There are three kinds of games: Bad games, good games and great games. There has never been any shortage of the first, the second kind is fairly easy to find, but truly great games are few and far between. Gamers tend to stick like glue to great games, triggering a flood of similar games from game developers hoping to make a quick buck. Then there are the games that are simply too controversial or out-of-the-ordinary to clone. Looking back to circa 1998, the game that stands out the most in my head is Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now. As it happens, I bought and played this game with great enjoyment back in the days, but once I switched to Windows 2000, it would no longer run. Why? Because the developers had hard-coded a restriction into the game that restricts it from being run on any Windows NT-based operating system. I recently found, however, that it runs just fine on Windows XP.

Getting the game
Getting your hands on Carmageddon II is not particularly hard. A quick search of the local gamestores turned up quite a few copies, both new and used, priced around €5-8. Not too shabby. As for getting the game through other means, it might not be so easy as the game came with a (for its time) quite formidable form of copy protection on the CD, making it hard to create a working copy (and breaking some Pioneer CD-ROM drives, as I recall). Also, the game features a nice soundtrack by Iron Maiden, which you'll miss out on if you get a warez:ed copy. Personally, I bought the game way back when it was still new, paying full retail. Since it retains its playworthiness some 5 years later, I can safely say I don't feel ripped off.

Important: The version you will want to get is the UK BLOOD version. You can identify it by looking at the box; on the back, there should be a white-bordered square with the UK flag and the string "UK * BL" in the top right corner.

Getting it to work on Windows XP
I got the game to work almost perfectly on Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2, by following these simple steps: First, I installed the game to my hard drive using the installer provided on the CD. I then installed the version 2.0 patch followed by the fixed EXE that provides Windows XP compatibility. Unfortunately, it seems the fixed EXE is not of version 2.0, so overwriting the original game executable with it reverses some or all of the 2.0 patch's effects. I've e-mailed SCi about this, and will update this page if I get a response.

Having installed and updated the game, I tried running it in Direct3D mode. This worked well in the sense that the game started properly and was completely playable, but I got some distorted graphics. After installing Zeckensack's Glide Wrapper, I could play the game in Glide mode. (Now maybe I can dust off some other old 3dfx-only games!) Of course, if you happen to be using a 3dfx-based graphics card still, you have my pity, but at least you can run Carmageddon II in Glide mode without installing a wrapper. In Glide mode the game worked well and none of the graphics were distorted. I tried mucking around a bit with the settings in the wrapper to try and get a higher resolution, but all such attempts resulted in the same distorted graphics as when I used Direct3D. However, for a game that's more than five years old, I think Carmageddon II looks really nice, even at the default resolution of 640x480.

Quirks and fixes
I ran into a few problems playing the game on Windows XP. Firstly, the game will occasionally crash (very rarely). However, since your progress, your credits and the state of your car are automatically saved after each finished race, this is not that much of an issue since you don't need to replay a lot to get back to where you were. Second, when switching CD tracks, the game slows to a near-halt for a few seconds. This is annoying but easily fixed; just turn off the music and run it in the background using Winamp or something while you play. Third, on one out of the two computers I tried the game on, I couldn't get network play to work - for some reason, the button to start a network game just wasn't clickable. However, since network play requires one CD per player and I only own one, this wasn't much of a problem to me.

Another annoyance I encountered is that Carmageddon 2 likes to reset the gamma of my Windows desktop to a setting that's much too high. I used the "gamma helper" that comes with Zeckensack's glide wrapper to fix this.

What's it about?
The gameplay in Carmageddon II is refreshingly simple, yet gets surprisingly hard at times; you could say it's one of those games that are easy to learn, but difficult to master. Basically, there are ten "groups", and each group consists of three races and a special mission. The races take place on different maps, where courses with checkpoints have been set out. You have the option of trying to win the race (by getting to the last checkpoint via all the others before everyone else after a certain number of laps), or you can win by destroying all opposing racers or by killing every pedestrian on the entire map (here we get controversial). The second option is the most common because it is the most fun - apart from simply destroying the other cars by crashing into them at speed, you have an arsenal of weapons at your disposal. There is also a multitude of weapons for killing pedestrians more effectively than by simply running them over. However, the pedestrians never fight back; the other racers do.

An additional element of difficulty is the timer. At the beginning of each race, there is a timer which counts down from one minute. When the timer reaches zero, you automatically lose the race. To get extra time, you must inflict damage upon the other racers, kill pedestrians or pick up yellow time bonuses. The former two actions also give you credits, which you can use to purchase additional cars, as well as upgrades for them. In other words, getting through the game by simply winning each race is a definite no-go - you'll have to get violent to stand a chance, since your basic car really isn't good for much. Destroying all of your opponents is the road most often taken; killing every pedestrian might seem easier on paper, but on most maps they number in the thousands, some in hard-to-reach places.

After completing the three races in each group, you are given access to that group's mission. The mission usually takes place on a well-known map, but instead of the usual "race, wreck or wreak havoc", you have a set objective, and a set timer; there's no getting extra time. Objectives generally include blowing things up or killing select pedestrians. Some missions are regular races where you simply have to finish before the timer reaches zero. This is harder than it sounds.

Why the game doesn't go dull
A few things help Carmageddon II from becoming boring after a few races. I mean, running people over and trashing cars has to get pretty dull, right? Wrong. Firstly, many of the maps are very well put together - once you get a couple of minutes on the timer, you can go explore. Almost all the maps have places where you can try some stunts. The game has a good physics engine and though the cars handle nothing like reality would allow, they are great for crazy stunts. Second, thanks to the many power-ups available, you will be able to trash your opponents in new and fascinating ways as the game progresses and your skills grow. Furthermore, each group you complete unlocks a set of new maps and cars for you to play and buy. All of these things combined make the game worth playing to the end. The one main problem I have with the game is that some of the missions can be incredibly hard to complete. Fortunately, there's a level skip cheat, so you can progress to the next group without finishing the mission if you really want to. When you finish the entire game, you have your choice of replaying any map or mission in the entire game, which means you can save those impossible missions for later if you find yourself stuck.

Unsurprisingly, Carmageddon II received pretty good ratings in the press when it was released - many publications gave it grades in the 90%+ range. It is one of few games that have a well-known band doing the soundtrack, the graphics remain decent even today, and the fact that SCi have released a patch for it to get it working under Windows XP so many years after its original release says something about its popularity. I'd definitely recommend anyone with a couple of hours to spare and a taste for racing and carnage to get this game. You should be able to find it for very little money, and with the right patches, it works like a charm. There's also a host of add-ons available (Google knows more) if you want more of a challenge after completing the basic game. There's even a fan-made expansion pack!

More information
An additional source of information about the game is the unofficial FAQ, available here. It contains a lot of useful information but is very unprofessionally written and the author is overly anal about his copyright, spending far too many lines whining about it. He also gets some basic things wrong (the author claims that the game is not finishable in the starting car, which is not true - it's quite sufficient if upgraded) and has included a lot of useless information (we don't really need to be told what the "LEFT" and "RIGHT" controls do). Still, some parts of it are worth a read-through.

More screenshots from Carmageddon II are here, the official game website is here, and here is WASTED, a site with quite a few add-ons for download. Finally, feel free to discuss this article in the forum. I will try to help if you have problems with the game.