Hot Rod Rebels

• Designed and modeled 6 racecourses

• Scripted dozens of spectacular stunts with dynamic moving objects

Most of the design documents for the game disappeared along with the closure of 675 Sycamore Drive.

I captured what I could from memory in my blog post: We Totally Did the Donut Jump Before Red Hot Chili Peppers

The cool Game Design innovation was that each race was to start with a 1/4 mile drag race, complete with a red/yellow/green "Christmas Tree" and reaction time readouts in the thousandths of seconds.

The gameplay was surprisingly deep and accurate given the very short amount of time down the quartermile - typically less than 8 seconds. We had modeled smoking the tires, popping the clutch, and wheelstands

T1_Rodsville

Notable highlights:

• Up-n-down Donut Stop - a giant DONUT dunking up and down into a cup of coffee

• Two moving freight trains - jump the parked car carrier onto the southbound train to gain speed

• Thor's Hammers - few brave souls attempt the shortcut through these twin swining hammers

T2_Island

Notable highlights:

• The veritcal cylinder tube hill climb (inspired by the Atari Fuji hidden area in RUSH 2049)

• Dynamic Volcano - shoot the vent on lap 1, and sail over the top on lap 3 during the eruption

T3_Canyon

Notable highlights:

• Rolling boudlers along the start/finish straightaway

• Keystone wall ride - the keystone drops out of the top of this hairpin

• Stalactite/stalagmite spiral - the main track passes straight through this cavern, while a shortcut path corkscrews around twice

T4_Swamp

Notable highlights:

• Mangrove Zigzags - swipe the roots off three trees to collapse them, then drive across next lap

• Hollow tree teeter-totter - a strange shortcut that forces you to wait at the exit for the best line

• The Chopper - a tree-felling machine that followed the start/finish straightaway devouring cars

T5_City

Notable highlights:

• Recycling center - a serpentine path of conveyor belts and palettes of aluminum

• I'm on a boat - a ferry travels from one dock to the next; hop aboard for a relaxing ride

• Demolition - a collapsing skyscraper opens a path through downtown on the 3rd lap

T6_Mountain

No maps survive of this legendary drive

Notable highlights:

• Leap of faith - the quartermile starts on a mountain top - you have enough room to brake and catch the downslope

• On a wing and a prayer - only the reckless and lucky few ever have landed this stunt - floor it from the start and aim for the wing of a circling prop plane, skip off, then fly into the snowbank on another mountainside

• Downhill ice caverns - slippery surfaces with limited traction make dodging ice bergs difficult

Big shoutout to Kirk Young aka Pitfiend for the inspiration!