Demolition Racer Pc

[Cristy Borovetz]

Ive been a fan of demolition derbies since I was a small child. Let's face it: Watching cars crash into each other is just plain fun, and it really seems like a natural topic for a video game. While several games have claimed to be destruction-derby games, they're really just racing games with a different scoring model and visible car damage.

Games like Destruction Derby and Destruction Derby 2 placed far too much emphasis on causing the opposing cars to spin. It was the only real way to score any points, and it pretty much sucked the fun out of the game. Head-on collisions just damaged your car way too much and had little or no payoff. So you aimed for the fenders of the other cars. Demolition Racer uses a slightly more realistic scoring system. So you'll earn points for most collisions, as well as specialty scores for setting a car on fire, knocking a car out of the race, and landing on other cars. However, the scoring detection is a bit off. You really need to make hits with the front (or back, if you're going in reverse) of your car. Controlled fishtails that smack your opponents with the rear fender of your car are worthless. Also, the game seems to miss a lot of hits, especially in multicar pileups, robbing you of potential points. Your car's damage is rendered on a simple meter that goes from 100 down to zero. While certain hits may do more damage to your vehicle, area-specific damage doesn't really occur.

Much like its brethren, Demolition Racer is broken up into two main types of events. You'll find the meat of the game on actual racetracks, where you'll battle it out for three laps against fifteen other cars. Winning these races requires a delicate balance of speed and brutality. You must damage other cars to score, but you must also finish near the top of the pack, because the earlier you finish, the greater your score is multiplied. The other races are arena battles, which are won solely on how much damage you can cause to the rest of the cars. There are a few variants on these two basic race types - such as chicken mode, the chase, and suicide.The control in Demolition Racer is smoother and cleaner than that of previous derby games. The Dual Shock controller works extremely well here - with the left stick used for steering and the right for accelerating and braking. Since the car only has two real options (forward and reverse), this is one of the few instances where using the right stick for both gas and brake works really well.

Graphically, Demolition Racer does a lot of things right. It's got a very smooth frame rate, and the car models look nice, take damage well, and have lots of nice fire and smoke effects. But all this graphical sheen comes at a cost. Because of clipping problems on a couple levels, you'll see cars and sections of track through walls. A wider camera option would have been nice in the arena levels, since when you take shots from the side, you're frequently just bouncing around without seeing what is actually hitting you. Bands like Fear Factory and Cirrus populate the soundtrack, and the game does a decent job of providing collision and engine noises.

If you've played Destruction Derby, you've played Demolition Racer. While DR is a better game, it would have been nice to see a more realistic scoring system that took things like radiator shots and driver's side-door hits (a big no-no in real derbies) into account. It's a solid, fun game, but it lacks any real originality.

Playing the demo for DiRT Showdown reminded me of many things. One was how much I detest wacky capitalization, another was how the gameplay brought back memories of games gone by. Destruction Derby may have been the first demolition derby racer I played, but it wasn't the best, and also that wasn't the one I was pining for afterwards. That honor goes to Demolition Racer: No Exit for the Dreamcast. In my original review of the game over a decade ago, I praised it a lot (and used the tagline to shamelessly reference the legendary WWF tag team Demoliton's famous theme which I expect to have blaring when DiRT Showdown hits shelves since a rock song about smashing, pain, and destruction is perfect for it.)

Looking at DR: NE with a decade of hindsight is interesting because the graphics sure aren't "drop dead gorgeous" now, and yet they also aren't the kind of old that one things of as bad. You can make out a lot of details on the cars, especially when it comes to smashing them up, which really does help even PS1 games like Vigilante 8 age slightly better. While the environments themselves are kind of muddy, you can still make out what they're supposed to look like reasonably well and the skies look great. The racing/demolition derby aspect is still exciting, and no matter how many times I try, or how many...near decades now since Destruction Derby is closing in on being 20 years old, I will never actually win a virtual demolition derby. Maybe I'll luck out and survive it as a mini-game in Saints Row. Maybe.

