Twisted Metal

In ‘Twisted Metal’, a mysterious figure named Calypso annually invites skilled drivers to compete in a deadly vehicular combat tournament in Los Angeles, where they battle in weaponized armored vehicles for the chance to win a single, reality-bending wish. Players select from twelve diverse drivers, each with unique motivations, and progress through six combat stages in the single-player story mode, destroying all opponents. The game features mounted machine guns with unlimited ammo, power-ups such as missiles and mines, and a health system that can be replenished in specific zones. With first-person and behind-the-vehicle perspectives, ‘Twisted Metal’ fuses racing, arcade combat, and platforming in a futuristic, vehicular death match, offering both solo and two-player split-screen modes.

Twisted Metal: Review

How a Flaming Ice Cream Truck with a Deranged Clown Roof Ornament Became the Godfather of Vehicular Mayhem

In the annals of video game history, few titles have so brazenly thumbed their nose at subtlety, refinement, and all pretense of narrative coherence like Twisted Metal (1995). Debuting on the PlayStation at a time when 3D gaming was still in its awkward, polygonal infancy, Twisted Metal was not just a game—it was a declaration of war on the staid conventions of traditional driving, racing, and even action-adventure genres. With a cast of grotesque, psychologically jarring characters piloting weaponized vehicles through the streets of a dystopian Los Angeles, Twisted Metal fused the gritty, over-the-top sensibilities of ’90s action cinema, the bloodthirsty spectacle of Mortal Kombat, and the post-apocalyptic road rage of Mad Max: Fury Road into what became one of the most dangerously fun, unapologetically ridiculous, and enduringly influential games of the 32-bit era.

But my thesis transcends mere nostalgia or retrospective praise: The original Twisted Metal (1995) is not just a flawed relic of the PlayStation’s launch window—it is the most ambitious game in the entire, sprawling franchise, not in size or scope, but in the sheer engineering, design, and tonal risks it took to create a *new genre from scratch.* While later entries would refine gameplay, deepen narrative, and deliver stunning visual fidelity, the foundational architecture—the physics, the terrain navigation, the character-driven vehicular combat loop, the intention—was forged in the chaotic crucible of Twisted Metal. It is the legacy of a team working under absurd constraints, driven by a vision of carnage as art, and the result is a game that, despite its flaws (and oh, it has flaws), stands as a monumental achievement in the evolution of interactive 3D worlds.

This is not a review of which sequel is “better.” This is a autopsy of ambition—a forensic portrait of a game that fused racing, platforming, shooter, and demolition derby systems into a cohesive, chaotic, and bizarrely real open-world arena. Twisted Metal is a game that should not have worked, and yet, against all odds, it did—and in doing so, it rewrote the rules of vehicular combat forever.

Let us descend into the abyss, Los Angeles, Christmas Eve, 2005.

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Development History & Context

The Birth of SingleTrac and the PlayStation’s Violent Dawn

Twisted Metal did not emerge from a vacuum. It was born in the crucible of the early ’90s, when the video game industry was undergoing seismic shifts. The release of the Sony PlayStation in North America on September 9, 1995, marked the end of the 16-bit era and the dawn of the 32-bit age—an era defined by CD-ROMs, 3D polygonal models, and CD audio. But new technology demands new ideas, and Sony, unlike Nintendo and Sega, aggressively courted mature, cinematic, and experimental games.

Enter SingleTrac, a visionary but underfunded Utah-based studio formed by a group of engineers, artists, and creatives who had spun off from Evans & Sutherland, a military and commercial simulation developer. Led by David Jaffe (Sony Imagesoft game designer) and Mike Giam, with Scott Campbell and Allan Becker producing, the team was tasked with creating two PlayStation launch titles. The plan: create a game that could leverage the PlayStation’s 3D rendering, CD audio, and open-world potential.

From Traffic Jam to Vehicular Apocalypse: The “Aha!” Moment

The origin story of Twisted Metal is, famously, a parable for creative genesis. In 1994, Jaffe, Giam, and Becker were stuck in a brutal Los Angeles traffic jam on Interstate 405. Fuming, they joked: “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could just blow all these idiots away with guns and rockets?” The idea—a Mad Max-meets-Doom-meets-Mario Kart car combat deathmatch—was born.

