Free Licenses for Carmageddon Reincarnation Pre-Alpha Release
I only vaguely remember how I felt at the wheel of a supercharged bright red car. I pushed the throttle and accelerated. As I started reach top speed, I noticed another car coming my way and crashing into me from the side. My car rolled over and absolutely mutilated some unlucky nearby pedestrians. They practically exploded by the force of the impact as the blood splatters stained the asphalt. I grinned sadistically.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what made the original Carmageddon so much fun and so addicting. It was released in 1997 when I was I was only ten years old. It’s one of the first video games I remember playing. Around that time I had also been addicted to less violent games such as Jazz Jackrabbit and less sadistic games such as Wolfenstein 3D. In the latter, at least the violence was directed to Nazi’s well-deserving of being shot as one could argue self-defense. However, Carmageddon was a whole new experience. There’s something frighteningly enjoyable about mowing down innocent pedestrians, not excluding grandmothers. I was hooked.
Video games have come a long way since those days. Here is a video showing the evolution of Carmageddon including a preview of Carmageddon Reincarnation.
Almost two years ago while browsing the web I stumbled upon a Kickstarter for Carmageddon Reincarnation. I hadn’t really heard of any releases after the original version and as such have never played them. However, upon seeing the Kickstarter, I felt as excited as I had been almost two decades ago when I first discovered Carmageddon. When I noticed that they were offering to insert people as characters in the game, that seemed like an awesome idea. I could already imagine family and friends playing Carmageddon and running me over in brutal ways. However, this reward tier was no longer available.
I considered the other tiers such as being featured on an in-game holo-ad or billboard, but it just didn’t seem as funny, and cost about 250% of the previous tier. I contacted Nobby from Stainless games through Kickstarter to find out what the options were. A week went by without any response. I’m not one to easily give up when I have an idea, so I sent him another message through Facebook. He replied a few days later:
Hi Ken,
I’m really sorry – with all these modern methods of communication, and Kickstarter currently keeping me really rather busy, I completely missed your message (the KS message system is a nightmare because our email system keeps blocking the incoming mail as spam and we’re missing out on notifications!). Thanks very much for contacting me, and now I’ll answer your question.The billboard Reward will see you featured on all of the numerous billboards in the levels, but the ads that feature you will share time with other ads that will be shown in rotation. So you could drive past billboards without being guaranteed to see yourself.
The most prestigious Reward is to get yourself into the game as a driver. We didn’t think that someone being a driver would also really be appropriate as a pedestrian too, however given the level of the Reward, I can’t see any reason why your character shouldn’t also appear as an individual, high value pedestrian in races that their car doesn’t appear in. How does that sound? We know we’ll be featuring Screwie Lewie in his motorized wheelchair in some events, so we could work on a similar cool idea for your driver…
I hope that info helps, Ken. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can clarify for you. Apologies again for the delay responding.
Best,
Nobby
I mailed him back with an idea which would allow the character to be a pedestrian as well, and he replied “That sounds absolutely SPOT-ON! I can already tell we’re going to work together really well!”. That was all I needed to know. Spurred by nostalgia, I decided to sponsor development of the reincarnation of my favorite game with the following reward tier: “HANG ONTO YER HELMET: We’ll fly you from a nearby major international airport to the UK. You will be collected by the 600hp Carmageddon Range Rover. Once here, you will get a once in a lifetime chance to get together with the design team at Stainless and create a new opponent character based on your likeness! You can join in with the team to create a backstory and to customize a vehicle to your liking. You will forever be enshrined in Carmageddon folklore. People will be talking about you in bars all around the world. Governments will debate you, and civilisations will fall. OK, maybe not. But you’ll be DEAD COOL. Literally. Includes flight, all UK travel and 3 nights in a local hotel. Reward is subject to attendees obtaining any necessary Visas. Attendees can bring a guest, but must cover the additional travel & hotel costs themselves. (+Previous Rewards below $750.)”.
A few months later I was on my way to the Isle of Wigth in the United Kingdom. I live in Cancun but since my family lives in Belgium I made a pit-stop there. Unfortunately, whilst hitting the town with my friends from Belgium we were attacked by a group of drunk or drugged guys. I broke my hand punching one of them in the face as my friends and I tried to fend them off. The bad news was that I had to visit the hospital the day after to have a cast put on. The good news was that the creative people at Stainless Games had a blank canvas to express their inner-most emotions. Here’s the result:
As you can see, they’re a very mature bunch, almost to the point of being enlightened. I should mention that this photo was taken before the final night, when we all headed to a bar. In other words, these drawings were made by sober people. Now imagine what these same people drew after about a dozen beers. I don’t know how I made it through airport security with the mental-scarring images on my cast, but somehow I did make it back to Belgium albeit with some strange looks from fellow travelers.
