<![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Some of you guys might be interested to check out the online game Darkwind: War on Wheels which is a turn-based persistent-world multiplayer cars-with-guns game.

[www.dark-wind.com]

sam2

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> The Car Wars community on the Web is still surviving. Play-by-Internet sessions are very active now, especially with use of the VASSAL online board game program.

French Autoduel Association (FADA)
[car.wars.free.fr]
[tdehais.9online.fr]

Mid-South Autoduelists and Handgunners Attack Team (MADHAT)
[cwhnj.com]
[cwhnj.com]
[cwhnj.com]

Newfoundland Autoduelist Association (NADA)
[games.groups.yahoo.com]
[carwarsfan.ning.com]
[www.vassalengine.org]

I am still maintaining a Web site with a few links to Car Wars resources and publishing a Car Wars e-mail journal. I am also operating a new tournament for the game for the first time since 2003.

Drive Offensively!

Michael P. Owen
Seattle Washington Autoduel Team (SWAT)
[www.serv.net]

owenmp

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> You know, all of us gaming geeks should get together for four days a year at a convention center in some central city like Indianopolis, maybe in the summertime, and play these games together without sleeping or bathing the whole time.

Who's up for it?

Jim_in_Buffalo

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I loved this game...only drawback was that I'd spend about an hour putting a car together, slaving over all the details and calculations, only to get it totally destroyed in about 15 minutes.

JaysonAych

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Whoa, I think I stepped in some nostalgia!

*Goes in closet to delicately caress Car wars box set.*

Skeller

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Ah, good ol' pen and paper rpg. My favorite was when the rules asked you to roll a "d3". Oh man, those were the days...

CmdrHunt

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I, too, am that old and that geeky. I actually think of Car Wars as one of the 'later' microgames, after Metagaming went under.

I still use 'D2 hazard' (as in, pedestrians are a D2 hazard) in conversation. Of course only other old freaks know what I'm talking about, but I'm used to that.
-Kle.

Klebert L. Hall

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Another game that hasn't been mentioned yet -
Gorkamorka.

Along with a decent indie computer game - Mexican Motor Mafia

angusprune

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I'll be a monkey's uncle if this isn't a blast from the past.

From the time I was 8 to 15 this game was a constant. I used to design car after car. I read Uncle Albert's and would dream. I guess that all stopped when I could actually drive.

sharky

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]>

JoSCh

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Car Wars is the sole reason why I have a roof-mounted recoilless rifle on my Plymouth.

Greg A.

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> wow someone brought up I76! That game was so sick I wish I still had it!

I never played this game, but it sorta reminds me of a football game I played with my dad called Paydirt. Anybody?

toopersent

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> omg....I remember this one...in fact somewhere I still have my plastic-cased game set...along with the original Star Fleet Battles, and even the predecessor to SFB where you had to use string and a 360 degree protractor to figure out if you could shoot at someone or not.

and the miniatures...good God did I just say that in public?

njudah

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> i think i have almost everything Car Wars related. i still love how long it could take you to reach someone on a big map :)

cybergrunt

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Where's my hat tip? J/K but I did tell tips@Jalopnik.com about this a year ago. I used to play it all the time (ok, when I wasn't playing D&D, AD&D, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Top Secret, Axis and Allies, etc) when I was a kid.

I still have my entire collection including the original little plastic box set, the Deluxe set, Dueltrack expansion, Uncle alberts catalogues, etc. Anyone interested in buying it all? Or playing a tournament? I've never tried to play it whilst drinking...

Autoduel is sweet, I still play it.

Turboner

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Oh, the long summertime afternoons that I spent inside playing CARMAGEDDON on my PC.

When I could have been out getting some sun, I was inside killing as many pedestrians as I could...

Technically NOT Car Wars... but close enough :D

El_Bandito

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Ooooh, oooooh, I've gotta do some surfin' for an old copy of I-76. Carmageddon, I managed to get pretty good at, but I'm more a fan of older PC games. Don't know why, they just seem more fun....

Gettin' old sucks. Where's Space Duel?! Damnit, Sonny, when I was a kid, we had vector graphic video games and we LIKED it because it was better than text-based Apple II games!

Kelly

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Loved this game played through high school and played Autoduel on the old Apple II+.

I would love to see a modern PC or console game based on this property or maybe even one of those click-based mini games?

macmathan

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> YES! That and Paranoia was my youth...

Jimmy Dare

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> @Epaminondas:

you may be interested to note,
space hulk board game recreated as a free computer game

rektide

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I found this game at a yardsale before my pencil and paper career took off, I must have been 9 or 10.

