Carmageddon Message Board

Stainless Games's enhanced re-release of Carmageddon swerves onto Android on May 10. That's a little later than originally planned, but when a classic game's going for free, we're not bothered. As promised in the Kickstarter campaign for Carmageddon: Reincarnation, Stainless isn't charging a cent during the racer's first 24 hours on Google Play.

The enhanced version of the 1997 mayhem maker sports slightly enhanced graphics, touch pads that can be placed where you want on-screen, and YouTube and Facebook integration for those who like to share virtual bloodshed in video form.

#carmageddon The most gloriously violent racing game ever made is making a Kickstarter-funded comeback. To thank the folks that gave their money so the vehicular genocide could continue, Stainless Games is offering the iOS re-release of the original Carmageddon for free. What are you waiting for? More »

Carmageddon is now on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, and as promised British studio Stainless Games is offering it for free on its first day there. It's launched slightly later than anticipated, but the gory racer once infamously banned in its home nation is now available to all at no cost. Well, all the age of 12 and over - come on, it's still Carmageddon. Anyway, if you're unlucky enough not to nab it in the first 24 hours, it'll still be available but at its regular price of $1.99.

A lot's changed since Carmageddon released in 1997. Back then Grand Theft Auto was only a single game, nobody really knew who Britney Spears was, and a certain Steve Jobs had just returned to a struggling company called Apple to save them from near bankruptcy. Stainless' classic, however, plays on iOS much as it did 15 years ago, albeit with a few touch-ups. It now comes with various customized controls, editable video replays, retina display and iPhone 5 support, leaderboards, and other enhancements to boot. It of course still features, as Stainless puts it, "buckets of gibs."

The Android version is due to hit late 2012/early 2013.

The iOS version of the infamously violent Carmageddon should be available for download next week, Stainless Games tells us. Founders Patrick Buckland and Neil 'Nobby' Barnden say they've submitted the racer to the App Store, and pending Apple's approval it arrives sometime next week. The Android version, however, remains in development and won't hit until around late 2012/early 2013.

While the port remains faithful, it's also tweaked for iOS beyond a slight visual uplift. The controls are very flexible, with touch pads for pedals and steering able to placed anywhere across the screen, and tilt controls are supported as well. There's also the integrated ability to share videos of your greatest maims on YouTube and Facebook. Stainless tells us it's tried to make the 1997 game more accessible for a modern audience, including making specific tweaks to the opening levels to help new players through a little easier. There is, though, a range of difficulties to keep those hailing from the old school in their driving seats. Multiplayer is sadly absent, but Stainless promises it's a big part of the upcoming Carmageddon: Reincarnation.

We asked Patrick and Neil if they were tempted to tweak the iOS version to bring it up to an 18 rating (it's been rated as a PEGI 12). The pair laughed that they weren't with "this game," implying they may well be with the upcoming Reincarnation. As Stainless promised in the Reincarnation Kickstarter, the game will be free for the first 24 hours of its release, costing $1.99 after that.

Carmageddon Max Pack has recklessly careened into GOG.com, and is now available for download. If you happened to support the Carmageddon Reincarnation Kickstarter campaign, Stainless will distribute your code for this classic car combat game. If you didn't, you can just buy it for $9.99.

GOG promoted it in an unusual way (which, for GOG, is not itself unusual), with team members decrying its "pointless violence" in the trailer above. "It's not even a racing game!" Now there's a glowing endorsement.

The original Carmageddon will be coming to iOS and Android devices this summer, as announced on the Kickstarter page for the Carmageddon: Reincarnation project. The mobile-optimized version of the game will feature Game Center integration on iPhone and iPad as well as the ability to upload movies from the game to YouTube.

Carmageddon will be free for iOS users for the first 24 hours of the game's release on the App Store as a "thank you" to fans that donated to Stainless Games' Kickstarter project, and will sell afterwards for an undetermined price. Funding for the project reached $500k Saturday, and will close this Wednesday.