Fast-forward about a year and a half to present-day. I’m downloading the pre-Alpha version of Carmageddon Reincarnation just released today while writing this post. A few days ago I received some renders from the Stainless team to preview the driver and car. Unfortunately the legal team discovered just now that the name Venom already been claimed by another sports car; the Hennessey Venom GT, supposedly the fastest car in the world at the time of writing with an average 0–300 kilometres per hour (0–186 mph) acceleration time of 13.63 seconds. Anyway, without further ado, here are the renders:
The matching driver. They had told me they’d give it cast on one arm since that’s the only way they’ve known me, but judging by the render that was said jokingly:
I also received 10 licenses for Carmageddon Reincarnation today. Some of them I’ll be giving to family and friends, but I’m holding onto a few to give away to readers of my blog. The first one is going to the person who can come up with the best suggestion for a new name for the car. To give you some idea of possible names, Nobby suggested Fangtastic. It’s a good pun, but unfortunately it has been coined by a vampire fiction book already, and we want people to think about snakes upon hearing the name, not vampires. Comment your best name suggestion below and you could win a free license for the new Carmageddon!
This post is also available in: Spanish
151 Comments
Cool blog!, Stainless sounds like they’re good people. I think your car should be named “The Mushroom Stamp” or my favorite word “Cunty”.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun meeting them 🙂
Why not stick with Venom in a different form. Perhaps either ‘Venomous’
or ‘Anti-Venom’. The only one I can come up with now that doesn’t use venom would be ‘Serpent Sting’.
Hi! Nice looking cars, hope to run over you in the game! Why not naming the car “Snaky Bastard” ? Or why not : Steel Cobra ? Cool reading so.
Snaky Bastard is my favorite so far 🙂
Please confirm your email address for the license.
[email protected] 🙂 Thanks!
You’re very welcome. Thank you for helping with the name and enjoy the game!
You have no taste whatsoever.
And your car concept sucks ass.
And seriously? A male model? How fucking lame are you lol.
Looks like someone is a little upset that I didn’t pick any of his suggestions. Sorry not to adhere to your definition of taste, but considering you would’ve named the car “AutoMambile” I’m glad we don’t have to share.
Yes, I work as a male model, though I wouldn’t consider it my primary career. If you think that’s lame you’re entitled to your opinion, but I’m curious what you do for a living if you consider modeling to be lame?
Also, you don’t know anything about me or about this car. There is a lot more to it than you can tell by this render. I don’t want to give away the surprise before the game is released though.
Hopefully the Stainless team will have time to implement the ideas we discussed, but unfortunately originality takes time to implement and they might be short on that.
Don’t let it get to you – trolls like the one above are everywhere, you did a great work with the render and the ideas above! keep up the good work 😉
Thanks for the support. Seems he censored himself in the end.
My suggestions are: Python, Krait, Malice, Blood Python or Reptile.
I think I prefer the Python (or Blood Python) as they sound aggressive like the Venom.
Opie would be a good name or Edgar
For a snake maybe, but for a car? 🙂 I wouldn’t want to get caught getting into Edgar.
serpent (but i already got the game and 3 giftable copies hehe, just wanna see your car on my screen asap)
You and me both 🙂 It’s not finished yet apparently since I couldn’t find it in the Alpha.
I could :3 not playable though, but if you dig trough the .zad files you will find the wheels hehe.
veh_base.zadData_CoreContentVehiclesWheelsdefault_Venom
(linked to your blog from here btw; http://www.carmageddon.com/comment/49055#comment-49055)
One more for you although it is becoming apparent that I might have played too much World of Warcraft over the years. How about ‘Coilfang’?
After Asheron’s Call I swore off MMORPG’s as being too addicting hehe, so I don’t get the reference.
Pretty much why I stopped playing WoW a few years back. Always playing it in my spare time and it was just such a huge time sink.
How about Viperster or Anacorpseter (from anaconda and corpse)
Venomsprinter
AutoMambile (from the green mamba snake)
Posting this part again because apparently the post editing didn’t work.
The Crawler, FangSprinter
Solid Snake (lol just joking)
RattleWagon, RattleMobile, PoisonAxle, The Snacker, Snakxy or Snakexy
Dugattini Melaydon Snake JTM
How about Sneaky Snake in The Venomizer?
Snakenit Vernomis.
Snekan Drane.
Carnavenomal.
Vennysnake.
Swintul.
Snakogran.
Snakespreed.
Snakedoom.
Hi, drooling for a license ^^’ what about “Snake Bite” ?
Or since it will be your character’s car… “The Devomizer” or “The Devominator”
These sound cool but don’t really tie in to the snake concept.