I started by using 2x1 cm paper cut out cars on drafting pad "maps", spending way more time building courses and designing cars than actually playing. At some point nearly I abandoned playing and focused on building a new economy / car construction rule set, which was followed by new combat damage rules. I remember rediscovering the drafting pad of maps when I was in high school and being astounded by the detailed 40 odd page volume of content I'd made for the game.

I had no idea this classic was a Steve Jackson classic. Rock on guys.

In high school, when I had gamer friends, we played the far superior rendition:
BATTLE CATTLE

rektide

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Oh man did I play the living stew out of Car Wars. I even played Boat Wars and bemoaned the existence of Tank Wars. My friends and I played Car Wars for close to 12 or 13 years. Actually I still have it all in one of my comic collection boxes including the good ol' Uncle Alberts and ADQ. Oddly enough, we were also virgins until late in life. Huh.
I wonder if there's a connection.
Nope.
Not at all.

Paulyshoreis.dead

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> The last of my Car Wars stuff finally went to the winds of fate (by which I mean the trash) during my last move a couple years ago. And now damn you I have an urge to pay it.

Though finding several hours to kill and someone to play it with is more of a limited factor than it was in high school.

catcubed

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Oh Ghods, I'm the biggest nerd here! I (still) have: Car Wars, Sunday Drivers, Truck Stop, Expansion sets 1, 2, 4, 5 & 7, AutoDuel Champions, AADA Vehicle Guide, Convoy, Car Wars Deluxe Edition, DuelTrack, Car Wars Tanks, several Uncle Albert's Catalogs (2035, 2036, "Uncle Albert's Catalog From Hell"), and several years worth of AutoDuel Quarterly.

Freddie Freelance

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> "(The game's maker, Steve Jackson Games, claims that a Swedish bus company's recent development of a bus with mini-electric engines in each wheel, fed by a central generator, may have been inspired by one of the enhancements you could add to your car, back in the early 1980s.)"

Actually, that's not quite true - you sorta misinterpreted the comment on their site.

The SJG site mentions that "This should sound familiar to Car Wars fans..." because the "big fuel cell with motors in each wheel" design was the whole basis for the car structure in the original game (a modular fuel cell was easier to compute damage for than a relatively fragile internal combustion engine). It wasn't an "enhancement," it was the basic model, and the Swedish design wasn't "inspired" by Car Wars, it's just an obvious way to build a vehicle once you have good enough small electric motors.

I'm 100% certain that's how Car Wars was designed. Guess why?

cirby

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Still have my set, the rarely available die-cast cars, the Dueltrack supplement for gas engines and helicopters as well as a pile of Autoduel Quarterly and Uncle Al's supplements.

I was so involved with Car Wars that I wrote a Hypercard stack that made point allocation easier

Chris Barrus

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Was the Apple ][E version of this AUTODUEL?!?!

Now that was one of the greatest games ever! And no dice rolling, needed.

DCI Gene Hunt

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Another funny thing about Car Wars was that while an arena battle could take a couple hours to play out (or days in the Sunday Drivers scenario), the "time in game" was rarely more than 10 to 15 seconds.

medeasin

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> LOVED this game. But yeah, the ten phases per second really dragged it out. That box artwork was so cool though.

medeasin

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Oh, how my friends and I loved Car Wars. I think I loved it a little too much. I subscribed to Autoduel Quarterly, and owned darn near every supplement that came out for it. I kept the little card-stock counters in a drawer tray meant for pencils. And now here's some guy on a website talking about the game in a kind of "Look what our parents were wasting their time doing back in the '80s" way, and I guess I'm a little ashamed. We should have been cultivating our mullets and "going for it," but instead we pushed little cars around a tabletop and rolled dice.

Jim_in_Buffalo

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Autoduel baby!

[en.wikipedia.org]

bitgod

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> PAgent: I remember a similar story with a Traveller (did anyone else play that RPG? I loved it!)supplement that allowed you to build your own space armada. Of course, everyone spent all their resources making overpowered versions of the Death Star--and the guy who won? He built several million single laser starfighters that effectively swarmed everyone else's ships and ended the game in a matter of 2 or 3 turns.

Steve Jackson Games--loved the OGRE series and Illuminati, especially the play by mail version--- letters would come to saying "The Teamsters, controlled by the UFO Cults, are trying to assume control of the Phone Phreaks"

KingEdRa

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I played this once at my cousin's house when I was about 8. It was a really old game then.

I remember both of us getting really bored after about 20 minutes trying to figure out the directions, and we ended up playing the game by taping firecrackers to Stomper trucks and running them head-on into each other.

I guess we played it more realistically, because there's very little chance of bodily harm by using a 12-sided die.

Let me take that back.
Most of the people I knew in high school who got beat up all the time were very familiar with 12-sided dice.

