Destruction Derby

1995 · Racing · PlayStation

About Destruction Derby

Destruction Derby (1995) is Reflections Interactive's demolition-derby racer for Psygnosis, an early PlayStation showpiece that put 20 cars on screen and modelled their damage in real time.

Destruction Derby in Depth

Based on the sport of demolition derby, the game has the player racing and wrecking cars for points. Collisions change how a car handles, limiting its steering and top speed, and head-on hits risk damaging the radiator, which makes the car overheat and stop. In Destruction Derby mode the player scores by wrecking rivals in a trackless arena called The Bowl. Stock Car Racing is about finishing first with no points for destruction, Wreckin' Racing rewards both, and Time Trial is a solo time attack. The PlayStation version supports two players over a system link, and the MS-DOS version has online multiplayer.

Damage is calculated in real time from the speed and angle of each impact, and the engine could show up to twenty cars on screen at once, which only Daytona USA had managed among console racers at the time. To keep the pack dense enough for big pile-ups, the team made the tracks small.

Making Destruction Derby

The British studio Reflections began the game for the PlayStation in late 1994. Because its publisher Psygnosis belonged to Sony, Reflections received development kits long before the console's release. Producer Tony Parks said the physics were simplified for performance and to suit the PlayStation's digital controller, balancing "realism and playability", and distant objects were drawn with less detail. It debuted at E3 in May 1995, where Edge and Next Generation suggested it could "trounce" Ridge Racer, and was released on 20 October 1995 for PlayStation and then MS-DOS.

GamePro called it "the most raucous racing experience of the fall" while regretting its limited options, and PC Gamer praised it as "thinking man's destruction". The Saturn port was criticised for its inferior graphics. Destruction Derby 2 followed in 1996, and in 2023 IGN named the original one of the PlayStation's "forgotten launch gems".

Destruction Derby Trivia

It was reported under the working titles Demolition Derby and Demolish 'em Derby.
Director Martin Edmondson said that without simulated physics the game would be "completely unplayable", like "pool when the collisions are all off".
Every car uses the same wire-frame model, told apart only by its textures.
The Saturn version, ported by Perfect Entertainment without transparency effects, was released only in Europe and Japan in August 1996.
It sold more than a million copies by August 1996.