Dracher Snake.
Boobsler Snake.
Solindo Snekus.
Babban Stranto.
Ardon Panani.
Hello Ken! It’s Roman. Great idea of the car. Was it Gallardo?
Here is mine variant for your car:
Vinjector or Winjector ( it’s venom+ inject, and occasionally “win” word.
He he, I’m in desire now to drive by with your car and Ryan’s “bus”)
Se ya in game soon!
Not really, although the Gallardo is one of my favorite cars it’s actually a bit of a blend of various sports cars with a Polish supercar being the main source of inspiration.
Can’t wait to try out your car as well 🙂
Jadelord, Scalesborn, Smackfang, Venorunnem, Clawstriker, Nagaslammer.
Mambadammer.
Taipanhammer.
Bignaga.
Lycosaspeed.
Arctosana.
Poizonetti Mamba
Asphalt Asp
Asp-fault
Asp Byte
Venomyte
Meduzah
Poizonetti Gorgon
Gorgonzilla
Poizonetti V-NOM
Slithera
Speed Mamba
Turbo Boa
Poyzon
Snakespit
Slitherer 🙂 letter “S” could be in snake style
I´ve got also description for the car – “This buddy will sneak up from behind and bang your ass with its spikes”
I like the game the graphics are good and I hope
it’s better then the first Carma
I lke the game and I hope it’s better then the first Carma
Sambademamba.
Viperos.
When they announced the winner?
Announced the winner?
Make a sponsorship contract with Razer and name it by them. Win/Win. Maybe they might make their own racing wheel thingy.
Hi i think the venokiller is the perfect Name
Camo-Roach!
The Venominator.
How about…The Nufangler?
The Hissing Hitchhiker
The snakey bastard
Snassnake!
How about Venumb? Play on words and sounds similar.
Then there is always Mantiss, MantPiss…
Vicious Vinny, VauxamJetsom
Also can try alternate language versions of Venom It fits so well with the green. Shame on you Hennessy!
You should call it Viper, I come out with the name after 6 hours of brainstorming, hope you’ll appreciate that and gift me with a copy of the game 🙂
Btw, thinking about the copyright on Venom, you could always call it Veleno
Hyper Viper!
Usurpent
Or ‘The Usurpent’ might be more appropriate/grammatically correct
Why not name it Zeher or Vish? It means Venom in Hindi. Pretty powerful words.
Adder Assassin.
King Cobra
I’d say “The Injector Killer” for the name 🙂
Or what about “Slimy Shitface”
Max Byte
Splitjaw.
Although it seems like a decent name was already picked so props to the winner ^.^
Bereaver Deeva – Revelator V8.
Usurper – comes from idea of USUP LIFES
hiss-terectomy ! Just sick as it should be… or if you plain it down a bit Asp-irin?
“Saucerkraut”. Sauerkraut is from german Raddish cabbage – a dish that causes you to fart truly evil and venomish gases… Saucer like the flying saucer, the car looks a little like it. S can be snake-like ;).
veinomous viper pretty poor but first thing that came to mind with the venom on the shirt car looks pretty cool btw being involved with the team any idea when the game is coming to next gen consoles
Tailbreaker
Venomnator
Emperor
Anacondor or Aventacondor – Considering the car has hints of the Lamborghini Aventador on the design with.And Anaconda considering it has a snake theme to it.
B-Adder
I think a good name for this car would be “Intravenomous” ! 😀 I for one, like it a lot.
Cheers for the opportunity!
fanghiss
cobranator
toxic serpent
serpuntis (play on words of serpent and punt)!
those are just off the top of my head. too tired to think of any more right now.
Well one thing came to my mind MotherF*cking Snake! From the movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ2QFmJ7h0A
hahaha!!
For some reason I was thinking Sabre, but also,
Anaconda
Fang
Poison
Cobra
Snakebite
Also I think you should definitely have them referencing you punching someone because that’s badass. Maybe some bloody rags on your hand instead of a cast? 🙂
Delirium is the name I’d pick
Massacro
Obnizom
or bring back some cars from the second game!
Vendeath!!!!
Anklebreaker
Veneno (aka Venenito)
The Strangler
Killesey Poison/Kennessey Poison/Viperbite/Headsnakecrab/Crabhead! (front reminds me of HL headcrabs)
I know its got nothing to do with snakes and maybe the guy is a crossdresser bit my suggestion is: Olive Oil 🙂
SnakeAnnihilating Car
Snake wheels
Wormtongue
pyThong
The Splicer!
V-nom
I’m a backer, so don’t need a license, but thanks anyway.
Car names:-
Forking Viper
Copperhead-gasket
Green Mamba
White-rimmed Python
Turbo Krait
Flying Snake
The Governator. Reigns the streets with hard action.
