History VideoGame / Carmageddon

* {{Bowdlerise}}: The first game saw versions replacing pedestrians with [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman robots or zombies]]. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools This had the effect of]] giving the game a pretty neat AfterTheEnd setting, and justified why the pedestrians all shamble around like lemmings. A censored version of the UsefulNotes/{{Nintendo 64}} port even has ''dinosaurs''!

* CanonDiscontinuity: The official site for the reboot has a history section. Under the entry for ''Carmageddon 3: TDR 2000'' is [[https://web.archive.org/web/20181008045107/http://www.carmageddon.com/history/carmageddon-tdr-2000 "We don't talk about this"]] accompanied by a picture of a flaming poo. Or the [[http://www.carmageddon.com/nosebleed-pack Nosebleed Pack]] for that matter. [[http://store.steampowered.com/app/331650/ The Steam page]] confirms the original developers' dislike for the game even further.

* CanonDiscontinuity: The official site for the reboot has a history section. Under the entry for ''Carmageddon 3: TDR 2000'' is [[http://www.carmageddon.com/history/carmageddon-tdr-2000 "We don't talk about this"]] accompanied by a picture of a flaming poo. Or the [[http://www.carmageddon.com/nosebleed-pack Nosebleed Pack]] for that matter. [[http://store.steampowered.com/app/331650/ The Steam page]] confirms the original developers' dislike for the game even further.

** Carmageddon II also features the Flower Power, unlocked after you finish the game. It's a hippie van with treads that's fragile, lightweight, handles poorly and is top-heavy so it tips over constantly. Its listed Strength rating is ''-1'' out of 5.

* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: Many of the stage names and names of the the drivers themselves.

** Grabbing the '[[TooFastToStop Hot Rod]]' power-up increases the car's acceleration to a dangerous amount and makes your car front suspension lift up when driving. The increased speed and difficult turning mean this powerup can only be safely used in a straight line with no obstacles.

* ControllableHelplessness: 'Bouncy Bouncy', along with '[[PinballProjectile Pinball Mode]]' is the ''worst'' powerup in the game, due to how frequently you'll pick it up. It will make your vehicle jump uncontrollably every 3 seconds, which can topple you over the faster you go. What sucks is you can't become a BouncingBattler, so to avoid hefty recovery/repair fees are forced to wait it out.

* DrivingUpAWall: The series has featured a variety of physics-modifying power-ups (most blatantly the Wall-climber power) that allow driving at all sorts of bizarre angles, including up sheer walls and even upside down. Certain types of cars can even do so without any power-ups, whether due to abnormally high downforce, extreme acceleration, supernatural tire grip or some other unusual physical property. This is made even more common by the tendency of cars to get involved in powerful collisions and get punted upwards onto walls and ceilings.

** The pedestrians splatter gruesomely if you so much as touch them, especially in the first game where they were sprite-based and not 3D objects that could be truly knocked around freely. It is ''just barely'' possible to drive slowly enough to merely injure one, granting the player a "Cat 'n Mouse bonus" if they lose a limb or two. No pedestrian collision deals any damage to your car (however large animals in the second game on the other hand...).

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: AI-driven vehicles do not always drive; as long as they are out of the player's visual range, they are randomly moved around the map. This is quite noticeable when racing, as heavily-damaged AI opponents will appear to be moving far faster than their vehicle should be capable of doing still. Similarly AI vehicles which should supposedly be some distance behind may suddenly appear ahead on a head-on collision course. [[LampshadeHanging The manual even justifies this as an excuse to waste them.]]

* CoolPlane: The Supastuka in the second game, although it's AwesomeButImpractical. The beta used to have "Birdy" -- a Cessna with clipped wings and a large bloodied propellor to drive into people. It was scrapped before release.

* DrivingUpAWall: The series has featured a variety of physics-modifying power-ups that allow driving at all sorts of bizarre angles, including up sheer walls and even upside down. Certain types of cars can even do so without any power-ups, whether due to abnormally high downforce, extreme acceleration, supernatural tire grip or some other unusual physical property. This is made even more common by the tendency of cars to get involved in powerful collisions and get punted upwards onto walls and ceilings.

** The pedestrians splatter gruesomely if you so much as touch them. It is ''just barely'' possible to drive slowly enough to merely injure one. No pedestrian collision deals any damage to your car.

** Also, if you push an opponent into deep water it wrecks them, but if they drive into it themself, they teleport back to solid ground just like the player would. Giving the opponent a little nudge on their way to Davy Jones' locker can make all the difference.

* {{Bowdlerise}}: The first game saw versions replacing pedestrians with [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman robots or zombies]]. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools This had the effect of]] giving the game a pretty neat AfterTheEnd setting, and justified why the pedestrians all shamble around like lemmings. A censored version of the UsefulNotes/{{Nintendo 64}} port even has ''[[EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs dinosaurs]]''!

* SequelDifficultySpike: The Missions on the second game, which [[http://www.carmageddon.com/history/carmageddon-2 the lead artist]] admit that they were late additions which he didn't test enough for people that unlike him hadn't become experts - "[[CreatorBacklash And so I stand before you, guilty of making a game too challenging for most mere mortals. It's a guilt I'll carry with me to my grave.]]" There are cars that can't be used to clear missions; for instance, the mountain course missions are almost impossible in cars that aren't off-road because those don't have enough grip on slopes and can barely be maneuvered in snow; the snowplow mission can barely be cleared in a slightly smaller vehicle because one's driving against a tank; one has to use a tank-like vehicle to clear the Big Dump, or have the cheat code that solidifies one's car (albeit it's fair to say that the Big Dump can be cleared if they waste themselves).

