Death Drome

Overview

Released October 15 1996 exclusively for PC. Death Drome is a third-person, vehicular combat game where players assume the position of a convict whose ultimate goal is to kill his fellow inmates and escape or risk capital punishment, they take control of a futuristic motorbike and compete in an arena to destroy other convicts with any available weapons and power ups. The various bikes to choose from have varying stats (speed, handling, armor and weapons), but each carry the same primary weapon, a laser cannon, which is auto-targeting and does increasing damage over time. Spread over the arena are several secondary weapons, including missiles, mines, flamethrowers and shock wave generators, as well as power ups that restore your health, give you nitro boost (which can be used to ram your enemies) make you temporarily invulnerable or invisible. The bikes can only carry 3 weapons at a time (including the primary weapon).

Story

Death Drome takes place in the year 2057 where crime has reached an all time high and criminals are to be found everywhere. In order to tackle the problem the government establishes an organisation to execute criminals and to provide entertainment in vehicular based, gladiatorial battles.

(Taken from the in-game training manual)

Attention criminals...

You have been selected by C.O.R.T., The Committee of Recreational Termination, to participate in DeathDrome.

You will be assigned one of eight state-of-the-art, one-man, multi-purpose combat vehicles or "Runners". You will run a circuit of eight prison arenas or "Domains", around the world, completing three rounds in each prison.

You are required to achieve a minimum number of kills in order to complete each round and escape the domain. For any criminal skilled enough to complete the circuit, freedom awaits. For all others...grim, fiery death.

The odds are not in your favour...

Box art

The game's cover art was designed by Stefan Sagmeister, who considers it one of his worst works:

I made the mistake of accepting a job I had no interest in. The standard American packaging system for a video game at the time was a jewel-case inserted into a gigantic cereal box to cheerfully dupe little boys into thinking they might be buying something bigger and better than a CD in an empty box. [...] My first presentation to the client was somewhat below mediocre and it went downhill from there – with enough people, money and meetings involved we managed to quickly pass awful and moronic to end up with the remarkably pure piece of shit you see attached.

Sagmeister in "Design Disasters - Great Designers, Fabulous Failure, and Lessons Learned" by Steven Heller, 2008

System Requirements