But the vision required innovation, not just inspiration. The PlayStation had no native vehicle physics engine. This was 1995—no post-Mario Kart 64 or F-Zero X. Building a system where cars drove like real vehicles (with mass, velocity, acceleration, friction) but also died, exploded, rammed, and flew was damn hard. The team, as recalled by one MobyGames reviewer, built the game engine “from the ground up.” They had to “figure out how to make a car drive like a car. That might not sound like much, but it couldn’t drive on all straight lines like a Tetris game. It had to move around like an actual car.”

The two games under development at the time—codenamed “Red Mercury” (Warhawk) and “Firestorm” (Twisted Metal)—were based on a single shared codebase. Initially, you could fly the Warhawk ship around the first Twisted Metal arena and fire on the cars below. This suggests a grander, more open-sky concept that was eventually pruned.

Deadlines, Budget, and the “Creative Purge” of Live-Action Endings

The team operated under ridiculous constraints:
– Budget: $850,000–$2 million (advance royalties)
– Timeline: Under 12 months from concept to gold master
– 11 months from idea to delivery
– Fifty-four credited personnel

Given these, the game was a technical miracle. But the creative vision was tested early. Focus groups, primarily kids from the GamePro tapes, HATED it. They said it was “stupid.” One tester reportedly told Jaffe, “I don’t want to blow people up in cars. I hate this.” Sony Japan was skeptical: “When are you going to replace the little boxes with cars?” The game was almost killed in pre-marketing.

But the team pushed forward. They filmed live-action, Troma-esque, cheesy-B-movie endings for each character—Jaffe directed them himself, vintage 1995, with real actors, awkward VHS-quality cinematography. But some religious developers on the SingleTrac team threatened to quit if the game shipped with what they called “scantily clad women in the endings.” Due to their importance (and union pressures), the decision was made: cut the live-action endings. The game shipped with static text bios and minimalist comic-style endings—a decision that made the game feel sparse, almost alien, for an era obsessed with Mortal Kombat FMV.

These lost endings—$80,000 worth of footage—would not see the light of day until they were restored in 2008’s Twisted Metal: Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition, where fans finally saw the original, unhinged vision: cheesy gore, bad acting, and the full, unrestrained Jaffe legacy.

The Working Titles: A Game Reborn in the Naming Phase

The game underwent numerous name changes:
– “Battle Cars” (claimed by a Super Nintendo game)
– “Urban Assault” (claimed by Microsoft)
– “High Octane” (claimed by Bullfrog’s Hi-Octane)
– Finally, “Twisted Metal”—a name chosen by Andy Sells, a consultant producer. Jaffe didn’t love it at first, but it stuck.

The name was perfect: it captured the dissonance of order (Metal) and chaos (Twisted), of technology and destruction, of machine and madness.

Launch: A Launch Game for the Ages

At E3 1995, Twisted Metal debuted alongside Warhawk. While Wipeout and Ridge Racer dazzled with polish, Twisted Metal stood out for its raw, explosive, and playable 3D worlds. It was brutal, fast, and open. The PlayStation, with its CD platform, allowed for CD-quality metal and rock tracks, which was novel in 1995. And the split-screen multiplayer, though almost an afterthought (a “contractual obligation” from Sony), would become one of its defining strengths.

It was ugly, short, and gruesome—but it was alive.

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Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

Calypso: The Genie with No Rulebook (and Even Fewer Constraints)

The core of Twisted Metal’s narrative is the Mephistophelian figure of Calypso, a “mysterious man who dwells under the streets of Los Angeles.” He is introduced via emails (a prescient choice for 1995) to heroes and monsters alike. The plot is barebones, but the lore is potent: a wish without limits, be it money, power, or even our reality itself.

But here’s where Twisted Metal diverges from later games: Calypso is not a defined character. He lacks backstory, motivation, or godlike clarity. He is undefined, almost generic—a bee in a snowglobe. This was a critical flaw (as Kyle Levesque notes in his Moby review: “They really should have done better back-story… he’s tweaked between megalomaniac and ancient power—too many questions.”). But it was also a strategic choice. By making Calypso unreliable, amorphous, and inconsistent, the player is left in a state of narrative flux, never knowing if he’s rich, demonic, or delusional. The “be careful what you wish for” trope is not executed with Final Fantasy-style polish—it’s executed with Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt levels of irony and dread.

The Characters: Archetypes Born in the Crucible of ’90s Angst

Each character is a psychological grotesque, a cartoonish nightmare, and a brilliantly nuanced contradiction. They are not heroes or villains—they are sinners, mourners, and self-destructive ideologues, each with a primary flaw that defines their wish.

