Racing games were always very popular in the videogame world, and also lucrative, and as time passes, they tend to have upgrades, changing maybe the objectives, maybe the rules, or just putting cars to be destroyed , or even envolving another themes.
But in 1997, a racing game released by Stainless Games, came and brought to the racing genre something very polemic and discussed. Carmageddon was a new subgenre of the racing games, with a different style of gameplay and also bringing a completely new thing to this kind of game, violence.
It was originally developed for the PC (DOS), but latre on it was ported to the Windows, Macintosh, Playstation (1999), Nintendo 64 (2000) and Game Boy Color (2001). There is also a version for Android and IOS, already available.
In Carmageddon you run against a number of opponents controlled by the A.I, that will try to stop you and kill you at any cost, it's a game essentially anarchic, where not like the other racing games, you could win each race by completing one of three objectives: completing the checkpoints like an ordinary racing game, killing all the pedestrians on the level or destroying all oponents cars. All this with a rich graphical violence, while you could paint the streets with the blood of the pedestrians you roadkill.
As you run, crash against walls, destroy opponent cars or roadkill persons, your character (represented in the upper left corner) has different reactions and phrases, something that reminds of Doom.
The scenarios of Carmageddon usually represent a city, full of people and many ramps and bridges,
there is also some rural maps, not only with humans but also cows. They are very open and you could just stop racing and just explore it.
The game featured instrumental versions of songs from Fear Factory's album Demanufacture, with the song Zero Signal being used in the game's intro. The other songs from the album that appear are Demanufacture and Body Hammer.
Carmageddon doesn't have many differences to the graphics of other games, it was good for the time, many details and the map distance though was pretty new for the time.
Carmageddon is based on a classic 1975 movie named "Deathrace 2000", starring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine, where the objective was to roadkill as most pedestrians as possible to collect more points than your opponents.
Due to the graphical violence in the game, in many countries (like Germany and England) Carmageddon was released with the violence content limited or censored, by changing the humans by zombies or robots. The Brazilian version of it let you play with humans, but for that, you would need a key, without having it, you would play with the robots.
There are other three games of it, Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now, Carmageddon TDR 2000 and Carmageddon Reincarnation, this one is having now a collective financing on Kickstarter to use a modern graphical and physical engine. There is also an expansion to the original game named "Carmageddon Splat Pack", which included new maps, vehicles, tracks, network levels and 3dfx support.
Carmageddon broke a tabu in the videogames, setting a new subgenre to the racing games. With some good gameplay, many levels to explore and of course, violence, Carmagedon is a must play game that you need to have in your personal collection.
