Deathtrack

Development

Designer notes from the manual:

The Creators of DeathTrack: Tom Collie, Mark Brenneman, Darek Lukaszuk, Bryce Morsello

It was a cool autumn day when we all sat down to find a fun game concept that would excite players into that emotional catharsis that results only from that unique combination of speed and maneuverability delivered by a car-racing game. And, more importantly, a game concept that would let us pose in front of a Ferrari looking nonchalant. With that solid premise we set to work on DeathTrack—after, of course, convincing everyone that we were qualified to create a game about motorsports.

Mark: “I know cars, man. I spent seven years off the coast of Alaska, so I know cars.”

Bryce: “The Ferrari Testarossa is the serious mad-racer’s choice. You can very well race without power windows, can you?”

Tom: “I really know vintage cars. I’ve got a 1978 Ford Fiesta that works as well now as when it was new.”

Darek: “I own a Mercedes, man. What more do you want?”

After dazzling them with our innate sense of automible racing, we went for it. Darek wrote the code, Tom did the art and Bryce sound effects, and Mark built all the 3-space objects. Jeff got us pizza late nights and ran errands (he was also company president in his spare time).

Drive safely and remember: “Porsche” is a two-syllable word.

Pit crew:

Piotr “11mm” Lukaszuk for fast graphics Dave “Wiz” McClurg for 3-space etc. Paul Bowman for playing foosball with us Jeff “Really, I am the president" Tunnel Steve “Is yesterday too soon?” Ackrich

Dedicated to the memory of Enzo Ferrari.

Moral Support: W.L., T.L., T.R., A.T., C.T., T.H., S.S.

Thanks to Steve Wendell for the red Ferrari (we’ll probably return it soon).

Special thanks to Terry Ishida.

References

• Game designer Peter (Piotr) Lukaszuk makes a cameo as the cape-wearing gangster.
• The Lukaszuk brothers, Darek and Piotr, who wrote the game and designed the graphics, come from Poland and placed a reference to that fact: one of the drivers in the game is named "Wrecker Niszczyciel" (translated, this means, literally - Wrecker the Destroyer), he's from Warsaw, Poland, and his motto is given in Polish (the Lukaszuk bros even retained the national characters in it). Translated to English, Wrecker's motto means: "Sausages are best when fried with laser guns".

Remake

The game was loosely remade as Death Track: Resurrection in 2008.

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #124 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list

Information also contributed by Jaromir Krol and Sciere