History VideoGame / FatalRacing

%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.

[[quoteright:280:[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/whiplash_3823.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:280:That's gonna hurt in the morning...]]

-> ''"It's Fatal Racing!!!"''

* HarderThanHard: Impossible and DR DEATH (the latter of which also locks the damage scale to where any track that has unavoidable damage cannot be won without using the pits) DR DEATH also cranks up the AI's aggressiveness UpToEleven.

''Fatal Racing'' (known as ''Whiplash'' in the US) is a PC racing game by Gremlin Interactive that can best be described as ''[=Race Drivin'=]'' meets ''Destruction Derby''. Eight teams of two race on courses until either all human players have crossed the finish line (or are destroyed 3 times) or only one car is left running on the track.

** Not just limited to the Bonus Cup, apparently. Just triggered this upon total destruction on 1-2 Snake Pass doing the Zizin Challenge (see SelfImposedChallenge below).

** Pulse Engineering: [[FakeBrit British]] Accent

* TechnologyMarchesOn: The multiplayer part runs on single-segment Novell IPX networks that were commonly used back in the nineties. But today's networks are almost entirely TCP/IP and have multiple network segments. Also, it's an MS-DOS game, and while the original could run fine on a Pentium MMX, nowadays you need at least a Pentium Dual Core to run it properly under an emulator.

* DummiedOut:
** The Death Drop track has a curious example of this. It's called ''"Death Drop"''. The manual warns you: "Mind that gap!". There is a large flat section [[ObviousTrap full of warning signs]]. You drive over it and... nothing happens. The mystery is revealed when you unlock the Bonus Cup and discover a sliding trapdoor in the road on one of the tracks, a feature not seen on any of the regular tracks and for good reason: it is severely bugged.
** The Fly By track is advertised as having two corkscrew jumps, but it only has one. There is a narrow stretch of track with no guardrails and a very wide end zone that looks suspiciously like the developers tested a corkscrew jump there, failed to make it work correctly and decided to simply flatten away the whole thing and call it a day.

* BadassDriver: Winning a championship counts.
* CarFu: Natch.
** '"FATALITY! <Name of victim>"
** '"Hey, you got one!" ~The announcer'
* CaptainObvious: The announcer at the splash screen before each race with DR DEATH enabled.
** '"It's Whiplash!!!"'
** '"It's FATAL RACING!!!"'

** A requirement to be on the course.

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The jewel box art above is a spot-on summary of the game.

--> ''"It's Fatal Racing!!!"''

* ArtificialStupidity: Each team has two cars, and if one falls far behind the other, it will start driving backwards, which might seem like this trope, but it's actually an intentional attempt to mess with the other drivers And when your teammate does it, he'll let you know in a sarcastic way:

* ArtificialStupidity: Hey, this guy is going the wrong way?!
** Oh, he knows. He wants to get intimate with your car's grill.
** He does it on purpose. Each team has two cars in the race, and once the second driver is too far behind (mostly on longer/harder races) he tends to do this in order to mess up other teams and advance their lead driver. You can [[OhCrap see him coming]] on the minimap, but if you're [[DeerInTheHeadlights not in an agile car]] or you're already damaged and a sitting duck...
** The artificial stupidity comes into play when the driver approaches a jump or corkscrew from the wrong side. They weren't programmed to ''stop''.
** Fatality: Million Plus car 8. Killer: Million Plus car 7. It's [[ButtMonkey always the Million Plus team]] that has these things happen to them, mostly due to their negligible durability.
** And when your teammate does it, he'll let you know in a sarcastic way:
---> '''I, uh, seem to be going in the wrong direction.'''

* DrivesLikeCrazy: A requirement to be on the course.

* DummiedOut: The Death Drop track has a curious example of this. It's called ''"Death Drop"''. The manual warns you: "Mind that gap!". There is a large flat section [[ObviousTrap full of warning signs]]. You drive over it and... nothing happens. The mystery is revealed when you unlock the Bonus Cup and discover a sliding trapdoor in the road on one of the tracks, a feature not seen on any of the regular tracks and for good reason: it is severely bugged.

* EveryCarIsAPinto: With bonus points coming from head-on collisions or knocking a critically damaged car into a wall!
** With an OutOfTheInferno moment for the car that wrecked it.

