Destruction Derby: How We Needed This Game Back In 1995

 

1995 was a phenomenal year for technological advancements in entertainment! - Pixar’s landmark computer-generated animated film Toy Story broke box office records and children's hearts around the world, Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system took consumer & office computing to the next level, and society was forever changed when the gods graced us with Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls; not only the best sequel of all time, but the greatest title to a sequel - ad infinitum.

It’s no wonder that whilst we were inundated with such technical achievements being bestowed to us lowly cretins, that we could miss the minutiae of more refined developments. Such is the case for the PlayStation / MS-DOS classic “Destruction Derby”: and how we didn’t know we needed this game back in 1995 CE.

Steered by British-based developer Reflections Interactive, the studio took the existing American motorsport pastime of smashy car ‘til car break (a.k.a. “Demolition derbies”), and made a videogame about it. Though the premise isn’t exactly revolutionary, what made this game special was the lack of bells and whistles needed; that the game was pure and simple fun, and with great craftsmanship in the right places.

As previously stated, Destruction Derby wasn’t the first vehicular combat racing game of it’s kind - There was even a game of the same title released in 1975 for the arcade, which later on became the infamous Death Race. No, there had been a slew of four-wheeled frenzy videogames before ‘95; but none of which offered a grounded take on the genre.

During the height of the “XTREME” era (around the mid-80s to late 90s), everything and everyone capitalized on the hyper abrasive marketing strategy of ATTITUDE - what you drink, what you wear, what you watch, to the point where you could probably live off products that were Xclusively Xtreme for a time. For a game that was focused on an extreme sport, of carnage and destruction galore, Destruction Derby had an admirable amount of restraint considering its contemporaries. Well… apart from the unfortunately XTREME game cover.

The middle ground between radical and realism was non-existent in the realms of vehicular combat racing games as it was an “either/or” situation. Your choices were either hyper-violence and cartoonish sprees, or simulated racing centric experiences. Sure, you had some experiences that were a close hybrid, but nothing as straight down the middle as Destruction Derby.

The modus operandi during development on the title was to focus on the implementation of simplified simulated graphics that could balance the “realism and playability” well. There’s a primal instinct innate in us to self-sabotage, to revel in causing chaos and the destruction of things; much like any cat ever - the more pristine and delicate something is, the greater the temptation grows to watch physics do its thing. The catharsis gained from watching smashy car ‘til car break is the entire point of the sport!

In recreating that feeling, collision physics had to be first and foremost the most important aspect of the game. Not only as an aesthetic measure, but any damage given or received would also impact the performance of your vehicle; even where you’ve taken damage affected your steering and speed differently. For example, frontal collisions could affect the car’s radiator, which in turn will cause the vehicle to overheat and potentially stop running altogether.

These physics weren’t for your car alone, but for the 19 other AI racers on the track at any given time, and game performance didn’t suffer a bit! This was mostly due to the ingenuity and fine-tuning by the team over at Reflections Interactive. Graphical pop-ins, dropping frame rates, and short rendering distances in 3D were prevalent issues during the fifth generation of console videogames; and they were most notable in most racing games of the time (see WipEout and Ridge Racer).

These problems were overcome by three important shortcuts that boosted game performance, without having to sacrifice much in the way of gameplay. Firstly, the size of every course and map was only as expansive as the draw distance of the PlayStation could handle, a commonplace issue for most 3D titles of the time. Many developers curbed this through distance fog - a great example of working within limitations is that of the early Silent Hill series, though a better technique to deal with draw distance would soon arise, through “Level of Detail” manipulation (or L.O.D. for short).

The general gist behind L.O.D. is that the further away an object or structure is within the gamespace, the less geometric detail would render on-screen; meaning that the hardware doesn’t have to devote any unnecessary graphics processing to an object you could barely see anyway! And finally, by simplifying each car with a single wire-frame model, the developers could allow more processing power of the console to display various texture maps of a wreck.

And wrecking, you will do! The game offers different modes, all with varying degrees of destruction. You do have your standard racing affair in the “Stock Car” and “Time Trial” options; But the real fun comes from the more whip-lash inducing activities, such as mode the game is named after. “Destruction Derby” sees you in a scrap on a trackless arena against nineteen other vehicles, with the sole purpose to inflict the most damage as possible - 100% smashy car ‘til car break action here. And for those who want a hybrid between the racing and demolition elements, can find both in harmonious tandem in the aptly titled “Wreckin’ Racing”.

The Nintendo 64 port of the game saw enhanced graphics, 24 competing vehicles, additional courses, a “Capture the Flag” game mode, as well as four-player split-screen; as opposed to the PlayStation’s two-player system link feature (which, back in those days required a Noah’s Ark approach: Two TV sets, Two PlayStations, Two Copies of the Game, and Two Controllers… Hoorah, Hoorah!)

Destruction Derby paved the way for such motorised mayhem classics in the Burnout series, Twisted Metal, Wreckfest, and the upcoming PS5 exclusive Destruction AllStars. And since the ‘95 release, has been certified as a pivotal title in the PlayStation’s repertoire, having secured it’s spot in the roster of 20 games within the PlayStation Classic’s mini console.

We’re quickly approaching the 25th anniversary of the title’s release, and we wish to commemorate a game that has left its tire-marks on the racing and vehicular-combat genre.