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  More Cities, More Chaos Midtown Madness was a success. It was obvious that this game was going to have a follow-up, and indeed, it did in September 2000 with Midtown Madness 2. While released in 2000, MM2 embraced the carefree spirit of the 90's. A decade where one could just par-take in fun and consequence free arcade gaming to their hearts content without a care in the world While the gameplay was the same, MM2 added another cities and more cars. Their was one very notable difference between the two games though: mods. It was possible for the user to add their own cars and cities to the game. Combined this with the fact that the Internet was becoming much-more widespread, these user-created mods were finding themselves in more game installs. While MM2 was mostly the same, their were visual enhancements as well, provided by the latest version of DirectX. Like the last game too, the game looked horrible in software rendering. At the time, before ...

  As Easy As Stamping On Kittens Controversy sells, which was in ample supply for this game. Carmageddon  was a massive success. It's a fun game, so that success was well earned. With massive success though, their is now the expectations for a worthy followup. A squeal in inevitable. As a result, work on Carpocalyse Now started.  The video game engine was much more refined, as Carpocalyse made use of more powerful hardware. The series was on Windows now, and could make more use of the capabilities of the 3DFX Voodoo accelerator via the Glide library. Instead of using sprites, the game use actual 3D polygon models for pedestrians now. In the past, 2D sprites were used because the hardware capabilities of PC's were still limited. However, PC's became ever more powerful, and Carmageddon would take advantage of those capabilities. More environmental effects were added, along with improvements in the car physics. Controlling the cars was a ...

  Harder Than French Kissing a Cobra What happens when you combine the arcade  insanity of Midtown Madness with the lust for blood of GTA? Basically Twisted Metal for the PC (Even though that game had been ported from the PlayStation to the PC as well)! A arcade game for those that want to paint the streets red with blood. It's Midtown Madness for those who love Itchy And Scratchy.  I played a lot of Carmageddon back in the day. It was very intense. With that said, their isn't that much to say about the game plot-wise. It's basically a vehicular combat game where you destroy over vehicles and run over pedestrians for points. Their plenty of violence, but it's way over the top and unrealistic, like that of 80's action movies.  Carmageddon was developed by Stainless Software, and published by SCI and Interplay. The Wikipedia page about SCI revealed a very interesting origin story about Carmageddon. Stainless Software sta...

  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...

  A Worthy Follow-up Driver was a massive success on the PlayStation. It instantly became a must-own title for gamers on that particular system. It seemed only natural that a sequel would follow. Follow it did with Driver 2, released in November 2000 on the PlayStation. This game was never ported to the PC, as the PC version didn't sell nowhere near what it did on the PlayStation. Driver 2 was ported to the Gameboy Advance though. However, this article will focus exclusively on the PlayStation version. This game was significantly larger than the original, as it came on two disc. Their were 4 cities included in Driver 2. The included cities were larger in size compared to their predecessors. Like in games like Midtown Madness, Chicago is depicted in this game as well. Chicago has always been a favorite for 70's style car chases. The Blues Brothers come to mind. Havana is depicted as well, and can be played immediately. Las Vegas is depicted too,...

  Chicago Goes Mental (More Than Usual!) As the 90's came to a close, the performance of PC desktop computers was growing at a accelerated rate as graphics adapters were becoming ever more powerful. Microsoft released the DirectX API's and libraries so that Windows developers could write games that could take advantage of these graphics accelerator using their technologies.  The first version of DirectX was released in 1996 for Windows 95. Doom95 was one of the first major titles to utilize the new gaming tech. It ran very well. Despite this though, it took a few years for Windows gaming to take off. Doom for DOS usually outperformed Doom95 because MS-DOS imposed virtually no overhead, leaving all the resources of the computer to Doom Guy's taking. This was not the case for Windows 95 as Windows itself already took a significant overhead, and as such, left less resources for Doom. Despite this though, the release of new GPU's and process...

  The Open World Goes 3D! The 90's was a very interesting time. This was the decade that I discovered GTA. For several who grew up after GTA 1, it's hard to image a world without it. For many gamers, GTA is as essential as food and water. It's one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world. At the same time, when going back to the decade that gave birth to GTA, it wasn't the biggest thing in the world. Don't get me wrong; GTA 1 and 2 were very popular games. At the same time, that was it, they were just popular games. They weren't the genre-defining titles that changed the landscape of gaming. They were just popular games. Even within the open-world genre, GTA was about to be eclipsed by another title that would steal the spotlight, and rewrite the rules of driving without limitations. As mentioned, I feel that it's important to mention this because we need to place ourselves in the 90's mindset. We have to remember th...

Let The Mayhem Continue..... I'm Brown Bread Now! For some reason, when I think GTA London 1969, Austin Powers pops into my head for some reason. But the only thing that GTA taught me was that London in 1969 was not a very inviting place. This expansion pack was released on both the PlayStation and the PC. On the PlayStation, it was released about a year after the first game. There really isn't much to say about the game in that it's essentially GTA 1 with a 1960's British skin over it and people driving on the opposite side of the road, and 60's-ish music playing in the background. One quickly gets use to the Double-Decker buses and Union Jacks galore. The game was developed by RockStar Canada. On the PlayStation, one needs the original GTA disc in order to play the game. I have GTA London installed along with my GTA 1 game on my DOSBox SVN-Daum setup. Like the original game on the PC, the GTA London makes ...