* HarderThanHard: Impossible and DR DEATH (the latter of which also locks the damage scale to where any track that has unavoidable damage cannot be won without using the pits)
** That's the whole point of the DR DEATH cheat code. Instead of pitting when you're dying, you have to pit tactically to avoid crowds and dangerous levels of damage. It adds a tactical element.
** DR DEATH also cranks up the AI's aggressiveness UpToEleven.
*** Not only that, the cars also become fragile like never before. All that, complete with marathon-ish amount of laps you need to go through. [[SarcasmMode Good]] [[HaveANiceDeath luck!]]
* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace/[[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace Marvin Just Shot Me In The Face!!!]]: Marvin is the default name for one of the Mission Motors cars. Go ahead, I dare you to have a head-on collision with him. No? Don't worry, he'll oblige.
* ItsAWonderfulFailure: Not winning a race will often result in the announcer giving you particular messages on your performance:

*** The voice cheat gives a hilarious one that plays the trope for laughs: "RUBBISH RACER!" (in a cheery mood)

* MarathonLevel: Bonus Race 3 takes about 30 minutes to finish on Impossible, assuming no crashes or flipovers. No other tracks approach this in length, even on [[HarderThanHard Impossible]], leading to suspicion of this being a bug. Incidentally, this remained unpatched, and appears even in the US version.
** Putting this in perspective, the average time for the computers is around 55 seconds. The track has 10 laps [[EasyModeMockery on Girlie]]. That's upwards of 10 minutes on the easiest difficulty. And it's one of those levels where you take unavoidable damage due to completely random flippers that are about ten times as strong as any of the other flippers in the game.

* MyCarHatesMe: The more damaged your car is, the longer it takes for it to start again after you flip or fall off the track, leaving you stuck in the middle of the road for a few agonizing seconds with a car that's about to explode and 15 other drivers that gain points if they destroy you.

* NintendoHard
** Especially with the DR DEATH cheat code.
* NoFairCheating: Subverted. The only time that certain cheat codes (or, specifically, Cheat Car effects) don't work right is when a specific cheat code is activated (specifically, DUEL)

* RampJump: Duh.
** Including '''moving''' ramps. Most tracks feature those little speedbumps that slowly and mysteriously go up and down. [[EverythingTryingToKillYou Naturally]] one pair of those is located in the middle of a turn, on a track section suspended over a ravine with no guardrails.

* SelfImposedChallenge: Comes in the following varieties:
** NoCasualtiesRun (never be victim to a fatality, even your own)
** Pitless Run (never receive pit work)
*** {{Determinator}}: Pitless Run on a 16-car race after entering DR DEATH as a name. This is much harder than it sounds, since on a good deal of the courses, you'll take damage just from driving down the course. Flat-out impossible on Bonus Race 3.
** Try to win any of the Championships on Impossible or even DR DEATH difficulty with Zizin. Anyone who does this really should at least be commended for their awesome driving (or incredible luck).
*** To elaborate: The Zizin has excellent turning but zero grip; it drifts, and it drifts more than a drunk driver cutting cookies on ice.
** ([[TechnicalPacifist Technical]]) PacifistRun: Never be a killer for anyone else's death.
** [[HarderThanHard Beating]] [[ThatOneLevel Bonus 4]] with the [=DeSilva=]]].
*** To elaborate: The level is basically a giant straightaway that wraps around so cars [[SelectiveMagnetism drive upside down]] for half of the track. The main hazard is that it is very difficult to avoid [[strike:accidental]] intentional collisions by other cars and the pit lane is [[SchmuckBait in the middle of the road]]. The [=DeSilva=] is the slowest car in the game, giving the opponents plenty of opportunity to slam into your rear bumper.

*** Mitigate this by parking backwards in the pit lane or facing a wall. It's not perfect (you'll have to stop AGAIN to recover the damage), but it decreases the damage taken.

*** Though you can get around this issue by sticking to the cone-shaped center of the track, which isn't frictionless ([[YouFailPhysicsForever ironic that it's sloped in the oppposite way of a banked curve]]). Just watch out for any out-of-control opponents that might knock you off.

*** It's actually not that the cars are getting stuck on respawning. [[ArtificialStupidity It's that the AI thinks that it's in a pit zone]] and stays still, expecting to be repaired. This is just the track where it's the most noticeable.

** Thankfully, the Advanced Cars (unlocked with the FORMULA1 code) all have identical stats, maxed out across the board, despite what the car selection interface says. Whether this is actually an improvement or not is debatable, though, since it means taking enough damage to drop your top speed at all means you need to bee-line for the pit before anyone decides to use you for tailgating practice.

