Felony 11-79 (PlayStation)

There's an interesting racing game subgenre that's starting to emerge, one that seems to take more from Roger Corman's classic cult film Death Race 2000 and Single Trac's Mortal-Kombat-in-cars Twisted Metal than Sega's Daytona or Namco's Ridge Racer. It's probably best referred to as the "moving violation" class, where body count takes precedence over time trials and property damage over pole position. The contenders so far include Interplay's Carmageddon (Death Race 2000 in all but name), DMA Design's self-explanatory Grand Theft Auto, and the first out the console gate, ASCII's Felony 11-79.

The title revolves around a mystical statue that's been broken into a dozen fragments and spread across three modern-day towns. Your character has been hired to retrieve the pieces by a wealthy so-and-so who has questionable plans for it. To do this, you must drive through three different areas (Downtown, several blocks of a Chinatown-esque setting; Sea Side, a stretch of road resembling the Pacific Coast highway; and Metro City, a congested Paris-like strip), picking up the items and making good on your getaway before the allotted time runs out.

Besides this main goal, you also try to wreak as much havoc as possible on your surroundings, without rendering your car totally inoperable. You are awarded monetary compensation for each fence, bicycle, telephone booth, or vehicle destroyed along the way, though admittedly the payoff seems more slanted toward owner karma than actual blue-book value. For example, demolishing a sports car will give you $10,000, while a minivan, cab, or police car will provide $15, $30, or $50,000, respectively. Unlike Interplay's Carmageddon, pedestrians are off-limits - though it's possible to chase them about, making them hop and scream to your heart's content. This Pulp Fiction-like moral gait is also reflected in the game's excellent Dick Dale-style surf rock soundtrack, that hip-gyrating, bad-boy music.