Carmageddon: Max Damage developer interview: ‘It’s all about the Looney Tunes humour’

One of most controversial games of all time is about to make a comeback, with the original team behind the wheel.

Almost 20 years after it caused tabloid outrage, Carmageddon has returned with new console title Max Damage – and this time, Stainless Games have found inspiration from the most unlikely of places. Not Death Race or Mad Max, but the Looney Tunes...

“We've continued from where we left the brand all those years ago. Our philosophy has basically been that if it ain't broke, don't fix it,” says Neil ‘Nobby’ Barnden – Stainless Games' brand direction and co-founder.

So why bring it back? As Barnden explains, the original didn't quite turn out how the team envisaged.

“Imagine the frustration back in 1996 – the dawn of ‘real’ 3D games – and how much your mind's eye vision of the game you want to make was limited by the horsepower (or lack) of a Pentium 1 PC with 8mb of RAM,” he explains.

“Now, we can get closer to that original vision. You want 800 fully animated highly detailed pedestrians in the level? Check! You want a grid-full of intricately detailed cars, each of which can be dynamically damaged; squashed, twisted, stretched, banana-ed, or split in two, and when it repairs its parts fly back to the car from wherever they were lost, and can take out pedestrians on their way back? Check!

“In short, current-gen hardware gives us a whole new level of ways to create hilariously over the top chaos.”

One of the weapons destined to wreak havoc is the Anvil Launcher – which looks more at home on Wacky Races than on an 18-rated crash-‘em-up.

“This power-up lets players fire a giant anvil at very high speed and does a huge amount of damage to whatever it hits," Barnden reveals. "It epitomises the Looney Tunes humour that Carmageddon is all about.”

For those not particularly good at racing games, no fret – there's an especially gratifying 'plan B' for sore losers to vent frustrations.

“If you find you're being beaten, then you can kill your opponents to steal their points,” says Barnden. “In this way, you can complete a race without ever completing a lap. It's this mechanic that makes every event type a Carmageddon event.”

Despite the original causing uproar – particularly as it encouraged players to run over pedestrians for bonus points – controversy is firmly not on the agenda this time round.

“Things have moved on,” Barnden explains. “If we wanted to deliberately court controversy, we'd have to go down a route that would be antithesis to our intentions, which have always been to just make people laugh like loons while they're playing.”

“Our main reason for wanting to bring the game back was that there's really been nothing else quite like it, before or since. That's why we negotiated to buy the rights back from Square Enix.