Carmageddon: Reincarnation reached its $400k funding goal on Kickstarter this morning, ten days before its deadline. The Stainless Games team posted a video (above) to their Kickstarter page celebrating the funding achievement, which was first announced on May 8.

Since the project's announcement, the team added roughly a dozen updates on tiered rewards for those pledging, including details on the game revealed in a Q&A session on Reddit. Carmageddon: Reincarnation will be in "iterative development" with the potential for DLC after release. Additionally, the team described their plans to allow for the game to be modded, saying their "suite of modding tools is going to be really comprehensive and encourage extensive messing about with the game."

[Thanks, Will!]

Carmageddon is being refreshed with a Kickstarter-supported new game. But if you want some vintage 'Geddon, you'll be able to get that too - the original game, and its "Splat Pack" expansion, are coming to digital retailer GOG.com in "the coming months."

The bundle will cost $9.99 if you want to buy it outright; it'll also be available for free to anyone who kicked in $25 or more to the Reincarnation Kickstarter, presumably under the assumption that people who like Carmageddon would like Carmageddon.

Remember, remember the 6th of Julember. For that is the date that the two-day Rezzed game show, orchestrated by Eurogamer with lots of help from the nerds at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, kicks off in my current home town of Brighton, UK. It’s also my girlfriend’s birthday, which means I won’t be at the show until Saturday July 7th. And that I will miss the most recently-announced session, Stainless Games talking about how they’re bringing back Carmageddon with the forthcoming Reincarnation, and how/why they’re using Kickstarter to do it. A public chat about crowdsourced game funding only makes sense in these rapid-fire Kickstarted times.(more…)

Carmageddon: Reincarnation, initially announced as a downloadable multiplatform game last year, now depends on Kickstarter for completion.

Patrick Buckland and Neil Barnden, CEO and Executive Director of Stainless Games, tell an all-too-common horror story from creatives stuck in a bad business deal. After doing work-for-hire projects with their new company in the mid '90s, they finally released a passion project, called Carmageddon, which featured goofy and gory, over-the-top vehicular carnage, and still claims a place in the heart of older PC gamers everywhere. In order to get published, they sold rights for the title to SCI, which co-published the game with Interplay.

The title was followed up with a sequel in 1998 (it was called Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now, back when games could be called things like that), but when the sequel didn't do as well, the worst happened: Buckland and Barnden lost their own creation. They've spent years since then trying to get the rights back.

It’s entirely possible we’ll have to wait another 12.7 thousand years for Carmageddon: Reincarnation to roll its spiky, organ-splattered wheels this way, but we’ve waited this long already so a spot of extra patience before we can massacre pedestrians with weird cars isn’t going to hurt.

At least we finally have a first peek at roughly what the game will look like. Above is one of the proposed redesigns of classic Carma car The Eagle. That is in-game, albeit a “very, very early prototype” of Reincarnation – apparently the rendering engine’s already been replaced since then. More below.(more…)

I was a typically world-hating, violence-lovin’ teenager during the early 1990s, and that means I’m as pleased as the next man-child that ultra-sadistic racing/pedestrian-splatting game Carmageddon is finally, finally due for a comeback. Having rescued the rights from the ashes of publisher SCI, original developers Stainless Games are back at the helm. Here, I chat to Stainless co-founder Neil Barnden about what took ‘em so long, whether or not they’ll be changing the aesthetic and the humour for more modern times, how they nearly sued Los Angeles, whether they want to court controversy again and why they’re not bothered about the original games being on warez sites. (more…)

#deadcars Vintage car combat series Carmageddon is making a comeback, with original developers Stainless Games having quietly re-acquired the rights to its old property. More »

VG247 are reporting that the countdown timer at Carmageddon.com has nothing to do with former publishers Square-Enix, and that it is an independent project.

A source familiar with the matter said that Square Enix has nothing to do with the next in the Carmageddon series. All rights to the action IP have been negotiated away from Square, owner of original publisher Eidos. The Carmegeddon website is not owned by Square Enix, contrary to reports over the weekend.

Mysterious! I guess we’ll know more when the timer expires on June 1st. I wonder if it has anything to do with the previously reported open-source version.