Carmageddon (testing)

In Carmageddon, the player races a vehicle against a number of other computer controlled competitors in a (usually) suburban setting. The player has a certain amount of time to complete a specified number of laps of a course, but more time may be gained by going through checkpoints, collecting bonuses, damaging the competitors' cars or by running over pedestrians.

Races are completed by either completing the course as you would a normal racing game, wasting all other racers, or running over a set number of pedestrians (200 or so) before anyone else.

In many countries (including Germany and, for a short time, the UK), the game, when released, contained zombies or robots instead of people, as running over the undead was considered more acceptable by their respective ratings boards. Unofficial "blood patches" were rapidly released by members of the community to replace the zombie graphics and sound with the more gory versions, followed by official patches from the developers of the game that uncensors the game.

The game was notable for its realistic (if perhaps exaggerated) physics and for its in-game movie making features. It was also one of the earliest examples of go-anywhere 3D driving games, and may have influenced other later games including Driver and Grand Theft Auto III.

The game featured a music score version of Fear Factory's album Demanufacture.

The instruction manual for the PC CD-ROM version included a tongue-in-cheek dedication on the first page, which read as follows: The founders of Stainless Software Ltd, Patrick Buckland and Neil Barnden, would like to dedicate this game to their wives, Janet and Pauline, and to Patrick's children, Julianne and Sean, who all suffered from the hours needed to put this product together. However, dedicating something so sickly depraved and violent as this diabolical piece of soul-poison to them just wouldn't seem a very nice thing to do. So we won't.