However, I'm still pretty good at the racing/destruction mode where your goal is to not only get in first, but also do so with enemies trying to smash you to bits. This was the best part of the game when it was new, and remains its best aspect now. It's a blast to smash up vehicles to the point where they can't finish, even if that comes at the expense of your own placement. I'd completely forgotten about all the boxes scattered around the stages, but was so grateful to get a health pickup when my car was pitch-black and smoking due to all the damage it had received. Granted, it started off as a black car, but now, it was at the point of being none more black and then boom, a green box saves the day. While T-bones are what you aim for during the demolition derby mode (and in your grocer's fresh meat aisle), the most exciting attack was landing right on top of a rival ending their race instantly. That's one of those things, like grabbing a fire flower and blasting away goombas, that will never get old.

What did get old was trying to use the DC's analog stick to race. That thing is a tad bit on the sensitive side, and that didn't make steering the slightly slippery cars around any easier. Thankfully, the trigger-based acceleration and braking controls work perfectly because that analog stick sucks now. Seriously, it's bad even for the little Pong-style mini-game thrown in as a bonus. There's also a car shooting mode that allows the use of a light gun, which I don't have, and would require me to lug a...STANDARD DEFINITION TV out to use, so yeah, I just used the controller for that. It was amusing to shoot a car into a flaming mess as it barrels towards you, but the controls definitely fell short of using the DC pad for Virtua Cop 2. There's also a football mini-game, but I haven't unlocked it, so I don't know what it is. Surprisingly, I've got about 80% of the game unlocked, including reverse tracks for all the racing courses. Man those were such a big deal back then, now, they'd cost $10 and only be available as DLC.

Despite the controls, I still enjoyed the racing stuff, and the mini-games are neat little diversions. The mostly rock soundtrack fits the smash-em-up vibe of the game, even if the rap/metal music really dates this in the late '90s, and not in a good way since it's mostly garage bands trying to sound like Korn. The sound effects are satisfying though and really do convey damage well, even if the explosions are kinda weak. I absolutely loved Demolition Racer: No Exit when it was new, and now, I'm glad I can still have some fun with it. It's a shame it isn't available for download on PSN since it was also a PS1 game, but if you were to find it on ebay, or at a thrift store, I'd say it's definitely worth spending $10-$15 on it and having some fun. It's a great pickup if you grew up in the '90s and want a little flashback, or just want to give a younger person a little snapshot of the time. Better to use this than the Backstreet Boys, unless you have a sledghammer handy.

Demolition Racer is a racing game with a twist. Rather than a game that just requires you to try and win the race, this game gives you points to destroy the other racers' cars. The game has many styles of game play so you don't have to play the same style each game.

In Demolition, you race against other cars around the track and get points for hitting them, spinning them in circles and knocking them into the wall. You also get a big bonus for landing on top of a car which will immediately destroy the car. When you finish the race, your final position isfound by multiplying the points you got from hitting the other cars with the points that you got for the position you finished in. So if you finish first, but never hit anyone, you won't win the race.

The next style is The Chase. This style is your normal race game. You can still take damage and so can the other cars, but you are only trying to win the race. You don't get any points for hitting the other cars.

Chicken is another style. It is the same as The Chase except that you drive in the opposite direction as everyone else. This can slow you down when you run into the cars coming around from the other direction.

The next 2 game styles aren't done on race tracks. They are done in an arena. This is a circle area which may have hills in it where you just try to destroy cars. The first of these is Last Man Standing. In this style, you try to destroy every car without being destroyed yourself. You can still win if youaren't the last car by making a lot of points by hitting other cars. The scoring is calculated the same as the Demolition style.

Besides the Single Race, there is also League Racing. In League racing, you are trying to beat a set of tracks. There are 4 leagues on tracks and one league in the arena. In order to beat a track (or arena), you must place in a certain position. The first league starts out easy; you can finish in 5th place and still beat the track and go on to the next one. However, as you go up in difficulty of leagues, you will eventually have to place 1st on every track in the league to beat it. A league will usually have 5-10 tracks to beat.

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