** Fatality: Million Plus car 8. Killer: Million Plus car 7. It's [[ButtMonkey always the Million Plus team]] that has these things happen to them.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Damage from '''''landing''''' can be decreased quite a bit by [[ViolationOfCommonSense slamming on the brakes until the engine shuts off.]] The downside is that the engine must be turned on when you land. Surprisingly, the AI never figures this out, leading to more than a handful of otherwise-unavoidable suicides on [[MarathonLevel Bonus Race 3]].

** Lower places: "You've got to try harder!"[=/=]"You need more practice!"

[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/whiplash_3823.jpg]]
[[caption-width:280:That's gonna hurt in the morning...]]

* MyCarHatesMe: Bonus 4. Respawn after getting killed. Car stalls. [[HilarityEnsues A car cruising at 360 kmh crests the hill in your rearview mirror...]]
** And of course performance loss on damage. You get pushed into a ravine, take damage, respawn at a dead stop in the middle of the road in a crippled car that barely manages to crawl up to 100 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] belching smoke and flames. The pit lane is half a lap away, the pack is closing in fast, and should any of them intentionally tap your car, you turn into a fireball and they get two points. You know [[Film/{{Duel}} that one car movie...?]]

*** To elaborate: The level is basically a giant straightaway that wraps around so cars [[SelectiveMagnetism drive upside down]] for half of the track. The main hazard is that it is very difficult to avoid [[strike:accidental]] intentional collisions by other cars and the pit lane is in the middle of the road. The [=DeSilva=] is the slowest car in the game, giving the opponents plenty of opportunity to slam into your rear bumper.

''Fatal Racing'' (known as ''Whiplash'' in the US) is a PC [[http://www.crazycargames.net/racing-games/ racing game]] by Gremlin Interactive that can best be described as ''[=Race Drivin'=]'' meets ''Destruction Derby''. Eight teams of two race on courses until either all human players have crossed the finish line (or are destroyed 3 times) or only one car is left running on the track.

''Fatal Racing'' (known as ''Whiplash'' in the US) is a PC racing game by Gremlin Interactive that can best be described as ''[=Race Drivin'=]'' meets ''Destruction Derby''. Eight teams of two race on courses until either all human players have crossed the finish line (or are destroyed 3 times) or only one car is left running on the track.

* ShoutOut: [[TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Well,]] [[Series/RedDwarf the]] [[Franchise/StarTrek default]] [[Franchise/{{Alien}} drivers']] [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey names]] [[Film/TheBlackHole have]] [[Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951 loads]] [[Series/BlakesSeven of]] [[Film/ForbiddenPlanet these]].

* ShoutOut: [[TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Well,]] [[Series/RedDwarf the]] [[Franchise/StarTrek default]] [[Film/{{Alien}} drivers']] [[TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey names]] [[TheBlackHole have]] [[Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951 loads]] [[Series/BlakesSeven of]] [[ForbiddenPlanet these]].

* ComingInHot: Figuratively in that a car heading for the pit lane is usually spitting flames and smoke. Literally in that you have to slow down a car going 300 kph to a dead stop in a pit lane that is [[EverythingTryingToKillYou about five cars long]]. And don't even think of slowing down early, you'll just get rear ended [[strike:despite the best efforts of the drivers behind you]] by drivers swerving off the racing line ''just'' to do that to you.

** Acceleration is fudged, but top speed is ''scarily'' accurate. As in, you're going at full speed on a narrow stretch of road with no escape and there's that Reise Wagen slowly [[VehicularAssault creeping up]] on you... With many tracks being essentially flat out, choosing a slower vehicle is a liability, not for those few measly kph but because it is ''slower'' at all.

** And of course performance loss on damage. You get pushed into a ravine, take damage, respawn at a dead stop in the middle of the road in a crippled car that barely manages to crawl up to 100 kph belching smoke and flames. The pit lane is half a lap away, the pack is closing in fast, and should any of them intentionally tap your car, you turn into a fireball and they get two points. You know [[Film/{{Duel}} that one car movie...?]]

* NotAScratchOnIt: Averted and subverted. You're going to take damage, guaranteed. Pitstops of course fix you right up. And your car won't display any visible damage, but will emit gradually increasing quantities of smoke and fire until it [[CriticalExistenceFailure suddenly explodes at 0 hit points]].