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In the dark and distant past I use to play Car Wars and also enjoyed the odd game of GW’s Battlecars. I even flirted with Dark Future for a while. I keep meaning to revist this genre, probably Car Wars which was a fun game.
However in the meantime I have been playing the odd game of Death Rally on my iPad.
It’s a great little racing game, but with guns and missiles, very much the flavour of Car Wars.
It was only a couple of weeks back when I mentioned Dark Future, in the main as I posted a photograph I had taken of a couple of the vehicles at Warhammer World.
Well bless my cotton socks, you can now download from Games Workshop, the complete Dark Future game including all the supplements and White Dwarf articles. Warning – this is a very large file, 26.7MB.
Excellent, no excuse for a game now, though as I said before I liked the background and the models, but I much prefer the Car Wars mechanics.
Update 1 – fixed link to Specialist Games download page.
Update 2 – removed link as no longer working
Those with long memories may remember that at one time Games Workshop produced a 20mm near future Car Wars style game called Dark Future. In which armed and armoured cars fought each other over the open road.
The game came with a selection of plastic vehicles and some were on display at Warhammer World.
When the game was been promoted in White Dwarf there were lots of articles on how to convert Matchbox cars for use with Dark Future.
I really did like the concept and the metal miniatures which were also produced for the game, but though I admit I preferred the Car Wars rules.
When I was younger I use to play a lot of Car Wars and even had an article published in Autoduel Quarterly, the magazine for Car Wars. One feature of the mag I liked was the historical references to “current” day events.
I was looking for something else on the web when I came across this, the SmarTruck III.
Now the blurb from the website says:
SmarTruck III is built on an International medium duty truck platform and features the most advanced communications, detection and deterrent systems to be deployed in a vehicle-based mobile unit. The next three commercial variants of SmarTruck III will be delivered to the Air Force; other potential end users are the Border Patrol and the U.S. Marshals Service.
SmarTruck III, like its two predecessors, is loaded with sophisticated technology including a weapons station module – featuring a remote controlled 50-calibre machine gun – a surveillance module with a 360-degree camera, a pan and tilt night vision camera with laser range finder, a hydraulic assist system to help the vehicle during acceleration, a regenerative braking system, which stores energy and makes the vehicle more fuel efficient and a terrain adjustable suspension and chassis system. The vehicle has sufficient gross vehicle weight (GVW) to accommodate armor and additional weapons or control modules while still providing excellent performance and fuel efficiency.
(my emphasis)
Now if that is not straight out of Car Wars I don’t know what is?