Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

Moby ID: 23157
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Description official description

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing allows you to play as one of four rigs racing against a competing company to deliver your cargo before they do. You must race an opposing company's truck to beat it to the cargo destination to put the competition out of business. There are five separate courses to play on, each with its own scenery and environments. In the meantime, police cars will chase you down and attempt to block your truck from getting to your goal.

That is what the game was meant to be. In reality, the game has no gameplay. A lack of AI means that the opposing truck does not even move from its starting location, so there is really no "race" to begin with. Winning is virtually guaranteed. As well, the game lacks collision detecting which means you can go through any objects like houses, boulders, trees, and bridges that you are required to cross. Besides this, the trucks do not have any top speed, which means you are able to accelerate into infinite, even when going backwards. Traveling off of the edge of the map is possible in the game. Despite the fact that the back of the box and advertising said it would have police chases, absolutely no police cars are actually present within the game.

Later revisions of the game included a bug fix preventing the game from crashing when selecting the fifth course and implemented a rudimentary AI for the opposing truck, which now actually moves, although it stops just shy of the finish line, meaning it's still impossible for the player to lose.

Spellings

  • 大货车极限竞赛 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Screenshots

Credits (Windows version)

9 People

Produced by
Programming
Design
3D Artists
User Interface
Sound

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 6% (based on 9 ratings)

Players

Average score: 0.9 out of 5 (based on 52 ratings with 2 reviews)

YOU'RE A WINNER!

The Good
Ah, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. Known as the worst game of all time, this game has gotten many low marks on sites like Gamespot, X Play, and Netjak.

Well, are there any good things about this game? Well, its serious glitches make the game so hilarious. I will explain them when I get to the Bad.

Although my copy of the game has no soundtrack, there was one and I listened to it and it's one of the best game music soundtracks I've heard.

As this game's many fans say, this game is "so bad that it's good", in a way.



The Bad
Hmmm, there are only four trucks to choose from in this game! Not that it matters, they all have the same handling, top speed, and acceleration. Stellar Stone really should have added different top speeds and all that, but they didn't.

There's also only five tracks to choose from. Actually, there's only four because one of them, Nightride, does not work at all. Selecting it without this patch (I'll explain it later) causes the game to crash.

As for sound effects, there are N-O-N-E unless you get the aforementioned patch.

Also, without the patch, the opponent truck does not move a single inch. You get no AI without it.

Here's the funniest part. You go through EVERYTHING! And when I mean EVERYTHING I mean EVERYTHING! Buildings, your opponent rig, trees, road signs, road lights, and even bridges! When crossing a bridge the truck FALLS THROUGH it, and when I saw my truck fall through the bridge the first time I nearly ended up on the floor laughing.

And there are literally no physics in this game. The trucks, they can literally go up nearly vertical mountains! And at the top of the mountain, a little ways, is the gray area. Normally in a game, these "gray voids" have an invisible wall around them. In Big Rigs, however, you can go into it. Seriously. And when you do, the truck starts flipping out like it's having a seizure in some parts!

The graphics of this game are rather poor. You can't even set the graphics to high, it's medium or low. And the rigs' headlights are not even attached to them. So sad.

The trucks all have top speeds when going forwards: 81 mph. It's an ENTIRELY different story in reverse. The rigs can go backwards at an infinite speeds! And when they're going so fast backwards, when you press the left or right arrows, the truck starts spinning really fast, which would cause many people with motion sickness to start feeling a little queasy.

Because of the lack of AI without the patch, you win all the time. And when you do complete a race, you get a screen with a three handled trophy saying "YOU'RE WINNER!". By this time you'll be laughing your head off.

But the really bad thing about this game is the fact that the game was not what it was meant to be. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing was supposed to be a game that featured you delivering cargo to a destination and trying to avoid cops. There are no cops, no cargo, and not much of a game here in Big Rigs.

The Bottom Line
Okay, Stellar Stone released a patch that (didn't really) addressed some of the problems. It gave the opponent truck AI, but the truck just follows a programmed path to the finished line, and it stops just short of it, allowing you to still be WINNER all the time. Sound effects are also added, like a handbrake and engine. Lastly, Nightride is fixed, but it's a mirror image of the first track. This patch barely fixes the glitches in the game, such as going through buildings and going up nearly vertical slopes. Apparently Stellar Stone wanted to keep the trucks' magic powers of defying physics and going through buildings! Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is only good for a few laughs, unless you're a curious person who wants to find this game and watch trucks go 50,000 miles an hour...in reverse.

The developers, Stellar Stone, do not exist anymore as far as I know. But the producers, Gamemill Publishing still do. How they managed to survive after publishing this game is a mystery to me and anyone else that played this....rather unique game...