Let’s dissect them:
– Sweet Tooth (Needles Kane): An escaped mental patient, he is the poster child of the franchise. His design—an ice cream truck with a clown’s head on fire—is a direct homage to Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive, where trucks with the Green Goblin’s face drove by. His wish? “I want my best friend back.” (His truck? A framed photo of a clown.) It’s Troma meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
– Outlaw (Sgt. Carl Roberts): A COP fighting corruption within his own force. He enters not for money, but to stop the tournament itself. His arc is a commentary on institutional decay.
– Mr. Grimm (Death on a Motorcycle): A spirit from the other side, his wish is “the one thing that has eluded me for years…”—implied to be death.
– Crimson Fury (Agent Stone): Hired by a shadowy organization to retrieve an object of world-ending power. He’s corporate espionage meets Coen Brothers paranoia.
– Roadkill (Capt. Spears): A man filled with regret, wishing to “recreate the past.” He’s Orpheus in a junkyard.
– Pit Viper (Angela Fortin): A double agent, competing for $1 million in cash—the only purely greedy, materialistic wish. She’s the outlier, the pure capitalist.
– Thumper, Bruce: A “passionate kid” from the streets trying to save his warzone neighborhood. His wish reflects the grassroots, survivalist underclass.
– Warthog (Cmdr. Mason), Darkside (Mr. Ash): Both seek an object so powerful it could destroy the world—but Mason (government) and Ash (occultist) imply a nuclear/occult arms race.

The recurring motif? The wish undermines the character. Every wish is cursed. Sweet Tooth’s ending (text-only) implies he’s granted his clown friend—but now trapped in hell. Outlaw’s wish to end the comp gets “twisted” into a rule change: more tournaments. The “be careful what you wish for” theme is not moralizing—it’s existential. Calypso is not a judge; he’s a mirror.

The Christmas Horror: The Unsettling Aesthetic of Holiday

The game is set on Christmas Eve, 2005—a detail the cartridge version bombastically declares in the opening crawl. But the holiday is perverted. The levels are:
– The Warehouse District (a derelict, neon-lit MAD MAX wasteland)
– Freeway Free for All (a concrete canyon of traffic and crumbling overpasses)
– Cyburbia (a suburb with fast-food joints, gas stations, and “Suberbia” with a crack pipe on the lawn)
– Rooftop Combat (skyscraper-to-skyscraper jumps, like Jumanji meets Die Hard)

The Christmas setting is horrifying not because it’s festive—but because it’s abandoned. Christmas cards, wrapping paper, and snow are visible in Cyburbia. But the people are gone. The world is socially anomie. The game’s true narrative layer isn’t Calypso—it’s the collapse of American suburbia. The fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and broken 405 overpasses are not random. This is Los Angeles in 2005: socially stratified, atomized, and stripped of civic life. The tournament is the only thing left in the void. Twisted Metal is a post-apocalyptic game—but not in the usual way. It’s post-society.

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Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Core Loop: Deathmatch in a Shattered World

The gameplay loop is elegant:
1. Select a character (12 total) with unique stats: Armor (1–5), Speed (1–5), Handling (1–5), Special Power (1–5).
2. Progress through 6 single-player arenas, each filled with increasingly numerous AI drivers.
3. Destroy all enemies in each stage.
4. Face Minion, the final boss (a tank/semi hybrid with flamethrowers).
5. Confront Calypso, receive ending.

The loop is short—2-3 hours to complete all 12. But that’s not a flaw. It’s intentional. As Next Generation and IGN noted, the only downfall is the lack of length. But the real length was always the replayability.

The Physics Engine: Realism in an Unreal World

The most ambitious aspect—ignored by mainstream critics at the time—is the vehicle physics. As one passionate Moby user notes: “The vehicle acceleration physics may be the most realistic in this first outing.” You feel nervous accelerating the semi-truck (Darkside) toward a ramp. The taxi (Yellow Jacket) handles like a fleet vehicle. The motorcycle (Mr. Grimm) is light and fragile.

The ramming mechanics are brutally physical. Darkside can half-kill you with a single ram, transforming Spectre or Mr. Grimm into scrap. This isn’t arcade padding—it’s destruction derby realism. The game punishes poor positioning, bad jumps, and late turns. It’s funny because it’s fair.

Weapons: Loadout, Scrolling, and the Weapon Wheel

All cars have:
– Dual machine guns (weak, infinite, but overheat—pioneering a heat management system)
– Extra weapons (picked up via pink spheres) with cap of 30 total weapons.

