Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

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"Big Rigs" redirects here. For the truck, see Semi-trailer truck

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

Developer(s)	Stellar Stone LLC
Publisher(s)	Activision (2003) GameMill Publishing (2004)
Release date(s)	November 20, 2003
Genre(s)	Racing
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Everyone (E)
Platform(s)	PC
Media	CD
Input	Keyboard

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is a racing game released for PC by Stellar Stone LLC in 2003. The game received essentially universal negative reviews, with many critics referring to it as the worst video game of all time.

1 Gameplay
2 Original product
3 Reception
4 Cult status
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The box of Big Rigs states that the player may "[r]ace trucks across the country, with cops chasing [him or her]." GameSpot considered this description of the game to be nothing more than "terrible, horrible lies" ^[1] since there are no cops in the game. Additionally, they pointed out, the "computer-controlled" opponent vehicle has no AI and never moves from the starting position. The player drives the truck through the checkpoints and to the finish at his or her leisure in order to achieve victory.

There are no obstacles for the player to negotiate in Big Rigs, as the truck may freely be driven on and off roads without any loss of traction, straight up hills, through structures, and even out of the map's boundaries. When the truck drives out of the boundaries, it enters an endless, unfinished grey light, where it does all sorts of flips and rolls. The truck falls through bridges also. Another glitch is that when the player's truck is put into reverse, it has no terminal velocity; as the reverse key is held, the truck will accelerate infinitely. However, as soon as the reverse key is released, it will halt instantly.

Upon completion of the race, the player is presented with a large, on-screen trophy cup overlaid with the text "YOU'RE WINNER!" Due to a developer oversight, the game occasionally fails to distinguish between whether the player is starting or finishing the race when they pass through the starting checkpoint, and so this screen may appear to end the race before it even begins. In addition, one of the game's five maps causes the game to crash altogether when accessed. ^[2]

Stellar Stone released a patch that fixes some of the game's glitches. With the patch, the opponent does participate in the race, but stops before it reaches the finish line. The fifth map that caused the game to crash when selected was also fixed. However, the patch replaced the broken track with a mirror image of the first track, without changing the corresponding preview image or name.

Despite all these issues, Big Rigs managed to be a commercial success. According to GameSpot, Big Rigs sold well over 200,000 units.^{[citation needed]} GameSpot's award for Worst Game of 2004 states that Big Rigs outsold three of the five games in Gamespot's "Best Game No One Played" category;[1] the criteria for that award is that each game sold fewer than 20,000 units in North America.

[edit] Original product

It has been speculated that Big Rigs is an early, unfinished release of a Stellar Stone game known as Midnight Race Club: Supercharged, and that the game was originally intended to feature trucks, big rigs, motorcycles, and sports cars (all of which remain in the data files of the retail version of Big Rigs). ^[3] The reason for this possible early release of the game is unknown.

In January 2004, Stellar Stone released Midnight Race Club: Supercharged.^[4] The game featured improved graphics, working driving physics, collisions, and computer-controlled opponents with functional artificial intelligence. Motorcycles, trucks, and cars were successfully implemented; big rig trucks, however, were removed, most likely in order to decrease similarities between Midnight Race Club: Supercharged and Big Rigs. This did not prevent others from noticing that the game engine and track layouts were identical to those of Big Rigs and the game was a commercial failure. ^[3]

[edit] Reception

The infamous "YOU'RE WINNER !" trophy.

Big Rigs was subject to a great number of negative reviews. Thunderbolt Games stated, "I wish I could think of some redeeming factors for the game, but there simply aren't any" and gave the game a score of 1/10. ^[5] It was also featured on the X-Play "Games You Should Never Buy" segment. Morgan Webb, the host, described Big Rigs as "the worst game ever made." ^[6] Netjak rewrote the code of their site to allow the game to receive a score of 0.0.^[7]

Alex Navarro of GameSpot 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."^[2] In the special "frightfully bad games" video, Navarro stated, "This game received the lowest score in the history of Gamespot, a 1.0. And by lowest, I mean it can't go any lower. 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 dubious award of "Flat-out Worst Game" award in 2004, despite the fact that the game was actually released in 2003. They said that they would use the "YOU'RE WINNER!" trophy as a symbol for the 'Flat-Out Worst Game' award but by 2005, a more generic logo was used.^[1]

[edit] Cult status

For the same reasons that Big Rigs attracted such widespread criticism in the mainstream gaming community, the game has also developed a cult following among certain fans, similar to games such as Shaq Fu and movies like Plan 9 from Outer Space.

A number of enthusiastic fans have formed a group known as the BROTRRers, an online community with a name based on an acronym of the game's title. This group cites the nontraditional physics and game mechanics, especially the absolute freedom from gravity and inertia, as the great assets to the game. This group formerly conversed on the GameFAQs Big Rigs message board. However, as all posts on this board must concern the game, some of the BROTRRers have moved to other boards to avoid the deletion of their messages for being off-topic. The highlights of this community include a satirical philosophy/religion (Rigism), ten commandments (Rigmandments) and a Book of Rigism. Inspired by the game's victory screen, the BROTRRers frequently use the word "WINNER" as an adjective. In this context, "WINNER" is generally used to denote excellence or high quality. Another habit of the BROTRRers is to put Big Rigs-related things in all capital letters (e.g., "STELLAR STONE" instead of "Stellar Stone".)