Venomancer
Kick ass kobra
Hey! Are you still taking suggestions? How about “Bloody Wiper” or “Blood Wiper”
Driver, Kobra Kobain. Car, lady kobra, Killer Kobra, Sharpe bit are few ideas I have for you
Von Green
Love the concept, made one too
###
concept text:
Being fired from the Grand Mercy Hospital because of his so called unorthodox and dangerous methods and left by his wife which took all his money for her new live on Hawaii with her young callboy Gonzalez, Dr. Vannacut became somewhat what we might call criminally insane.
He stole an ambulance car from a running rescue mission with still a patient insideand modified it with whatever he found in the local hardware store to a deadly no-mercy machine and named it Throatrunner DS. (This is a mix of names, as the original model design is based on a Citroen CX Estate; The six-wheeled version was called „Loadrunner’; and it’s predecessor was named „Citroen DS”)
He applied basic ground spikes to the front bumper and rasped ‘ern down to shark teeth sharp spears.
Under the very front of the car he attached lawnmower blades to make sure no onewill stay in place once stuck on the spears.
btt: your car’s name could be
Poison Ivy (Ivy because many male drivers name their cars after girls, e.g. Eleanor 😉 ), and “Poison” because of “Venom”.
i think DC would have something against that…
that’s cool though it sort of looks like Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters.
Hi Ken, amazing car! Wish I could have my own car and model in such an awesome game
Here’s my lame attempt: Dodgy Vibora (Spanish for Viper)
Cheers!
Carnnibal.
How about Lambociraptor?
Viperion
Anokiller
The SideSlider
The Viper Sniper
Civil serpent, goodbye hiss, the constrictor, copperstrike
ViboRun
Has to b the trouser snake coz that’s why dudes get lambos due to there inadequacies haha n as a send up snake fisting instead ov pliskin
The Rattler
PokeYer Face
Slaghammer
Cuntoblaster
SlipperySlapper
How about Fang’s Kiss or Bite My Shiny Metal Asp?
Dirty Dumb…
“MotherFanger” The car Looks Awesome!!!!
The SSslaughter
“The Vaccinator”
“Ro Sham Boa”
“Sssssssooo Fassssst”
“Snarky Little Bastard”
“Do you even Fang?”
“Slippery Snake of Snakytude”
“FANGTastic Fury”
“Snaky McSnake Snake”
“Copperhead Impailer”
“Yo Mamba So Fast”
“V is for Venom”
I am a backer myself as well, your design is pretty cool. I’ll probably drive in it. I don’t need a key, but was thinking something lame as “Ereptile Dysfunction” or something along the lines.
green anaconda, sly snake, throw snake, throw reptiles
Pit Viper
Vicious Reptile or Bitter Acid
Serpent Steele 😛
Viper Sniper
grønn slange Or just one of those words.
Means Green Snake.
Kraken would have been great 🙂 Copperdead might work, not with green though.
what about VenOminous…?
Green grenade, rattlesnake or scumcar
The Lameborghini Murderlago.
Solid Serpent
The Venomator
Brakeskin
Steelsting
The Terrifang
“Steel Basilisk”
The basilisk is a legendary reptile reputed to be king of serpents and said to have the power to cause death with a single glance.
Greetings from Cusco – Perú
Spit Viper
It’s not a pun, rather it’s the name of a highly lethal Australian snake.
Dugite.
Either way, that is one gorgeous design, I look forwards to driving it in game! 🙂
Arnomamba.
Viperhouse.
speedygon-killer
only because its a Lamborghini and its super awesome!
The Mantis
Well seen! I like this one, now that you’ve mentioned it, the front of the car totally looks like a mantis.
Impalator
green lantern~
The Rattler
“Severing Snake” with hes car “Slythera Venom” 😀
Carnnibal.
a name that fitswell for this car is bigsnake (ocult adult humor)
The Mighty Python !
(I don’t need a license, I’m a backer already)
SPLATTERMAMBA.
SOLIDNAGA.
The reventatum
Now that this contest is over, does anyone have an idea for another contest to give away another license? I have more than I need for friends and family since most aren’t avid gamers.
Viper Striker
Green Cobra
Ah, so you’re the guy behind this car. Interesting story, nice to read, glad you recovered well! At first I was worried that it might look too much like Kutter’s car Kountslash but… not really! They are pretty different, although I have to admit your driver render looks a bit… plain, don’t you think? It doesn’t really fit the rest of the cast. It’s just like, ”normal looking guy”. Maybe you could’ve worn a neat looking racing suit fitting the venom/snake format at least, but that’s my opinion! I’m very curious about the other two Kickstarter vehicles, I wonder when they’ll reveal them! Take care!