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 universal negative reviews, with many critics referring to it as the worst video game of all time.

1 Gameplay
2 Reception
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The box of Big Rigs states that the player may "race 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 is no police presence in the game. Additionally, they pointed out, the computer-controlled opponent vehicles have no AI and never move from the starting position, making even the description of the gameplay as a "race" questionable.

There technically 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 90° inclines, through structures (there is no collision detection whatsoever), and even out of the boundaries of the map. When the truck drives out of the boundaries, it enters an endless, grey void. Furthermore, as the truck approaches a bridge, the truck simply falls right through. When the player's truck is put into reverse, it has no peak velocity; as the reverse key is held, the truck will accelerate infinitely. However, the truck will halt instantly when the the reverse key is released.

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 outsold three of the five games in GameSpot's "Best Game No One Played" category, the criteria of that category being that each game sold fewer than 20,000 units in North America.^[3]

[edit] Reception

The infamous "YOU'RE WINNER !" screen.

Big Rigs received universally negative reviews with the critics considering it to be one of the worst video games, if not the worst, ever. 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. ^[4] It was also featured on the X-Play "Games You Should Never Buy" segment. Morgan Webb, one of the hosts, described Big Rigs as "the worst game ever made." ^[5] Netjak gave its first ever 0.0 to the title.^[6]

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."

In GameSpot's "Best and Worst of 2004" awards, Big Rigs was given the "Flat-out Worst Game" award, 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]

Also, the Big Rig gamespace on Gamespot has an art banner, something usually reserved for popular/well-received games. As such, it is the only "bad" game with an art banner.^{[original research?]}