The game's glitches are totally intentional.
The game is actually a combination of Mind Screw and Stylistic Suck. Just look: the options are limitless, and you can go one billion miles per hour. They made this as less of a racing game and more of a Wide-Open Sandbox.
Building on the previous theory [of the game's bugs being tossed in on purpose], the game was an attempt to scam us out of our money.
Take the game's cover.- Front cover: No vehicles move anywhere approaching that fast enough to spout flames when traveling forwards, there's no collision detection, there is no police, not all trucks have loads and/or are 18 wheelers, and there's no SFX for anything but the engine.
- And the back cover is an even bigger pile of Blatant Lies, complete with "screenshots" that are actually mockups!! And how can the AI give even the most experienced driver a challenge when there's no AI in the first place [at first] and you can't even lose??!!
The trucks have a primitive version of the Flux Capacitor That only works at extreme speeds going backwards.
The bizarre images and sounds you get when you reach those speeds are caused by traveling through time.
The game is really an artistic game with a deep meaning.
You see, the whole game is a giant metaphor, showing how life is unfair and broken, and that we should keep on trucking anyways. The empty promises that the game made? Meant to represent how life is full of disappointments that we must make the best out of (E.G. Hilarious footage). The infinite reverse speed and the abrupt stop? It represents how, no matter how much we rush through things, one single mistake (lifting your finger in this case) can force you to start all over again, at zero. The opponent? Meant to represent you, and how no matter how hard you try, you will always feel as though you didn't quite reach your goals. The glitches in the game were intentional, and not glitches, but a deep metaphor.
- The "You're Winner" screen is life metaphorically laughing at you; your rival gets all the fame, and you're just a nobody who can never succeed. And the opponent winning only for the game to crash? That's the realization you have when, after you finally do reach your goals...that's it. There's nothing to do but to celebrate your hollow victory. It was all meaningless. And lastly, crossing the speed cap and winning instantly represents life's stress finally catching up to you and killing you off. You rushed so hard, so fast, that you just couldn't take it any longer.
Specifically, the game is a playable metaphor for the Platonic Cave
The game is trying to demonstrate that the world we see isn't like it really is. Yes, it looks real enough, but anyone brave enough to move beyond preconceived constraints proves the whole thing is fake. Clipping through solid objects, the opponent refusing to beat you, physics not working, being able to literally drive off the map, all of it is supposed to represent the illusion of reality. The game was horrible for a reason
It's not a computer game. It's a PC-compatible insanity-inducing weapon built by Dr. Eggman, so he could torture us into surrendering the world to him. And I think his plan is working.- Alternatively, it was made by Doctor Forrester, when the movies didn't work.
The game takes place in The Matrix
By knowing it doesn't exist, the player's truck is capable of defying physics, such as infinite acceleration, going through buildings, and keeping enemies magically frozen. This product is a variation on the "Springtime for Hitler" gambit...
Unlike in The Producers where a flop attempted for economic reasons, the company saw that their actual racing game was going to suck, so they engineered this as an intentional cult piece. They knew that releasing something so obviously unfinished would draw a lot of attention, so they were banking on said attention earning them some sales in hopes that it would make them some money back on their coming flop.This thing sold at least 20,000 copies. Whether the profits on that were enough to recoup the losses incurred with their actual racing game, or if this even managed to turn an overall profit for them is unknown, but they were successful in creating a memorable product.
The developers of the game came up with it as a result of being driven mad by playing too much I Wanna Be the Guy
Obviously, the mental strain caused by trying to win out a hellishly difficult game burnt out their minds, causing them to rebel against the idea of actually working to beat video games. So they designed a game that could be won with no effort whatsoever.- This game came out in 2003. I Wanna Be the Guy came out in 2007. That's a four year difference!
- No, it was mindbreaking. The cracks from the mental strain were so severe they went in both directions, causing trauma to occur both before and after the traumatizing play attempts. In other words, IWBTG is not merely an excruciatingly hard game but an Eldritch Abomination in the form of a video game.
- Alternatively, the opposite is true: after playing Big Rigs drove him insane, Kayin created IWBTG out of pure spite.
The game is the result of hooking an albatross's brain up to a basic game engine.
- As stated here.
All the problems with physics, difficulty, and the lack of opponents are because it's an albatross.
The game was developed by vortigaunts
- The three handle trophy gives it away. Vortigaunts have 3 arms, just like the trophy. The reason it sucks it's because they have diferent standards for games.
This game is an accident
- A person was making the game, made it as it is now, and said "That's enough for one day" and left. Someone else came in, mistook it for a finished game, and published it.
