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A futuristic racing game with hover cars, in the same line as Wipeout, using a modified version of the Magic Carpet 2 engine. The game was created from scratch in six weeks. Gameplay takes a straightforward approach, with the directional keys controlling the steering and throttle, and three keys to fire the minigun, missiles or charge the booster. While the minigun has unlimited ammo, both fuel, armour and missiles must be replenished by passing through some marked areas or picking up powerups in the track or by left destroyed opponents. While the vehicles float on the track they are still influenced by the ground material: they slow down on dirt and even more on water. Each track has a number of shortcuts or alternate routes that offer powerups, and some tracks feature gates and ramps that open or close randomly. Includes 9 tracks and several game modes (for Saturn owners and PC players with the 1.2 patch installed) such as single race mode (with option to change the number of laps), a Championship mode, Split Screen, Clone Race (beating the ghost of the best race time), Death Match (Where instead of finishing first what matters is finish alive and with the most kills) and Hot Seat, where up to eight players can compete in the same race by taking turns, with the computer taking control of the players' vehicles waiting for their turn. There are six hover cars to choose from: the fast Flexiwing and Outrider, the balanced KD-1 Speeder and Vampyr and the slow but armed to the teeth Berserker and Jugga. In addition to the natural capacity of each, their Minigun, Missle and Booster capacities can be upgraded by picking up powerups during the race. There are Eight teams to choose from, which change the colour of the vehicle: Mad Medicine (white), Bullfrog (aqua green), Storm Riders (purple), Fire Phreaks (orange), DethFest (blue), Foo Fighters (yellow), Gorehounds (red) and Assassins Anonymous (black). Bullfrog later released a PC Revision addon pack which included additional features made for the Saturn version. These extra features included more tracks: Ancient Mine Town (6 laps), Arctic Land (6 laps), Death Match Arena (5 laps) designed specifically for death match race. There's also Split Screen Single Race, and new game modes: Clone Race (the computer creates a clone of the player's car, programmed with the best ever lap. The best lap in each track is saved automatically), Death Match (using a set or infinite number of lives), Hot Seat (allows up to seven players to compete in a race at once, each player uses the same control pad and plays for the set up amount of time. The other players are controlled with an autopilot while they are not in control). The one noticeable disadvantage about this game mode is that the number of players playing Hot Seat will all have the same car, instead of separate cars. An external camera view is added, however without control of the car. You also hear your opponent's car sound while in this view even if there is no enemy car beside you. |
