game. Just pure sandbox-style fun factor from start to finish. At least half of the fun of GTA came out of copying carmageddon.

I won't lie - when I first started driving at 15 years old, I had instinctive urges to run over pedestrians. I had played this game a lot.

I still have Carmageddon installed on my computer. And I play it regularly. And it still makes me laugh (and get frustrated - always a good thing for the longevity of a game).

I loved the ridiculous physics and damage modeling in this game. You could literally get your car bent in half and still drive around... barely :)

What's funny is that I'd never heard of all this controversy until just now. I spent a huge amount of time playing that game, and marvelling at the car physics and damage modelling. It was incredibly fun.