- How do we know that ISN'T what really happened?
Big Rigs would have been the greatest game ever made had it been finished
- Thank you Captain Obvious.
It's all Turbo's fault
This game was originally meant for arcades, but he snuck in and took over before the game was even finished. The game devs discovered this, thinking he was a virus, and got rid of him. The game's code was severely damaged in the process and the deadline was later that day, so they cut up the code. The arcade version was produced, but literally no one bought it, and they were all destroyed. Turbo managed to get back to Game Central Station before anyone knew he was gone, and we were stuck with the result of his latest attempt at game-hopping. The player character's name is Winner.
Hence the phrase reading, "You're Winner !" at the end of each race.- You mean Winner . As in, his name is "Winner" plus an empty space. Alternatively, the exclamation-mark is his family name.
The protagonist is a ghost trucker
With a fitting ghost truck. He is bored, so he tries to race with live trucks that don't care. There is a full working version of this game somewhere; what was released instead was just a result of very poor file management
Perhaps the game was finished, but someone accidentally grabbed one of their pre-alpha builds rather than the actual final build from the SVN or whatever they were using when going to submit the final build for release, didn't bother checking to see that it was actually the correct build, and shipped it. A single, completely avoidable mistake may have led to the failure and endless ridicule of an honest group of devs who had made a real game, but slipped up big-time when it came time to put something on a disc.- So, everything that the cover claims is in the game was actually planned to be in it?
It's all Haruhi Suzumiya's fault.
One night, the devs were working on this game. Meanwhile, it was day in Japan, and Haruhi got bored again. This time, she made a virus without knowing it. The devs had already gone home for the night, and the virus went in and screwed the game over. When the devs came in, they found their work was ruined, but the publisher said "publish the game or die". So they released an incomplete game screwed over by a virus. This is an Ironic Hell for the racer.
In life, the racer was a vicious individual who extorted and cheated to win races-in essence, and when he did win was a Sore Winner. When he died, the Devil decided to give him what he wanted: continuous and eternal victory. The car can go backwards at infinite speed because in life the racer often slammed into the opponents behind him just to mock them, and there's no-one there to ensure that any victory he has is hollow. The Truck is going to be the Doctor's adversary eventually.
The truck is a temporal anomaly, it chose the shape of a truck because of Blue-and-Orange Morality. Being a temporal anomaly, it can violate the laws of physics, its mere presence causes objects to "glitch" out of reality, its form is non-corporeal hence why it passes through everything, or otherwise just screws physics, leaving the map is just simply heading to existing outside current space-time. Its not perfect though as it needs to build up speed to go FTL, instead of instantaneously. The Doctor will be called in to take care of it as it presents a threat to other realities. The game hides how to build an advanced FTL engine.
This game is nothing but a proof of concept to build an advanced FTL engine, that will allow us to reach any part of the Universe (well, almost any part depending of its actual size that is unknown), even if it's backwards and having speed decreasing to 0 instantaneously (at least inertial dampeners are so good that the thing stops without disintegrating due to g-forces). The source code has hidden blueprints as well as the physics behind the engine that allow it to work.The developers simply found the game and released it, without knowing that fact. Who is actually behind the game is another very different thing (coming to us from the very distant future?). The game is actually a loose adapation of The Tortoise and the Hare.
Your opponent is so overconfident that he takes a nap right before crossing the finish line, allowing you to win even if you have been driving around exploring the map. It's not Artificial Stupidity, it's An Aesop.The truck you're driving is the Fusion Dance of Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth.
The reason why the world around you is so broken and unfinished is because Earth is actually falling apart just having you on it. You're a combination that shouldn't and can not be. Time slows to a stop and yet keeps ticking, your opponent dead frozen. You transcend dimensions at the end of the world and can singlehandedly cross and destroy all universes just by backtracking. You are the ultimate Outer God. You are Winner.It's all Davoth's fault.
This is a Bad Future where Davoth successfully destroyed all of creation, with this game being the last remnant of anything related to Earth trapped below the deepest hole of Hell. You play as the Doom Slayer, powerless and sentenced to spend eternity in what was once Earth, futilely attempting to escape his fate and hoping to undo the horrible destruction that our world has faced...but all he can do now, without demons or guns, is to just keep on trucking. Forever.Chikn was the announcer for the race at some point.
Given how he sometimes uses incorrect grammar such as "I gots" or "I'm love you", similiarly to the game's infamous "YOU'RE WINNER !" victory screen. Perhaps he got replaced by someone else when the game corrected it to "YOU WIN!".