Rollcage Stage II

Rollcage Stage II
Cover art of Rollcage Stage II
Developer(s)	Attention To Detail
Publisher(s)	NA Midway Games EU Psygnosis Take-Two Interactive (PC)
Series	Rollcage
Platform(s)	PlayStation Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	PAL March 8, 2000 NA October 10, 2000
Genre(s)	Racing
Mode(s)	Single-player or multiplayer

Rollcage Stage II is an arcade-style racing game for Microsoft Windows & PlayStation developed by Attention To Detail, and published by Psygnosis. It is the sequel to Rollcage and was released in 2000. On top of the basic racing concept, the cars can be equipped with weapons, that are picked up on the track as bonuses, which can be used against competing cars. The automobiles themselves, once again, have wheels that are larger than the body of the car thus creating a car that has no 'right way up' and can be flipped yet continue to drive.

For the North American Windows PC release, game publisher Take-Two Interactive repackaged the original European/Australasian version as "Death Track Racing".

Differences from 'Rollcage'

• Improved Graphics:
  • Rollcage Stage II was among the very first titles to feature hardware-accelerated bump mapping upon its release in March 2000, in the form of EMBM (Environment Mapped Bump Mapping). RSII was designed to be best experienced at the time on Matrox Millenium G400 graphics cards, released in mid-1999, which had exclusive support for EMBM until the ATI Radeon arrived in late-2000. Matrox's bump mapping technology was much hyped by industry press outlets at the time, with Matrox demoing Rollcage Stage II as a cutting-edge showcase for their cards, as well as dedicating a page on their website to the game.^[1][2]
• Larger Selection of Cars
• Wider Range of Tracks
• More Race Types (Such As Knockout Races)
• Upgrading Weapons which give increased capability and are obtained when two of the same weapon are picked up, such as Double Driller Missile, Double Nitro or Stronger Stasis Beam
• Added Bonuses

Tracks

There Are 6 Different Environments, with 3 or 4 tracks in each. There are the returning Harpoon (an exotic island) and Outworld (tracks that take place on a different planet) tracks, as well as 4 new ones: Skyway, which are all tracks built high in the sky, Ventura, which is in a rocky desert, and the even more futuristic Leviathan and Jumpgate tracks (Leviathan tracks are situated on an alien planet or asteroid and Jumpgate is a complex of buildings built in space). These are all spread into 5 different leagues which must be completed to unlock new cars and other things. Jumpgate isn't available until Type II Campaign is completed.

Cars

The Cars Are Also Different From Rollcage. Instead of having to drive the cars of some Drivers, you get to pick out of a good 20 cars from 5 different manufacturers which included SubSonic, Vostok, Richter, Unity, and Patriot. These cars each have a Type I, Type I and Type III version, which all gave a different paint job. Each car, except the first ones obtained when a campaign is completed, is unlocked by winning a race respective to that car. So some things are unlocked by just beating the campaigns, but getting a car for every race won is a nice bonus. The Cars in Type III are only unlocked when you find a smiley face token in the same track that you won them on.

Weapons

All Weapons from Rollcage return except for Ice Sheet. The original's Wormhole weapon was also changed. The missile weapon is also slightly different. The new weapons include Chain Gun, Laser Blades, Tazer Ram and Stasis Beam. The biggest addition though, is weapons becoming better and essentially 'Upgraded' when two of the same type of weapon is picked up, for example the Driller Rocket becoming Powered Up Driller Rocket.

Extra Stuff

There is a mode called "Scramble", where your car is placed on a floating track and the objective is to get to the finish line as fast as possible. This is made very difficult due to the many obstacles such as thin bumpy roads, big jumps, snow on the track, and more. It is also possible to create shortcuts which are usually very dangerous and hard to perform and it is often hard to even discover how to find the shortcut on some tracks where the shortcut is well hidden.

There is also a "Demolition" where the objective is to destroy as much stuff on the track as possible, either against the clock or in a two-player setting. Additional two-player modes such as "Rubble Soccer," "Combat Mode," "Time Attack," and "Pursuit" a "Training" is included for new players along with "Survivor" and a race in which every track is raced one after the other with the aim of setting a total record.

Soundtrack

Sequels

While ATD and Psygnosis did not continue on the Rollcage series, ATD later developed the game FireBugs featuring roughly the same racing concept.

Multiplayer

The game handles multiplayer games over LAN or direct IP connection.

To act as a meeting point, a multiplayer community has been created.

References

External links

• Rollcage Stage II site
• Rollcage Stage II at GameFAQs