Retrospective - A Look Back At Death Rally

It was 1996 when I first heard of Death Rally a game developed by Remedy Games a then smallish development studio based out of Espoo, Finland. The distributor was Apogee, a heavy weight publisher of its time and one that was an expert at using the shareware model of game distribution.

This was a time of much change and progress for PC gamers, we’d seen the back of the x86 PC’s and had only a few years earlier started to enjoy pentium power. 3D games had just started to hit the shelves and despite all of these positives the strongest memories I have of this time are of me playing Death Rally.

The top down racing shooter featuring Duke Nukem and a whole cast of other character misfits all with their very own slightly misspelled names! This was a big year for Duke Nukem as well as Apogee and things were only about to get better. With PC games reaching new heights me and my trusty 8MB Pentium 75Mhz weren’t going to miss a thing.

Shareware Version

It was a cold winter’s day and after having completed a marathon session of Z (developed by the Bitmap Brothers, you remember those guys right ?) I happened to stumble upon Death Rally on my monthly cover disc.

Now when I say stumbled upon I really do mean that because this was a game that wasn’t in my list of anticipated games nor was it something I had previously heard of. In fact looking back at why I bothered to install the game I’m pretty sure it was due to Duke Nukem’s feature and the prospective of racing against him being kind of appealing.

Expecting the game to be a complete waste of time I was absolutely shocked to find myself playing it for the next 10 hours. This single point in time marks not only my introduction to the game Death Rally but also to the greatness of Remedy Entertainment and the games that were to follow (e.g. Max Payne 1 & 2, as well as the up and coming Alan Wake).

Simply Addictive

If you ask anyone who played the game in its early days most would assuredly sum it up as “addictive“. In fact the simplicity of the game led to the addictivity which was a sequence of buying a car, winning races, earning money, buying a better car and then repeating. 

It didn’t matter how many times you raced a track or how many times you raced the same opponents, each time the game would be different and each time your hunger to win both the money and the points increased!

Throw into the equation no rules, guns, mines, pre-race sabotage, and the ability to engage in underhanded drug smuggling operations and you had in front of you a game with plenty of in game choice. Whether you chose to win by racing or by gunning down your competitors, well the choice was totally yours.

In Race Bonuses

Winning was everything but as well as coming first there were other motivational cash rewards thrown into each race. For example if you won the race by killing all of your opponents you earned a “Wraith Bonus” an extra $4000 into your pocket. If you finished the race with less than 3% damage, once again you earned another $4000 again straight into your pocket. These cash rewards were significant but getting them wasn’t always easy so when you did win them it was a reason to be extatic. 

Add to the above mix graphics which at their core were 2D but had 3D elements placed over them and you have a game that not only looks good but ran respectfully on most PC’s. Even by todays standards the graphics still look slick, the music doesn’t feel dated and above all the game has a solid production quality about it.

Cool Characters

One of the key aspects that led to the longevity of the game was the mix of entertaining personalities and characters. Sure there was no online play or even network play available at the time but the game was pre packed with 20 racers all of whom carried different driving traits.

With Duke Nukem leading the cast of racers it was almost like having real personalities racing against you. In fact whoever programmed the AI did a smashing job of individualising the racers making them extremely recognisable both from the way they raced to the way they purchased upgrades and in race weapons.

Certainly the misspelled names added to the characterisation and I won’t go into the four letter, foul mouthed words I yelled when I was beaten at the line by Bogus Bill or gunned down by Mad Mac. Certainly taking the game that seriously and holding personal grudges against individual AI racers can only happen when great care and time has been spent on the individual character elements within the game!

Death Rally Re-Released

If you’ve never played Death Rally then it’s an absolute gem amongst todays big name games. Played today it’s as addictive as it was 10+ years ago and thankfully you no longer have to rely on working with those pesky emulators due to Remedy re-releasing the game to work on modern PC’s. It’s now absolutely free to download from their website.

Remedy Games Interview

For those of you who enjoy our retrospectives we thought we’d mix things up a little this time. So instead of a single lengthy article talking about the game in a reminiscent, old memories type of way we thought we’d throw in an interview with Markus Mäki one of the founders of Remedy Entertainment and a key player in the development and production of Death Rally. Here’s the full Remedy Games - Death Rally Interview.

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