Planet racr install#
Planet racr Pc#
Planet racr windows#

Staying on the course is the primary challenge. POD plays into early racing game design, where success was primarily based on extremely granular muscle memory, both in track memorisation and turn acceleration. You either get to know the tracks like the alleys of your hometown, or die. POD has a fixed meta, favouring speed and turning, so long as you’ve got the requisite track knowledge.

A seemingly deep stat system allows you to reallocate 300 points wherever you like, into braking, acceleration, turning, and the like, though it doesn’t add up to much in action. Handling is awful too, with cars accelerating wildly from short taps of the keys. My hands are too big for the simple arrow-key controls, and cramped up after just a few races. Can you imagine being that insecure? Pod racing I do, but I don’t go around telling people about it. If you’re one of these smug post-gamers like myself, maybe you can appreciate the game falling apart in front of your eyes. There’s a widescreen hack too, though it breaks some of the skyboxes which I’d argue are The Point of POD.

Planet racr install#

If you play it anyway, find the POD entry on and install the PodHacks patch for some bug fixes and more flexibility with the forced 800圆00 resolution, which can cause some issues on dual-screen setups. The truth is that, even though POD is easy to find and run through an updated version on GOG.com, it has aged far worse than I expected. Ubisoft made an unnerving, sickly thing for my simple eight-year-old mind, whose only other conceptual playdates with the end of civilisation were limited to the dirt towns I made for the ants in the backyard. POD was one of the first pieces of media to make me truly consider the end times, and it was all filtered through The Rule of Cool. My mum’s ’97 Astro van looked even more like a cinder block in comparison-though, to be fair, it was very grey and very rectangular. I remember an overwhelming sense of menace and dread from the odd scenery running beside every track, and how the sharp angles of every car spoke to some alien knowledge of aerodynamics and technology. I remember cars that felt heavy and powerful, and that every impact with another vehicle resounded with a deep impact that sold the fantasy of driving a future tank cobbled together with slabs of rusted, corrugated metal and gas line pipes refitted for the express purpose of going fast. Pod is preserved so well in my memories because of its simple premise With over 30 tracks in the final version, it’s worth at least checking out the sights in each. If you’ve ever wanted a track to make you horny and sad, POD’s got you. Then there’s Roc, which imagines the art of HR Giger as a river, a psychosexual racetrack of spires and jet black organic-seeming pipes and machinery forming hypnotic, pulsing patterns on every surface. Plant 21 is what Bowser’s Castle would look like if it was set in an abandoned industrial shipyard, and if Bowser was a 50-year-old mob boss, I suppose. I love the surreal hillsides of Pompeii with its roads stretching out at impossible angles into the distance.

Beltane is a sprint down the city freeway, a dour purple sky in contrast with the yellow glow of the last remaining skyscrapers with power. I remember the most beautiful palette of greys and browns and greens and oranges streaking together I’d ever seen in a game. The CRT was too big for its available surface area and audibly hummed for about two minutes after it was powered off, the keyboard stuffed into a wide drawer not meant for keyboards resting on a soldier’s stew of thumbtacks, erasers, pencils, and pennies.

Planet racr Pc#

Ubisoft later released a retail version, but POD was birthed from the same tradition as Norton Antivirus and McAfee: OEM software, baby.įollowing one of the most essential PC gaming myth arcs, my uncle had a gaming PC in his basement, nested in one of those huge faux-mahogany desks that shouldn’t have been able to fit through the door.

Planet racr windows#

POD was one of those cultural artifacts that huge swaths of the public were involuntarily introduced to, like when They Might Be Giants’ song “Older” came packed in with RealPlayer on so many early ’00s HP prebuilts, or Chip’s Challenge in a Windows 3.1 entertainment bundle. If you grew up in the ’90s and knew anyone into PC gaming, it was probably on their computer at some point.