I grew up with this game.
SO I played it, it had the Max's home level, with the junkyard and the city, pretty much as it is in the real game. But instead of pedestrians, it had Zombies.
Took me a very long time, like till 1999 before I bought this game, but in that time I just kept replayign that demo over and over, it was so much fun.
Then I got the game, and I was suprised to see that I now kill real people.
I was a lil boy back then, and for some reason had a sick pleasure of looking up the 3D model'ed skirts of the chicks, just before I ran em over. Ok so I was a disturbed child. Maybe that's why I so loved this game.
So lets get to it.
My system was a 200 mhz ATI Xpert@play 4 meg card. The game ran fairly smooth most of the time (on smooth as my standards were back then) with plenty of slowdowns that I never paid attention too back then.
This game is so much fun its amazing, and kinda sad in a way. Often my parents would come into my room and wonder why there was screaming coming out of my room, and a lot of splatter and explosion sounds. When you parents are concerned, you know its a good game.
So graphics, top notch for the time, at the time other games such as Viper Racer existed, so ill compare Carmegeddon to that as graphics, Viper racer basically let your car just fold up and turn into any shape at all. Carmageddon however, was completely realistic as to damage. Door hinges etc. If your door swung open while you were turning, it actually thru your car off balance.
Gravity was a bit slim in the game, but, the game itself could end so fast, that maybe the slow gravity was a good thing after all.
The sounds repeat a lot, but you won't notice, you will be having so much fun killing everything. on the desert levels, there is a very anouying loud whistle, this made me liek to avoid the desert levels.
Controls:
For some of the cars, controls were normal, but if you say got into Magnum Magnisums big red semi, if you used keyboard, as im sure many did back then, at full turn radius, it wouldn't actually turn anymore, it turned sharped if you had it just slightly off max turn. This is where you needed a joy stick or steering wheel.
It seems some features were never acutally included in the final release, from reading the configuration files, it seems this game was meant to have stealable cars.
Thats the other thing, if you have notepad, you can edit this game. Change Max's car to 999 weight, and softtnes to 0. and you can have some fun being industructable an dplowing thru everything in your path.
This game also has some replay value, as you can try and beat it 3 different ways.
You can kill all opponents, which Im sure is everyones favorite thing to do.
You can kill all pedestrians, which, is time consuming, but the points you get is worth it. use the Electro bastard ray to get pedestrians in odd places.
or you can actually do the race (god forbid that).
If you can find a copy of this game, I highly recommend it, it isn't extremely compatibile with XP, but there are work arounds, just search online, people have made programs to fix it, Glide Wrapper for example.
Definitly get this game, if you don't mind sensless violence, you will really enjoy it, and most matches don't take long if your just in it for the killing, so its a good play when bored game, or play when mad game.