Car Wars - from RPG to PC/console?

[Brian G Turner]

I remember playing the Car Wars role-playing game, by Steve Jackson, when I was younger. The whole concept seemed really cool - develop a car to fight other vehicles, and upgrade it over time to bigger and better weapons and armour.

The trouble was, it took so long to start a game - and then move - then a game would often have to finish and be cleared away before it had even got going.

I remember there used to be a limited sort of "car wars" game for the original Playstation - all I remember from it is a pink ice cream truck with a rocket launcher, or similar, fixed to it. But I don't recall it allowing for vehicle development.

Surely there's a game for PC or console that covers what the original RPG tried to do? However, I'm not aware of any. Would be happy for some recommendations.

 

[Toby Frost]

I've heard that there is a licenced game for Mad Max in the offing. But other than that, I can't think of much that's recent, at least not on computers. "Elite with cars" always seemed a brilliant idea to me.

If you're into that sort of thing, you could always try to find a copy of Dark Future, a tabletop game played with Matchbox-sized cars. Someone is currently working on a similar board game called Highway 666.

 

[HareBrain]

"Elite with cars" always seemed a brilliant idea to me.

Based on my recollections of Elite, this would involve a three-hour trip carrying crab from Brixham to Covent Garden trying to earn enough for a sat-nav, and smashing up the car trying to park it.

 

[Remedy]

I remember playing Carmaggedon in 1999 and I've just had a look and they are making a new up-to-date sequel. They claim to be the first game that developed environmental destruction physics. Plus all the cars could have loads of weapons and attachments.

Problem with this game is that they are pretty keen on the whole running-over pedestrians business...

 

[Michael Coorlim]

There was a Car Wars computer game, Autoduel, released in the late 80s. It was written by none other than Lord British.

Yes.

That Lord British.

 

[Vince W]

Steve Jackson recently released Car Wars again. I'm so happy to have a copy of this again.

This might work for you @Brian Turner:

http://www.dark-wind.com/

 

[Edward M. Grant]

Carmageddon is the closest I've played. The new one is working pretty well now, but has some balance issues compared to the original game; I stopped playing when I got fed up with AI cars destroying me in one hit.

I've often wondered how a real Car Wars computer game would work if it was single-player, because driving a car while aiming a turret at another car would be tricky... I played ships with turrets in Elite, but space doesn't have many buildings or trees to crash into while you let the ship fly itself.

 

[Vince W]

After the success of the Battletech kickstarter, I would jump at the chance to support a Car Wars pc game kickstarter. Maybe we need to bring this up with Harebrained Schemes. Also an Ogre pc game would be amazing.