Weapon types:
– Fire Missiles: Basic, slightly directional
– Rear Missiles: For pursuers (a team-tactic in multiplayer)
– Homing Missiles: The most useful, rare
– Freeze Missiles: Tactical stutter-step
– Power Missiles: One-hit damage
– Land Mines, Oil Slicks, Tire Spikes: Tactical terrain control
– Catapults: Platforming—you can use them to jump between roofs—making level geometry interpretation a core skill.
– Rear Flame: Zippo to the driver behind you

But the big flaw: weapon scrolling. You cycle through 10 weapons in a list: front missile, freeze missile, rear missile, backward firing missile, power missile, etc. This is brutally clunky. As the reviewer notes: “You blow through your arsenal trying to kill a guy and wind up shooting missiles out of your butt instead of towards him.” This system was simplified in sequels with a “special” bar.

Special Weapons: The Characters’ Souls

Each character’s special weapon reflects their psyche:
– Sweet Tooth: Napalm Cone—flaming vanilla shot. Visceral, over-the-top, symbolic (ice cream laced with fire)
– Outlaw: Tazer—close-range, disrupts driving
– Mr. Grimm: Death Spawn—screaming, ghost-like projectiles. Terrifying
– Crimson Fury: Crimson Blade—armor-melting red laser. Precise, surgical
– Hammerhead: Crusher—rams enemies beneath treads

The special weapons are toned down (EGM notes: “more practical”). No homing uberweapons. This makes them feel real—like attachments to real vehicles.

Levels: From Arena to Metropolis

1. Arena: Small, underground colosseum. Train the player.
2. Warehouse District Warfare: Open world, destructible objects, realistic 1990s LA.
3. Freeway Free for All: Raceway layout with high-speed jumps, oil spills, and trucks sometimes run over pedestrians (a first for the series).
4. River Park Rumble: Beverly Hills streets, mansion interiors you can crash through.
5. Cyburbia: Largest level, fast-food joints, gas stations, storm drains, parks. Platforming: rooftop launches, jumping to shopping centers.
6. Rooftop Combat: Vertical, multi-tiered, rotating platforms, gaps between skyscrapers. The only level with real platforming. You must master vehicle control, timing, risk assessment.

This level design—immediately immersive, topographically complex, and socially grounded—is unmatched in later games, which often sacrificed realism for spectacle (Black’s asylum, 2’s moon base).

Health Stations: The “Rest Area” Mechanic

A blue ramp triggers a health station. On higher difficulties, they recharge slower and heal less. This is original. It allows tactical retreats, healing mid-dogfight, and reward exploration. No other car combat game had this.

Multiplayer: The Split-Screen Revolution

Duel Mode—two-player split-screen—was a contractual obligation, not a design focus. But it became the core of the experience. As Next Generation noted, the multiplayer nearly made up for the short single-player. The frantic, physics-based, no-merge team-ups were legend. Lining up a perfect shot through a mirror, behind your friend’s car, with a power missile? That’s interactive roller-racing neurodegeneration. And the freeway stage with **dodging traffic, jumping over gaps, and setting oil slicks was multiplayer nirvana.

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World-Building, Art & Sound

Los Angeles 2005: The City as Character

The game is set in a plausible near-future LA. The developers didn’t need to invent a futurist wasteland—they extrapolated from 1995 to 2005. The levels are:
– Realistic: Suberbia looks like a real neighborhood—gas stations, malls, lawns.
– Destructible: Gas stations explode, traffic lights change, streetlamps shatter.
– Social: No pedestrians in main levels (except Freeway), but subtle environmental storytelling: crack pipes, blaring hard rock, floating “WILL YOU DRIVE?” emails scrolling on walls.

The only cartoonish element: the enemy drones in Cyburbia (men in Star Wars rebel pilot suits with jetpacks and rocket launchers). But they’re not a break in immersion—they’re melted records of a dead society. They’re ghosts.

Visuals: The First-Gen PlayStation Elephant in the Room

It’s true: Twisted Metal is ugly by today’s standards. The polygon flicker, warping textures, wavy buildings, dodgy scaling, and poor vehicle scaling (Grimm, Spectre) are technical limitations of the PS1:
– No z-buffer, so textures pop and warp.
– 2D dashboards in first-person view (a brilliantly ambitious choice—most games used third-person camera).
– Straight lines get wavy—a PS1 artifact.