Windows · by J W (103) · 2010

The absolute worst game in existence! V.2

The Good
My last review that I wrote about this game was a sloppy, bland, boring review that I wrote in under 5 minutes. I understood the minor criticisms that many people showed this last review.

My only argument was that "every short game deserves a short review". It was also the second one that i added to this site (meaning that I had barely any experience on how to write reviews). But I also know that I haven't done a game review for MONTHS. So here it is, The new and improved Big Rigs review!

As i pointed out in my last review, there WEREN'T any good things about this game... today, i still hold the same opinion.

The Bad
Well, practically everything was bad about this "game". When you start it up, it kinda looks promising right until you see that you have only 4 choices of vehicles and only 4 choices of your race location (if you can call it a race). When I started the race, I was eager to be winning by such a long distance ahead of the opponent.

It was only 10 seconds later when I turned my truck around only to realise that the opponent, naturally, didn't move an inch. If there is a game i couldn't hate more; it is a game which has the main rule that you can't lose at it.

I wouldn't be all that surprised if the staff working at Stellar Stone (the company behind this crap) just downloaded a couple of 3d truck models and pasted them on some "borrowed" 3d landscape... its THAT bad. And most importantly,

i can tell how "hard working" the crew were when they didn't add any collision detection. This means that you can pass through any objects without even a crack on your windscreen. You can also explore the vast land of OFF the map by literally driving past the end of the landscape.

And whats the outcome of this AWE-INSPIRING level? Not another level, not an animation on your victory no, no, no.... you get a black screen with a golden racing trophy and the famous words "You're Winner!" at the bottom of the screen. At this point, I IMMEDIATELY exited the game, uninstalled and threw it back into the shop I bought it from!

The Bottom Line
My previous words on this game- "With no Artificial intelligence to create any kind of competition whatsoever you can't lose! Now what is the most challenging part of a racing game, well, to actually race somebody! Stay the hell away from this game if you know what's good for you!"

My opinion pretty much remains the same up to this point. I always tend to find the brighter side of everything, but with this game, I just couldn't.

This is my reason of WHY i chose "Big Rigs: Over the road Racing" as THE worst game of all time.It wasn't hard, but ´BY GOD, it wasn't easy.

Windows · by Arejarn (7353) · 2009

Trivia

Community

Despite how terrible the game actually is, Big Rigs has actually achieved a cult status among a number of its fans. In the style of Ed Wood's films or Plan 9 from Outer Space, Big Rigs has achieved the "it's so bad it's good" status of many cult phenomenon. A number of fans even formed the BROTRRers, taking the same acronym as the game's title. The highlights of this community include a satirical philosophy (Rigism), ten commandments (Rigmandments) and a Book of Rigism.

Critical reception

The game Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing received almost universally negative reviews, with many critics referring to it as the worst video game of all time. These are the websites reactions to this game:

  • Gamespot: 1/10. Gamespot reviewer Alex Navarro declared that Big Rigs is "so astoundingly bad that it manages to transcend nearly every boundary put forth by some of gaming's absolute worst of the worst and easily makes it into that dubiously extraordinary category of being one of the most atrocious games ever published." Big Rigs received Gamespot's lowest score of 1.0, meaning that their review system doesn't go any lower. In his frightfully bad games special, Alex notes "We don't hand out zeros, but maybe we should have for Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing." Big Rigs was also given GameSpot's "Flat-out Worst Game" award in 2004, despite the fact that the game was actually released in 2003.

  • Cheat Code Central: 0.5/5. CCC wrote "Imagine a racing game without a race. There is no time limit to beat and there is no one to race against. So what's the point?"

  • Thunderbolt Games: 1/10. Thunderbolt Games states "I wish I could think of some redeeming factors for the game, but there simply aren't any"

  • Netjak: 0/10. Netjak had to rewrite their review system in order to give this game a 0.0

  • X-Play: -/5. Morgan Webb declared this as the worst game of all time, and was unable to score the game because their system doesn't allow them to give out zeros.

  • GameRankings: 4% out of 100%. Big Rigs is GameRankings lowest rated game on their site.

  • Metacritic: 8/100. Big Rigs is also this sites lowest rated game.

Development

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing was originally going to be a game called Midnight Race Club: Supercharged!, which would feature big rigs, trucks, motorcycles, and sport cars to race in along with a "Competition Mode", but while the game was in development, Game Mill Publishing decided that the game would be split into two, Big Rigs and Midnight Race Club, released in pre-alpha state.

Information also contributed by J W.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Matt Neuteboom.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Sciere, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Victor Vance, OmegaPC777, 64er.

Game added July 20, 2006. Last modified January 2, 2024.