POD (Windows)

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Description

Your planet is doomed, and there is only one remaining seat on the spaceship leading citizens to safety. This will go to the winner of a sequences of races held within this futuristic world.

Viewed from above and behind the car, the game boasted a lot of technologically advanced features. Computer AI adjusted to your style of driving whilst in progress. It was the first game to use MMX technology, and the first to support 3D acceleration straight from the box. It also had a range of multiplayer options including networks and split-screen, and an online internet server to automatically match player.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Alternate Titles

• "生死赛车" -- Chinese spelling (simplified)
• "POD: Planet of Death" -- European title

Part of the Following Group

• POD series

User Reviews

Excellent arcade racing game	Iggi (20994)
Major milestone in the introduction of hardware-accelerated gaming	Zzap (62)
This game just plain sucks.	Tomer Gabel (4643)
A big disappointment.	Trixter (9110)

Critic Reviews

Coming Soon Magazine	May, 1997	92 out of 100	92
PC Action (Germany)	Mar, 1997	87 out of 100	87
PC Joker	Mar, 1997	85 out of 100	85
Power Play	Mar, 1997	82 out of 100	82
Game-Over!	Jun 07, 1997	8 out of 10	80
Game.EXE	Mar, 1997	75 out of 100	75
Gameplay (Benelux)	Apr 30, 1997	72 out of 100	72
CD-Action	Jul, 1997	7 out of 10	70
World Village (Gamer's Zone)	1997		60
Edge	Apr, 1997	5 out of 10	50

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Trivia

Graphic cards

POD was one of the first games optimized for graphic cards with a 3dfx chipset using the Glide API. With support only for the 3dfx Voodoo 1 chipset at first. Ubisoft later released patches to support the Voodoo 2 using the Glide API and non-3dfx chipsets via Direct3D.

MMX

The box prominently states that POD was the first game ever to support the new MMX instructions on Pentium II and late-model Pentium processors. In reality, the only thing POD uses them for is stereo and Dolby sound effects--very odd, given that there was a world of optimization possible in the 3D rendering area.

Information also contributed by Sciere

Related Web Sites

• POD (official website)
• POD Official UBI Site (Official POD website, available on five languages. All the extra tracks to download, new cars, statistics and a lot of information.)
• POD PhReAk (Car and track downloads, Windows XP compatibility patches)
• Podtek (Instructions about instalation, common problems, how to get new cars and/or new tracks etc.)