Growing up, I was always a Nintendo kid. Mario had its hooks in me from the moment they wheeled an NES into my hospital room while I was recovering from a tonsillectomy at the age of six. But I feel like I turned a corner in my appreciation for the medium with the original PlayStation console. That system had so many amazing experiences that completely changed the way I looked at video games, from Metal Gear Solid to Silent Hill to Final Fantasy VII. They were games unlike anything I’d tried on any Nintendo system before, and for me it all started with one game – Twisted Metal.
I still remember going over to my neighbors’ house after they rented a PlayStation from the local video store. We were passing the controller around doing versus matches of this wild car combat game, with over the top characters gunning each other down with missiles and machine guns. To an 11-year-old me, it felt like a transgressive version of Mario Kart’s battle mode, a demolition derby for the mad, featuring characters that felt like B-movie rejects. And to me, it was perfect.
Twisted Metal was developed by newly formed SingleTrac, led by David Jaffe, in approximately 12 months by a team of about 20 people, which feels so wild given the way development cycles have ballooned in recent years. The game was worked on alongside Warhawk, which initially shared a common code base, and came to the designers during a frustrating traffic jam that made them fantasize about arming their vehicles with guns and missiles. Sony was looking for something to show off their new PlayStation hardware, but during development SingleTrac were frequently asked by executives when the graphics were going to get better. Despite all the fears about the game while it was being made, which also included poor responses from focus testing groups, the game went on to sell over one million units on an $850,000 budget.
One of the most immediately apparent elements of Twisted Metal that makes it feel unique is that it has a roster that feels like one you’d find in a fighting game. The setup of the game involves a mysterious man named Calypso who holds a car combat tournament that promises to grant a wish, which draws in a cast of characters including the Grim Reaper, a restless spirit, and, of course, the iconic killer clown Needles Kane, the driver of the ice cream truck Sweet Tooth. It’s very easy to browse the characters selection page and immediately attach yourself to a character based either on their character picture or their vehicle, before you even know how they play.
Aside from their aesthetic distinction, they all have different stats for their car, and a special weapon that’s exclusive to them, and often themed around their character. Beating the game grants you a text screen that gives you a little short story about what they did with their wish, but an earlier version of the game had live action cutscenes that were cut because some members of the team found them offensive. These were eventually included as bonus content in the PlayStation 2 release Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition, and you can still find them floating around on YouTube.
Since my main point of comparison at the time of the game’s release for this type of gameplay was Mario Kart, it was exciting to see that the levels were more grounded in real life than the more abstract Mushroom Kingdom locations. City streets, suburbs, and rooftops were all turned into destructible battlegrounds, making for something that felt more dangerous and exciting. The level design of these can be pretty basic, with some of the six levels feeling a little too big for the number of characters in a match, but most of them provide enough interconnected areas to provide space for fun car chases between you and your opponents as you zip around, collecting weapon power ups and blasting each other to bits.
When revisiting Twisted Metal for this article, it’s clear that this is a first draft that gets improved upon greatly in its sequels. The campaign is pretty short, with only six stages to beat, but the variety of characters that feel meaningfully different gives it a lot of replay value, especially if you’ve got someone who wants to play versus mode with you. The levels are neat, but don’t have the imagination or flair of the other games, which add a lot of visual variety into the mix. I still love this game, but would much rather revisit one of its many sequels instead.
Twisted Metal 2, aka Twisted Metal: World Tour, was the game that I played most during the PS1 era. Many nights with my friends were spent passing the controllers around as we kept track of our wins and losses throughout the evening. The sequel had a revamped set of characters, some returning, some new, and a set of levels that were inspired by locations all over the world, giving each level its own distinct identity. I’m so fond of this game that this year for my birthday, I actually hooked up an original PlayStation to a TV in my office and got some people to play it with me over lunch – and it still was a blast.
Twisted Metal 3 and Twisted Metal 4 were designed by 989 Studios after SingleTrac was purchased by GT Interactive. I don’t have as much experience with either of these two games, and they felt like one of the first instances in my life that I was aware of a developer change in a series and could immediately feel the difference. The first two games succeeded based on how good it felt to drive and shoot in the cars, and these two sequels just didn’t have the feel down in the same way, which led to disappointment. They seemed to over rely on the power of the franchise’s name value rather than innovating in meaningful ways.
David Jaffe and company would get another shot at the series when Incog Inc. formed from previous SingleTrac employees to work on two new games in the series – Black and Small Brawl. Jaffe headed up Twisted Metal: Black, which was for the new-at-the-time PlayStation 2, while Steve Ceragioli directed Small Brawl, a kids version of the game that was the final game in the series on the original PlayStation. Twisted Metal: Black is hands down my favorite in the series, and one of my all time favorite games, with blisteringly fast gameplay and a dark and disturbing take on the series. There would be a couple others in the series, including entries for the PSP and PS3, but none of them ever reached the heights of Black for me.
Not only did Twisted Metal establish this long and storied series, but it spawned several other competitors that tried to jump on the bandwagon, creating a thriving car combat subgenre, for a time. Vigilante 8, Carmageddon, and Interstate ‘76 all followed in its wake, each providing their own take on driving-based mayhem. SingleTrac even returned to the genre twice after leaving Twisted Metal behind with Critical Depth and Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012. Critical Depth was actually one of the first games I purchased when I ended up getting my own PlayStation, and its submarine-based take on the genre was a blast. Eventually the car combat craze died down, with far less notable titles on the PlayStation 2 and beyond.
Despite not having a game released in the series since the 2012 reboot on the PlayStation 3, the franchise re-entered the cultural zeitgeist recently with the Peacock original TV series based on the games. While it changes a lot of the premise and important details, the game manages to capture some of the over the top fun, especially once it finds its footing a bit more in season 2. It’s the kind of show that’s broadly fun for general audiences, while also providing Easter Eggs that reward longtime fans of the series, even when those same fans might be frustrated by some of the changes made to the general concept.
Even though it definitely feels like a 30 year old game, the original Twisted Metal is still fun to revisit, which is easy to do via the Playstation Network. The fast-paced car combat that was so trendsetting in its day still feels exciting, making for an over-the-top demolition derby that feels like Mario Kart by way of Mad Max. With the recent success of the TV series, I’ve been hoping beyond hope that they find a way to bring back the series in video game form, even if it’s a smaller scoped project. If not, I’d love for an indie dev to take the concepts and run with it, as it feels like we’re due for that genre to come back into style.
To me, there are few things more exciting in video games that speeding around and slamming cars into each other as they pelt each other with machine guns and missiles, and even if we don’t get a modern revival, we’ve still got enough entries in this series that can be accessed on modern hardware that I can satiate my need for vehicular carnage any time I need it.