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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!

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