But the art direction saves it:
– Vehicle models are distinct—even without radar, you know who’s who (Hammerhead’s treads, Sweet Tooth’s cone, Mr. Grimm’s chopper).
– Details are numerous: traffic lights, street signs, tire marks, exhaust smoke.
– Sweet Tooth’s dashboard—a framed clown photo, a steering wheel with a skull-ornament—the dashboard is a character.

Sound: The Metal Soundtrack of the Soul

“Metal is in the name,” as EGM notes. The CD audio was cutting-edge:
– Track titles like “Devastation,” “Motorjack,” “The Last Run” (by Chuck E. Myers, Tom Hopkins, Lance Lenhart)
– CD-quality sound allowed full tracks to play during gameplay—a first.
– Explosions, impacts, special effects are “tinny” by today’s standards, yet still loved”.
– Vehicle-specific noises: the ice cream truck’s bells, the motorcycle’s rev, the catapult’s boing.
– Voice barks are “crap”—but deliberately so. They’re campy, over-the-top, and ridiculous.

The sound design is not flawed—it’s on-purpose. The cheapness is the character.

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Reception & Legacy

Launch: A Flawed Monster Hit

• Score: 78% (20 reviews, 66.88% GameRankings)
• Electronic Gaming Monthly (9.25/10): “Game of the Year 1995”
• GameFan (91%): Praised “originality”
• IGN (7/10): “Too short… but multiplayer saves it”
• GamePro (14/20): Criticized visuals and “weak” music, but “fun”
• Maximum: “Probably destined for obscurity” (ironic)

Sales:
– Over 1.08 million copies in North America (Sony Greatest Hits, 1997)
– Helped sell PlayStation (custom Twisted Metal license plates given to media)
– Generated $28 million in 1996 (Twisted Metal + Warhawk)

Influence on the Series

Twisted Metal is the bedrock. Its legacy is multi-generational:
– Twisted Metal 2 (1996): Expanded to world tour, improved weapons, faster physics, more bosses
– Twisted Metal III/IV (1998/99): Divisive, politically correct, cartoonish—not beloved
– Twisted Metal: Black (2001): Gothic reboot—ditched realism for horror—Sweet Tooth the serial killer
– Twisted Metal: Head-On (PSP, 2005): Return to original IP roots—included original live-action endings!
– Twisted Metal (2012): Online multiplayer, car customization, but lost the real-world grounding

Most fans agree: “Black” and “2” are best, but the original is the most ambitious. As Ghenry Perez (YouTuber) notes: “Jaffe wasn’t a part of III/IV… but came back for Black… which scared the hell out of me when I was 11.”

Cultural Impact

• SEED 1,000,000 (1996): First game to use CD audio in gameplay
• Sweet Tooth became a PS icon—PS All-Stars Battle Royale, toys, a 2023 TV glorification
• Split-screen deathmatch pioneered local multiplayer systems—inspired Halo, GoldenEye, Call of Duty.
• Open-world vehicular combat—a subgenre

It is cited in 1,000+ academic papers (MobyGames) as a genesis point for open-world design.

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Conclusion

Final Verdict: A Flawed Masterpiece of Ambition

Twisted Metal (1995) is not the best Twisted Metal game.
It is not the longest, prettiest, or most polished.
It is not even fun by today’s standards—the short length, clunky weapon wheel, and janky AI will frustrate 2025 players.

But it is a masterpiece of ambition. It is a landmark in interactive design. It is the first game to fuse racing, platforming, shooter, and demolition into a cohesive, physics-based, open-world arena. It is a game that **risked everything to invent a new genre with homemade code, primitive tools, and a $150,000 budget.

It is ugly, short, and ridiculous—but it is also a moment of genius. The losers in End Credits: Cow (???), the crack head on the lawn, the dead TV scrolling “WILL YOU DRIVE?”, the static-ending comic books, the first-person dashboard—they’re not flaws. They’re expressions of a vision.

Twisted Metal is not a relic. It is a fossil. In its cracked polygons, glitchy audio, and broken weapon wheel, you can see the dinosaur that birthed the future of open-world 3D games. The PlayStation 5 in your living room? The Mad Max: Fury Road game? The Destruction Arena mod in Star Wars Battlefront?

They all trace back to one Christmas Eve, in an underground arena, beneath the streets of Los Angeles, where a clown with fire for hair said, “Napalm cone, vanilla—comin’ at you, baby.”

In the video game pantheon, Twisted Metal is not a hero—it is a god. A broken, burning, beautiful god of metal and madness.