Yurikaze

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> One weekend back in the day, my buddies and I decided to play Car Wars for the first time. After spending a solid two hours picking out cars, choosing accessories, and pimping them out, we decided to battle on a simple oval track. Two of us started planning our stratagies, and angling for position, but the other guy just stomped his accelerator. By the time he hit the first turn, he was going to fast to negotiate it, but as he slid across the track he triggered his mine-layer, putting down a string of mines across the width of the track before crashing and burning.

We were both going too fast to stop, and couldn't avoid the mines, so we died as well. After TWO HOURS of getting ready, the game was over in about three minutes.

We have never let him forget that shit.

PAgent

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> OMG OMG OMG OMG! I love this game! It's worth the trip to the Origins game con just to play the Rogue Judges' Hot Wheels size version with a full 3D model city block to play on. It's amazing. I have photos somewhere I'll have to post. Nothing quite so awesome as launching your car off the top of an overpass while launching missiles at the car you're about to t-bone. Or laying flaming oil all over a major intersection, forcing all 12 players to spin madly out of control to avoid it.

Ed Grabianowski

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I played this game in the original version, and tried some of the computer games it spawned (someone mention I-76, also Carmageddon - also some post-apocalyptic online beta that I can't remember)... I've never figured out why SJ Games never made a Car Wars computer game.

severnclay

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I may still have the City Blocks too. Hell, now I gotta dig through boxes.

Tiger_Tanaka

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Wow. I found my set last weekend while going through some old boxes in the basement. Loved that game. It was quite fun to go back and read the road atlases they released for the various US regions.

JoeWoodsprite

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> @Seth L: LOL, I just had another nerdgasm when you mentioned Space Hulk!

@AmishJohn: Okay, I don't think I ever played it. I had a buddy who collected games and I think I read the manual for it, as I recall the ships were pretty bad-ass looking it.

...and yes, I-76 was in fact, the shit!!

Pwnieboy

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I still have the original!

Said the nerd.

Tiger_Tanaka

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> @AmishJohn:

Not really short lived, B5Wars lasted six years and there were dozens of minis and suppliments.

Then Mongoose picked up the line for a new game, and kept producing most of the minis for another six years.

Of course, it's nothing compared to the 30+ year run of Star Fleet Battles.

Seth L

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> @Epaminondas:

Renegade Legion was starship combat and land combat.

Also, it's never too late to ressurect old wargames, there's thousands of people clammoring for another Space Hulk.

Not sure why the 2002 reissue went nowhere?

Seth L

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> @Epaminondas: Renegade Legion was spaceship combat with physics... it came with paper box spacecraft (think rasin boxes), and combat was much like that seen Babylon 5... cut engines, roll ship, and shoot under or behind you. I've got a box of minatures from the short-lived B5 Wars game too... one of these decades, I'll have to paint them up.

AmishJohn

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Wow did I play the crap out of this!!! Made it easy to have a 2nd game with you while lugging those damn D&D books everywhere.

@AmishJohn: Ogre rocked too and I think I remember Renegade Legion, that was Spaceship combat wasn't it? Battletech, well, that deserves it's own post!

Wow Charlie, not sure where your getting this stuff but keep digging! Sometimes it's not so bad to feel old.

Pwnieboy

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Playing this game is how I spent most of my weekends during High School. I can't believe I admitted that. It may be hard to believe that I still have the game and all the expansions. It is tucked away at my parents.

Between Car Wars and Talisman what more could you want?

Bootlegger Reverse!!!!!

PS. I have all the expansions still for Talisman too!!!

PerfectVirus

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> @gfburke: YES! I still have I-76 around somewhere...

Frozen-Tex

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I had that exact black plastic cased version you show there; my friends and I never figured it out. But it did inspire some "remodelling" and repurposing of some model cars and G.I. Joe guns.

Frozen-Tex

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I remember when the gas-powered cars and metal armor came out in a supplement and they were fiendishly overpowered.

The best videogame adaptation of this basic idea was the Pentium era Interstate 76 which combined Car Wars with 1970s funksploitation. It ruled even harder if such a thing is possible.

gfburke

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> I've got the black-cased version around somewhere, along with several supplement books, Ogre, Battletech, Renegade Legion... holy crap I'm old.
IIRC, most of the vehicles were electric - the IC versions were a later addition.

AmishJohn

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> Oh man, I played this game a LOT back in the day. We played it like an RPG with a strong combat system. I remember making special counters for the shuttlecraft from V, how's that for 80s-liciousness.

gfburke

]]> <![CDATA[The Meanest Car Wins, In Post-WWIII Wasteland]]> oh how i loved that game

BMWCARL

]]>