Have you ever had a gaming blind spot that seems perfectly tuned for your interests? I’m a huge fan of both old-school vehicular combat and Remedy Entertainment, but somehow I’ve never played their debut game, Death Rally.
Released thirty years ago, this top-down racer feels like a weird anomaly in their long history of stylish and exciting third-person action and horror games. At first glance, it contains none of their signature personality that’s shone since Max Payne, focusing on creating a tight, arcade-y experience that’s unlike anything they’ve done since. Given its big anniversary, I decided it was finally time to try it out and see how it fits in with the rest of their oeuvre.
Sandwiched between the releases of Twisted Metal and Carmageddon, Death Rally was part of the wave of violent car games that were popular at the time. Published by Apogee, which later became 3D Realms, the game began as HiSpeed before rebranding after the publisher suggested they add guns to the game. As Sam Lake described in the Story of Remedy on their YouTube page, he said they started as a group of around 12 developers who had roots in the demoscene.
Lake was contacted by the team to do the writing, which was fairly limited based on the context of the game. It was a scrappy production, but the team gelled right off the bat.
Building a Racing Career
Booting up Death Rally for the first time, I was a little surprised at the structure of it. Perhaps it’s just because of experience with Twisted Metal or Remedy’s history of being more narrative-driven, but I thought it would be more like a series of specific races with narrative bits interspersed between them. Instead, it’s an interesting career mode that starts you off with a bad car and a bit of cash, then has you choose from various races as you earn prize money and work your way up the rankings.
You’ll purchase faster cars and more upgrades, allowing you to take on tougher classes of races throughout several different courses. Once you hit first place, you’ll get your chance to take on the Adversary to become the new champion of Death Rally.
It’s a neat loop that makes it feel like a true career, allowing you to make your own little stories as you try to scrape by on your way to supremacy. While it’s not robust by modern standards, the limited upgrades available between races do feel meaningful. After each race, you first stop by a legitimate car shop, where you can upgrade your engine, tires, armor, or even buy a whole new car.
This is followed by a trip to the black market, where you can buy land mines, spikes for your bumper, or even pay a mechanic to sabotage one of your opponents. If you’re running low on cash, you can also borrow some money from a loan shark; just be sure you’re ready to pay them back when they come calling.
As I mentioned before, the racing is all from a top-down perspective, which is a bit finicky from a modern perspective. I feel like this style of racing is the driving world’s version of survival horror tank controls – they make sense for their time, but can be hard to return to. The tracks are well laid out, but can be pretty narrow a lot of the time. Getting off track makes you slow to a crawl, so any mistake can cost you dearly. Scattered across the courses are various pickups, ranging from machine gun ammo to turbo fuel to money, and they can be critical for not only your race, but your career.
When the Guns Come Out
Every car starts with machine guns by default, and once you cross a certain part of the course, they become live. It’s a bit of a strange design, because it encourages you to hang back off the starting line, because being in front when guns go live will be disastrous for your car’s health. Eliminating your other racers is a good way of guaranteeing you won’t place last, so you’ll want to keep an eye on those black market items that can give your car additional offensive capabilities.
To enhance the Death Race 2000 vibes, there are pedestrians that are lined up along the track that you can run over, leaving a huge blood stain on the road, but unfortunately they slow you down upon impact. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t any bonus for running them over, but it was a nice touch that completed the car combat vibes.
In addition to winning the race, there are other ways to earn money on the track. If you manage to take out the other three racers in a given event, Death himself will give you a bonus for a job well done, so you’re encouraged to be as violent as possible. You’ll also get a nice chunk of change if you manage to make it through the race without getting too much damage, so playing cautiously can also be a strategy.
Occasionally between races, you’ll be approached by people who give you an objective, either to take out an opponent or pick up pills scattered all over the track, and these can yield a big windfall. Just make sure to complete the goal, as they don’t take kindly to failure.
A Glimpse of Future Remedy and a Surprise Cameo
Despite being a pretty run-of-the-mill car combat game, there’s a little bit of personality shining through, giving us a preview of the charm we’d become accustomed to seeing from Remedy. On the shop screen, there’s a passage along the bottom that describes the premise that stood out to me as a little wacky. It starts by just telling you how to navigate the menu, before shifting into talking about the race in strange terms, calling it a “hot rod road-hell purgatory, where motor souls scream, and way-tired wheels burn.”
It warns you of the “flame-crowned demon king” that waits at the end of the race, warning you to “listen to True Tom,” who tells no lies. It feels so out there, not really reflected in the races you’re seeing, but the flourishes are appreciated.
Since it was published by Apogee/3D Realms, you can actually play as Duke Nukem in Death Rally, which is also pretty silly. When you start a career, you name your racer and pick a picture to represent them, and one of them is clearly just Duke Nukem. There are even a few lines of dialogue that are used if you both pick the portrait and name your character Duke Nukem. This also gives your car extra armor, making for a fun and beneficial Easter Egg for fans.
You don’t really get much chance to take in the scenery as you’re speeding around in a top-down perspective, but there are a decent number of visual themes for courses, and they look good for the time. It’s an interesting combination of 2D visuals with just enough 3D elements layered on top of them to give it an identity, even if it’s not a particularly strong one.
Still Worth Playing in 2026?
Death Rally is available for free on Steam, labelled as Death Rally (Classic), thanks to a Windows port that was made in 2007. The re-release doesn’t support multiplayer like the original 1996 release, but the career mode is retained in all its glory. A complete remake of Death Rally was developed by Cornfox & Brothers, Mountain Sheep, and Remedy, released on iOS and Android in 2011.
This remake was eventually also brought to PC and is still available on Steam. Gameplay retains the top-down perspective, but the graphics were updated to fully 3D. There’s a similar career structure, with more weapons added into the mix for players to take advantage of.
With Control Resonant right around the corner, it’s so cool to see just how far Remedy has come in the last 30 years. Death Rally is a humble start for them, with a small scope and tight gameplay loop, but doesn’t have the narrative panache that they would eventually come to be known for.
While it didn’t endure in the zeitgeist the same way other vehicular combat games like Twisted Metal or Carmageddon did, it’s still a fun little experience that any fan of Remedy should check out, especially since it’s free.
Death Rally is currently available on Steam.