Fatal Inertia

Fatal Inertia is a futuristic hovercar racing game set in a 22nd century version of Earth where wealthy corporations provide ships, hire racers, and let them race and fight each other for entertainment because people got bored with the regular sports. The game provides six racing environments with 51 courses in total. The ships are based around four classes (Phoenix, Aurora, Mercury, and Titan), each with their own statistics based on top speed, acceleration, handling, braking, mass and strength. Each ship can be further customized through visual upgrades with emblems and paints, or technical upgrades through engines, brakes, hulls, wings, fronts, tails, side panels, cockpits and spoilers. Some of these are unlocked through achievements and trophies.

The weapons are non-lethal and make use of magnetic behaviour to hinder opponents. Racers can for instance launch magnets to weigh down ships. These last over time and eventually overload the system causing it to explode, but barrel rolls can be performed to shake them off. Magnets can also be launched as a cluster. There are rockets that ignite the opponent's thrusters to throw the ship off balance, force blasts provide explosions that disrupt the course, smoke bombs create smoke screens, towlines can stick enemies together or anchor them to the terrain, EMP disrupts magnets and shuts down other crafts, and the time dilator slow downs opponents. Most weapons have a secondary fire mode that launch the attacks backwards or provide an alternate use. Rockets and force blasts can then be used to launch the own craft for instance, and the alternate towline function is selected that way. Defence is provided through a force field with temporary protection from incoming attacks and environmental hazards. Weapons are picked up as power-ups during the races. Ships take damage and can be destroyed.

Races are organized around three leagues with sixteen racing series and different types of events such as Combat Race, Knock Out (elimination), Velocity (there are only power-ups that make the crafts go faster) and Magnet Mayhem (only power-ups that distort ships). The courses include Devil's Summit, Lost Canyon, Paradise Isle, Glacier Bay, Deepwoods Pass and Dragon Peaks. They consists of large natural environment with lush growth, many obstacles through natural formations and height differences. The course path is linear but often fairly wide and the crafts need to go through barriers that act as checkpoints. When they are missed, a reset is needed and valuable time is lost. The time of day for each race can also be determined. Some of these are unique and tied to a course, such as a blizzard for Glacier Bay. Courses include boost pads for extra speed. Multiplayer is supported for up to eight players.

The later released PlayStation 3 version is download-only and has a number of tweaks and additions, such as a training venue with eight new tracks (Fatal Inertia Proving Grounds Facility), a tweaked difficulty level with a new Master difficulty for veterans, and various adjustments to the gameplay, weapons and physics.