* ControllableHelplessness: 'Bouncy Bouncy', along with 'Pinball Mode' is the ''worst'' powerup in the game, due to how frequently you'll pick it up. It will make your vehicle jump uncontrollably every 3 seconds, which can topple you over the faster you go.

''Carmageddon'' is a [[RacingGame racing video game]] released in 1997 by Creator/InterplayEntertainment. The game ostensibly revolves around a series of car races held in a WideOpenSandBox, although racing is really not this game's selling-point. The player can race the opposition around the track, but true success comes mainly from causing as much damage as possible to their cars, as well as running down the innocent civilians (zombies in certain editions) that practically litter the map. At the time, it was one of the first video games to feature this type of violence on such a massive scale -- the game actively encourages the player to kill as many pedestrians as possible, something which garnered it a lot of controversy from {{Media Watchdog}}s.

* EarlyGameHell: The timer in the first game is probably your worst enemy. On some levels you have barely more than a minute to quickly find some pedestrians or power-ups to reap the rewards of extra playing-time.

** From the first game, Vlad's Annihilator and OK Stimpson's Fraud Broko come into mind here, although there are others. The former is a ridiculously fast dragster that is almost impossible to turn and very easy to waste, and the latter is an SUV with such bouncy suspension, it tends to flip over every time it gets hit. The mobile ports remove the jelly suspension from the Fraud Broko, but makes the Annihilator go so fast, it ''does wheelies'' every time it hits full acceleration from a standing start, making an already impossible-to-drive vehicle [[UpToEleven even more impossible to drive]].

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: AI-driven vehicles do not always drive; as long as they are out of the player's visual range, they are randomly moved around the map. This is quite noticeable when racing, as AI opponents which should supposedly be some distance behind may suddenly appear ahead on a head-on collision course. [[LampshadeHanging The manual even justifies this as an excuse to waste them.]]

* CyberPunk: The third game seems to be this. In The Slums and HiRise levels, cyber punk features such as holographic billboards are an abundance. Even the pedestrians seem to be all cyber punk'd.

* RammingAlwaysWorks: {{Zigzagged|Trope}}; how this trope plays out depends entirely on the mass of the vehicles or objects involved. With a heavier vehicle like The Plow and/or with the Solid Granite Car powerup active, you will do heavy damage to almost anything you hit, and you can drive into map objects and push them around as if they aren't there. However, if you are driving a very light vehicle, such as The Annihilator or the KVN Toucan, ramming most things without a beneficial powerup active (such as Invincibility) is generally a bad idea, since your vehicle will likely take more damage than whatever you are ramming. It is not unheard of for computer players to wreck ''[[SelfDamagingAttackBackfire themselves]]'' by ramming something because their vehicle is heavily damaged.

* SuperNotDrowningSkills: Zig-zagged. Cars can still be driven underwater, albeit with changes to physics to emulate water resistance, unless they fall off the edge of the map, in which they recover at around the last spot they were at before they went under (or get wasted, if they were pushed off the map by the player in the original game). However, [[SuperDrowningSkills peds in ''Carmgeddon 2'' and onward will drown after a short period of time if they are pushed into bodies of water]].

* VideogameCaringPotential: You can actually choose not to mow down any pedestrians, and simply go after the pyschopathic racers who do. Not [[SelfImposedChallenge an easy challenge though]], because of the time limit.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Cripple a car, then push it into a field of ExplodingBarrels. Grab a Dismemberfest powerup, gently nudge pedestrians to remove their limbs, then watch the torsos flop around pathetically. Trap an opponent in a confined space, enable Pinball Mode, and allow them to smash themselves to bits against the walls. Pin an opponent against a freeway divider, get the upgrades for solid granite car and gripped tires (by cheating, unless you're really lucky), turn the map on so the don't go anywhere, then ram them at top speed. They'll literally fly off the map. The opportunities are only limited by the player's sociopathy.

* {{Animesque}}: What sets ''TDR 2000'' apart from the previous games is how it seems to be inspired by CyberPunk animes. The game takes place in a Dystopian CyberPunk future, the residence all appear rather animesque in terms of fashion sense ([[YouGottaHaveBlueHair even sporting eccentric hair colours]]), and this is further evident in two playable vehicles: The Mecha, a [[WeaponizedCar weaponized]] {{Itasha}}, and The Machine, a [[CyberneticsEatYourSoul vehicular cyborg body]] 'driven' by a man named [[Manga/{{Akira}} Tetsuo]].

* MightyGlacier: Carmageddon II features Psycho Pitbull and his vehicle, Big Dump - a 35-ton Caterpillar 789 dump truck that towers over all the other vehicles. Fitting the trope, its enormous size ensures it can't fit under checkpoint markers and has trouble dealing with many common obstacles, has atrocious acceleration, one of the worst top speeds in the game (150 MPH), poor traction... and a strength of 80 on the 1-to-5 rating scale. (The fan-run Carmageddon Wiki assures the reader this is not a typo.)