The Collection Chamber: MONSTER TRUCK MADNESS 2

More Down & Dirty Racing Fun!

Tired of driving in circles? Wanna have some good-ol' ground-pounding fun?

Then climb behind the wheel and sling some mud at the competition in this rowdy follow-up to the hugely popular Monster Truck Madness racing game. Don't be fooled by posers, this is the only metal-mashing game in town featuring BIGFOOT, Grave Digger, and other high-profile legendary monsters of the mud pit. So stomp on the gas, pop it into gear, and feel the ground rumble beneath you in the game that eats other racing simulations for breakfast.

Monster vision. Traverse the spectavular new landscapes and check out the sheen on those truck bodies - everything you see is accurately rendered in photo-realistic, high-color graphics.

Race with the big boys. Here's your chance to drive 20 popular monster trucks - including 9 new behemoths - all with true-to-life physics models! Take on 10 emtirely new and unpredictable track environments, plus new multiplayer Summit Rumble venues.

That's gotta hurt. Go ahead: smash, crunch, flatten, pummel, tumble, and hammer your monster truck. Now these rulers of the road will show real body damage. Don't worry, they can take all the abuse you can dish out.

Drive locally, complete globally. Take on some of the best competition the world has to offer by racing against your friends and foes over the Internet Gaming Zone, a LAN, or a modem. Add a little "commentary" of your own, striking fear into the hearts of your competitors with real-time, instant voice communication via your truck's CB radio.

Monsters do come out at night. The new night racing mode adds a whole other dimension to the game. Truck into the darkness with only your wits and your headlights to keep you on track.

Realistic instrumentation. The new detailed gauges and othe dash components are exacting photo images from the cockpits of true monster trucks. You'll discover that beauty isn't just skin-deep when you get a look at the new, in-cab views of your truck.

Ger down and dirty with these extras!
New World Championship Wrestling - themed monster trucks including nWo Hollywood Hogan and Stinger trucks
Accelerated Graphics Port support
New weather options including rain, fog, and snow
Force Feedback joystick and steering wheel support
Digitally sampled monster truck engine sounds
Play-byplay commentary of Army Armstrong - the real voice of monster truck racing

~ from the back of the box

Go big or go home. That's essentially the mantra for the entire Monster Truck entertainment industry, and Terminal Reality took that to heart when they released the first Monster Truck Madness in 1996. Two years later, the engine that allowed for open track design got major improvements when the sequel - aptly titled Monster Truck Madness 2 - rolled around. Those years of development resulted in a racing game that earned a massive fan base that thrives to this very day.

On the face of it, not much has changed in this sequel. There are new visual themes, an expanded roster of vehicles and the all-new multiplayer Summit Rumble (which is unfortunately on-line only). The Drag events have unfortunately been lost, but they were my least favourite of the first game anyway. When you look at the Circuit or Rally races, they play just like the first. A terrain has been built using a versatile, yet a tad bland game engine that's been populated with objects like buildings or boats to give it some oomph. Level designers can now use sprites as well as polygons to add life to the land, but it is still no graphical marvel when compared to SEGA Rally 2, Ridge Racer Type 4 or Powerslide which all came out that same year.

The end of race clips are often brash and in-your-face, especially when utilising the WCW or nWo licence (left).
First-person dashboard isn't the best view, so it isn't missed much with the Community Patch (right).

What it lacks in graphical prowess, it makes up in the versatility of its customisation. With a program called Traxx, modders could create their very own tracks and some of them are wild. One track may take you on a trip across the planets of the solar system while another shrinks you to the size of a toy car to race around a kitchen. You could ride into hell, escape an alien invasion or tour a decently accurate recreation of Jurassic Park's Isla Nublar. With the fanmade addition of speedboats to the vehicle roster, you can now careen across lakes, rivers and canals that perfectly show off the new engine's reflective surfaces on water. The imagination on display far outweighs the original tracks, even if they aren't as tightly designed. A lot of them boast huge jumps which can only be cleared when playing on the hardest difficulty setting, which also makes the tight turns and steep, bumpy terrain far more of a pain. Treat them as obstacle courses instead of races and they play much better.

If you want to go further into customisation, there is an amazing Community Patch out there which increases resolutions, draw distances and allows for high-res textures to be patched in. There are a few niggles that I wish could be solved, but even so it is my preferred way to play. Some of those niggles refer to the video sequences. While the intro does play, the clips that play when you finish a race get skipped. The menu screens also don't render in full-screen on all non-generic resolutions (which includes the one you need to play in widescreen using 3Dfx graphics). Worst of all, through, is the dashboard camera view. The game cannot scale the graphics properly meaning it will only display correctly in its original 640x480 resolution. The project is still active so here's hoping these niggles can get solved in the future. For this reason, I have packages with and without these additions.

Custom tracks and trucks are often insanely fun. Race in speedboats on River Country Rally by Team Death (left)
or zoom around a giant's house in and ZooN Kitchen 2 by ZooN (right).

Even without all of these patches, the game plays quite well. You can even add the original game's tracks - all except the Drag events - increasing the track list considerably. You can tell which one came from the first game as the graphics are more primary coloured and saturated with no spritework to be found. The water is also a blue texture with none of the graphical effects found in the first game, or the reflections found in the second. They look primitive by comparison, but they are still fun to play. I have included them in both the Standard and Community Pack versions of the game but I do believe the best way to race through them is by running the original game.

When I reviewed the original Monster Truck Madness some time ago, I found the graphically limited engine didn't mar an otherwise incredibly entertaining game. The same goes here, except the engine doesn't feel quite so limited. In fact, the official tracks don't quite convey how robust it is. I had immense fun sourcing through some of the fanmade tracks, and included my favourites in the Community Patch version. It is a little awkward and unreliable to change them out, requiring a separate program that doesn't always work, but with over 100 tracks total there's a lot to keep you busy.

To download the original Standard Edition, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses dgVoodoo and _inmm.dll to run on modern systems. Manual, converted Help file and tracks from the first game included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 278 Mb. Install Size: 441 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

Download

To download the Community Pack HD Edition, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber has the Community Patch applied and uses dgVoodoo and _inmm.dll to run on modern systems. Manual and converted Help file included. A curated number of custom maps and vehicles have been installed. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 533 Mb. Install Size: 1.36 Gb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

Download

STANDARD EDITION