In recent years, the genre of racing has been captured by the “sand” disease. All games are open world. Race wherever you want on a huge map, collect cars, races and other bonuses. There are practically no racing games with prepared single tracks with beautiful surroundings or they are not popular. Arcade racing has also virtually disappeared. Some things come out among indie projects, but these are often raw or games without advertising support. I am lucky that my favorite genre of racing destruction has one, but very cool Wreckfish. I don’t like the current alignment, so I often look back in time.
The best part of the Destruction derby series?
Moving to nitro in the 90s. I haven’t bought a PS1 yet, and I am enthusiastic about racing from a friend in Twisted metal 2 on PC. The game belongs to the specific genre Combat Racing. In fact, these are arcade car battles in huge arenas with the use of weapons. For some reason, I am 16 years old, this game is delightful. And when I get my PS1, I also play this series and its analogues there. I’m not sailing into the JRPG genre yet, but more on that another time.
Somehow I just get tired of shooting, but the desire to smash, bend and blow up metal remains. This is how I find Destruction Derby Raw and become a destruction racing fan forever. However, after a lot of time spent in Destruction Derby Raw, I didn’t appreciate the two prequels and immediately joined the Flat-out dilogy on PS.
But today I want to tell you about the lost hit of the genre – Destruction Derby 64. A friend and author of our public The world is saved introduced me to the game. Remembering the reputation of Nintendo, I was not eager to get acquainted with this “cheap port” in my mind.
The Destruction Derby series was the most famous in the destruction racing genre in the 90s. The game was a response to the Japanese Ridge Racer, but with one remarkable difference. It was an unprecedented physical model of destruction. For unknown reasons, the episode was then abandoned. Probably influenced by the failure of the last Destruction Derby Arenas. I recently re-launched DD Arenas – it’s really awful, strange, not about “destruct” and is outdated in everything. DD Arenas is more like the same Twisted metal. And more focused on online. A similar game is coming out soon – Destruction All-stars.
The Destruction Derby series will have a sad handover story. The first two parts were created by Reflections, and the subsequent Raw and Arenas by Studio 33. Then Sony will buy Psygnosis, and Reflections – lovers of realism in racing – will begin to develop a new Driver series, which everyone immediately appreciated. Studio 33 managed to make a mark with racing games from the F1 series before the development of DD Raw. The studio, in its own way, will present the sequels to DD2, which will lead to the complete oblivion of the game, which opened the game industry to the race with destruction. It was bought by EA in 2003, renamed EA North West and successfully closed in 2006.
Development of Destruction Derby 64 began around April 1998, according to British magazine Computer and Video Games. Psygnosis worked on Destruction Derby for Nintendo 64 along with O.D.T., Formula 1 `98 and Wipeout 64. Later O.D.T. and Formula 1 `98 were canceled.
Psygnosis has granted THQ publishing rights for the Nintendo console. Looking Glass Studios was very popular at the time with the release of the stealth Thief: Dark project. The studio released DD64 in late 1999.
Destruction Derby 64, although conceived as a port of the dark first part of the series, has bright graphics and a wide variety of content compared to even the sequel Destruction Derby 2 and the dark green DD Raw. Visually, it looks more like screenshots of an early prototype of Destruction Derby 3. The tracks include eight tracks with forks and intersections and four arenas for crashes. A similar variety is found only in DD Raw. All this on a 64 MB cartridge. Incredible!
Destruction Derby Raw prototype.
The classic racing rules in the Nintendo 64 version are very different from all the games in the series. Racers on the track are divided into two groups, each of which starts on its own section of the track. One team rides towards the player’s group. This allows for regular head-on collisions. The player will even aim for them in order to get more points. In Destruction Derby 2, for example, you had to trick and deploy the car at the start to do this. After the arranged fun, if you survived, catch up with the surviving racers and get not in last place.
Closer to the final of the race, heaps of burned-out cars form in some places on the track, like unpredictable artificial obstacles. In any competition, 12 riders take part along with the player. In the original parts and in Raw there were 20, but due to the cunning with oncoming cars, the race is even richer.
