Carmageddon

The player races a vehicle against several other computer-controlled competitors in various settings, including city, mine and industrial areas. The player has a certain amount of time to complete each race, and more time may be gained by collecting bonuses, damaging the competitors' cars or by running over pedestrians.

Races are completed by either completing the course as one would a normal racing game, "wasting" (wrecking) all other race cars or killing all pedestrians on the level. The game includes thirty-six racetracks, played across eleven different locations. The game features three instrumental remixes from Fear Factory's second studio album Demanufacture (1995).

The game that became Carmageddon started out as 3D Destruction Derby, a banger racing sim prototyped by Stainless Software. This was signed by SCi in 1995, with the condition that it be made into a licensed game to guarantee popularity. Initially, SCi wanted to use the Mad Max license, but was unable to find out who owned the rights to the franchise. It instead secured the Death Race 2000 (1975) license, as a sequel to the original film was at that time planned.

According to head programmer Patrick Buckland, the initial concept stemmed from team members getting bored while playing racing games, leading them to ultimately drive in the wrong direction and crash into other cars. They decided it made sense to create a game where this was the objective to begin with. Shortly after, Psygnosis released a game with this same concept, Destruction Derby (1995).

According to the co-founders of Stainless Games, about two million copies of the Carmageddon series were sold in total. NPD Techworld, a firm that tracked sales in the United States, reported 118,500 units sold of Carmageddon's computer version by December 2002.

GameSpot was enamoured of the open ended, chaotic nature of the game, commenting that "Carmageddon touches that particular collective nerve that fuses the wholesome popularity of the All-American Racing Game with the homicidal singularity of the 70s cult film into an onscreen experience that can only be compared to the kind of automotive mayhem that a five-year-old American male wreaks with his Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars." Next Generation stated that "if you're willing to sweep your morals under the rug for a while, and shamelessly commit auto homicide on a grand scale, then Carmageddon is an absolute blast." GamePro gave a more mixed review, commenting that the game is intense and high on longevity, but that its focus on wanton destruction and gore is in questionable taste and ultimately to the detriment of the gameplay. They also found the graphics mediocre and the controls when using a keyboard to be "frustrating and sluggish".

Carmageddon had two sequels, Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now (1998) and Carmageddon TDR 2000 (2000). SCi planned Carmageddon 4 for a release in the end of 2005. In August 2005 SCi (at the time operating under the name Eidos), put development at Visual Science on hold for unspecified reasons.

In 2005, Swedish publisher Synergenix released two adaptations of the game for mobile devices entitled Carmageddon and Carmageddon 3D, developed by Impressionware and Kampo Interactive, respectively. Released on July 4, 2005, Carmageddon features a top-down perspective for lower-end Java devices. The game was later made available for BREW-compatible devices. Carmageddon 3D features three-dimensional graphics and was released on November 29, 2005, for Symbian and Mophun-based mobile devices.