Interstate '76

 

I've Been Drivin' All Night, My Hand's Wet On The Wheel (Na Nah Na Na Naaaaaahhhh)....................

Vehicular combat games were the rage in the late 90's. Games like Twisted Metal dominated on the PlayStation. The hardware constraints imposed by the 16-bit consoles like the Genesis or SNES were no more. More powerful hardware meant that more expansive games with larger environments and more graphical effects. True 3D environments began to take hold during this time.

A massive hardware arms race was occurring within the PC market as well. The 486 reigned supreme. These processors were driving games like Doom. The Intel Pentium processors began to become far more accessible as well, propelling intense FPS's like Quake, to the forefront. By the late 90's, 3D accelerators like the 3DFX Voodoo were taking the gaming PC's by storm.

For open-world driving games, it would look like the scene would be dominated not by games with expansive cities with involving story-line, but by vehicular combat titles in sparse environments. Times sure have changed. Their were still hardware constraints after all though. Games like Driver were very demanding on its hardware. Compared to modern standards, the world of Midtown Madness would be consider small.
Game developers quickly released that large worlds could be incorporated as long as they were sparsely populated. This makes areas, like the Southwest United States, a perfect fit for many open-world games. Massive worlds that one could drive on infinitely. Really fast action without much getting in the way, except your opponent.

This was what amazed me about Interstate '76. Sure, these maps didn't have much, but they were HUGE. One could just keep driving and driving, and could easily get lost. Just riding around in a bicycle would get boring, so lets spruce things up with 70's era muscle cars with weapon systems attached! This was the 90's, so everything was EXTREME!
InterState '76 using the 3DFX Voodoo Graphics Accelerator that's emulated on PCEM.

It's 1976. The Energy Crisis started in 1973 was never resolved. The United State collapses from the energy embargo. With no law-and order, crime becomes very rampant, and armed cars with powerful weapons systems terrorize the Southwest US. Again, like in most of these type of games, the cookie-cutter plot is simply a excuse to put guns and missiles on awesome muscle cars to cause mayhem. Only a excuse, but a very good one though. Blasting away opponents is jolly good fun!

The cars in the game are period specific to the 70's. Most are recognizable and based on real muscle cars from that era, but given different names. It's interesting how the very influential driving titles of the 90's do a throwback to the 70's, most prominently Driver 1 and 2. 

Anyone who played MechWarrior 2 would find this game oddly familiar. The reason for this is that Interstate '76 uses the same game engine, modified with muscle cars instead of giants Mechs. Both games were developed by Activision. Since this game is set in the 70's, their will be plenty of funk. If you can't groove to the funk, then get the FUNK out! This cool cat will groove to the music though.

The keyboard controls are a awkward at first, but when gotten use to, they function very well. Anyone who played MechWarrior 2 will feel at home, as both games use a similar keyboard layout. Sometimes, the keyboard doesn't respond, and the car refuses to go. I don't know if this is a emulator issue or one with the game engine. This issue though has been exhibited on both VMware and DOSBox-G. The keys can be remapped. One of my complaints with this game is that the method of remapping keys is awkward, with the user selecting a key from a pull-down menu instead of just pressing a button. The menus take the form of mechanical drawings, blueprints, and a diner receipt, which looks unique, but annoying to navigate.

Their are multiple game modes in Interstate '76 which are as included:
"T.R.I.P." (an acronym for Total Recreational Interactive Production), which is basically the campaign mode
Multi-Melee, which is the online deathmatch mode
Auto-Melee, which is the computer-driven deathmatch mode with car-bots
Scenarios, which is essentially stand-alone missions

Later on, an expansion for the game, The Nitro Pack was released, along with a graphically enhanced version of the game, the Gold Edition. This is the edition that has the 3DFX accelerated support. Later on, Activision combined the Nitro Pack and Gold Edition and released it as Interstate '76 Arsenal.


It's Time To Funk In The VM!
As typical with a lot of the older nostalgic titles, it would be a given for me to play these games on emulated environments reminiscent of period hardware. Rebuild a emulated equivalent of my old computer from the days of old. For a long time, I played the game under VMware Player running Windows 95. My Windows 95 installation uses the UniVBE VESA drivers, along with emulation of the Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16. The UniVBE drivers don't support Direct3D or 3D acceleration, but they do provide high resolutions via the VESA standard that is supported by the emulated VMware SVGA adapter. As such, Interstate '76 can use software rendering and run at a high-resolution in that mode. The game ran very well under VMware Player. Windows 95 under VMware Player doesn't use virtualization. However, even in emulation mode and restricted to a single core, it's very responsive on my AMD FX Quad-Core CPU running at 3.8GHz. No problem for a game released around 1997/1998. 

Next, I decided to try the game on PCEM. I'm emulated a late 90's Windows desktop PC with a Intel Pentium 1 processor running at 200MHz with a SoundBlaster 16, S3 SVGA adapter, and the 3DFX Voodoo accelerator. I'm using a older build of PCEM, but since version 12, the emulator has been updated, and performance has been improved as well. 

On PCEM, Interstate '76 ran faster in 3D accelerated mode than under software rendering because the graphics are being offloaded onto the GPU, or in the emulator's case, a separate thread. As a result, the core CPU thread is freed up for other task. There are a few graphical glitches in 3DFX mode, mainly around the dashboard. However, Interstate '76 is still very much playable.

Not content with VMware Player or PCEM, I decided to try the game on DOSBox-G, which is a fork of DOSBox which can run Windows 95 reasonably well. The SoundBlaster 16 and S3 SVGA adapter are emulated on DOSBox as well. After setting up Windows 95 with the appropriate drivers, I've installed the game, and it runs very well under that emulator.

In the past, this game had been notoriously difficult to run under emulated environments. As a result, emulators like DOSBox and PCEM have made massive improvements when it comes to compatibility with older games. If virtual machines/emulators aren't really your thing, then GOG have released Interstate '76 Arsenal as well. This version applied additional patches to get the game running on Windows 7/10.

Retrospective
Interstate '76 made a massive impression with me back in the day. I'm very glad that I revisited this classic title. It a reflection of how open-world driving games were in the late 90's. Geared towards providing those quick burst of fun. Their was very solid game-play as well. With that said, I would also admit that this game hasn't aged well. The older graphics I can overlook. I know that this game won't be able to hold up to modern titles. It's the pace of technology. Interstate '76 of bleeding edge back in the day though.

However, it's the game-play that aged the worst. One could make the same comparison to a game like Twisted Metal as well. They were games that were specifically designed to fulfill those quick burst of mayhem, but nothing more beyond that. Fun back in the day, but not fulfilling for those that want something much more in-depth. The story mode was a simple construct to provide the player with more opportunity to fulfill those quick burst. 

Very different from the games that we're all accustomed to now. At the same time, if one is looking for quick action, then this game won't disappoint. It's was still great joy revisiting this title, and it's fun watching those cars (other than me) blowing up. Sucks for them!
I've been drivin' all night, my hand's wet on the wheel (na nah na na naaaaaahhhh)....................

Interstate '76
WIKIPEDIA
 WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_%2776

Interstate '76
Fandom
 INTERSTATE76.FANDOM.COM
https://interstate76.fandom.com/wiki/Interstate_%2776

Interstate '76 Arsenal
GOG
 WWW.GOG.COM
https://www.gog.com/game/interstate76

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