Sixteen years after its rip-roaring and bloody tear across gaming screens, the folks at Stainless Games have resurrected the Death Race of car racing and demolition derby games with Carmageddon: Reincarnation.
“Attention all competitors: This is your one minute warning. I repeat, one minute until race commencement. Members of the public: You now have one minute to reach minimum safe distance!” – Original Carmageddon opening.
The original Carmageddon took a lot of criticism for its bloody violence and dark sense of humor (including banning by Vatican), but the game broke a lot of gaming ground for an early PC title with a its wide open worlds, 3D physics, game action replay and multi-player LAN events.
Why so long?
Stainless Games had legal issues when the game’s original publisher changed hands and development on the follow-up Carmageddon 4 was shelved in 2005. It took that long to settle their title issues. But, they got them back and went right to work on following up their successful hit series of 1990’s.
Now, Stainless have been quite busy over the past decade and a half, developing more mainstream titles like the Happy Tree Friends, Magic the Gathering and updated versions of classic Atari titles (Asteriods, Warlords, Battlezone, etc). But, it was Carmageddon that put them loudly on the gaming map with the screech of tires and crunch of metal on metal.
Kickstart Your Engines
Bringing any A-level video game to market these days is a big budget deal. But, what if you’re a medium-budget company?
Stainless Games turned to their fans with a crowd-funding project to help make Reincarnation a reality and fill-in their funding gap. Last May, they set a goal of $400,000 and created a Kickstarter project.
A lot of nifty incentives were offered, including actually having lucky investors a chance to appear in the game as a pedestrian victim or a racing celebrity.
And the campaign more than worked. In 30 days, 15,736 backers raised more than $624,000 for the game project.
That was in May 2012.
Ready and Rev’ing to Go
Well, the wedding invites have gone out (so to speak) as it was announced at E3: 2013 that Carmageddon: Reincarnation would be coming for the X-Box One and Playstation 4 as well as PC sometime this year.
Stainless Games continues to promote its impending arrival as well as the original Carmageddon being released as an Android, iPad and iPhone app.
Having to ramp up to the newest consoles meant more time and money, but Stainless Games got the shot in the arm they needed from Les Edgar, creator of Bullfrog Games and former VP of EA European with an injection of 3.5 million.
Despite lots of artist renderings, behind the scenes blogs, teaser video and pics, the game has yet to launch. The release of the next-gen consoles happened while the game was already in development. Which means not only did they have to miss their February 2013 release date, but currently a date hasn’t been set. The game is targeting sometime later this year.
Hold Your Horsepower
As an old-school gamer, I used to own a copy of Carmageddon on my PC and it was a guilty pleasure. Sadly, I will admit I had all but forgotten about this game and its sequels to the sands of time. But, after seeing the old gameplay footage and flirtations of new art renderings and screenshots, the old memories came flooding back.
Suddenly, I’m pumped to see Stainless’ finished product as they bring the beast back from the dead.
Getting a next-gen Carmageddon worthy of the original’s over-the-top gory, but funny and ground-breaking reputation should be worth the wait.
Until then, you can pop over to www.carmageddon.com to get the latest. Or satisfy that old Death Race urge by downloading the mobile apps until Reincarnation hits shelves.
(Check out this unfinished Game Play Teaser)
