Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is a 2003 racing video game developed by Stellar Stone and published by GameMill Publishing. The player controls a semi-trailer truck (a "big rig") and races a stationary opponent through checkpoints on US truck routes. Stellar Stone, based in California, outsourced the game's development to Ukraine, and the game was released on November 20, 2003. Due to a multitude of bugs and lack of proper gameplay, Big Rigs was critically panned, became the worst-rated game on review aggregator websites Metacritic and GameRankings, and has been frequently cited as one of the worst video games of all time by gaming publications. The game has also attracted a cult following since its release.

"Big Rigs" redirects here. For other uses, see Big Rig (disambiguation).

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
Developer(s)Stellar Stone
Publisher(s)GameMill Publishing
Producer(s)Sergey Titov[1]
Designer(s)Artem Mironovsky[1]
Programmer(s)
  • Denis Julitov
  • Sergey Titov[1]
Artist(s)
  • Yaroslav Kulov
  • Svetlana Slavinskaya
  • Peter Jameson
  • Tim Maletsky[1]
Composer(s)Alex Burton[1]
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows
Release
  • NA: November 20, 2003
Genre(s)Racing
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay
A big rig climbing a steep mountain

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is a racing video game.[2][3] Although the game's packaging states the objective as racing over US truck routes to be the first to deliver cargo and avert arrest by the police, neither cargo nor law enforcement is featured in the game. The player chooses from four playable semi-trailer trucks ("big rigs") and five truck routes, although selecting the fourth route will cause the game to crash. Once selected, the player navigates their truck through checkpoints using the arrow keys. Driving in reverse allows the vehicle to accelerate continuously, while releasing the associated key will instantly halt the truck.[2][4]

There is no time limit to complete a race and the opponent does not move.[lower-alpha 1] The player's truck can pass through the opponent and all objects placed on the route due to a lack of collision detection. Off-roading bears no traction penalty, hills can be ascended and descended without reducing the truck's speed, and traversal is possible beyond the defined play area. Completing a race rewards the player with a trophy bearing the phrase "You're winner !" [sic].[2][4]

Development and release

The development of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing was commissioned by Stellar Stone, a company based in Santa Monica, California, that was founded in late 2000 and outsourced game development to Eastern European countries like Russia.[2][6] Sergey Titov, the chief executive officer of TS Group Entertainment, licensed his Eternity game engine to Stellar Stone in exchange for a "large chunk of the company".[7][8] According to Titov, Big Rigs was developed by a team in Ukraine.[7] Although he is credited as the producer and co-programmer of the game, Titov claims that he had neither had much input on the development, nor the possibility to halt the game's release.[1][7] He stated that publisher GameMill Publishing initially sought to release one racing game stock keeping unit but later decided to split it in two—Big Rigs and Midnight Race Club—and shipped Big Rigs in what he believed to be a pre-alpha state.[7]

The game was released on November 20, 2003, for Microsoft Windows and distributed exclusively through Wal-Mart stores.[2][9][10] Titov later offered to replace the game with one from the catalog of Activision Value, should a buyer send him their game copy, sales receipt, and registration card, which twenty people did.[2]

Reception
The trophy presented to the player upon completing a race

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing received "overwhelming dislike", according to the review aggregator website Metacritic.[11] Based on five critic reviews, the site calculated a normalized rating of 8/100, its lowest ever.[2][11] The game also stood as the all-time worst game on GameRankings.[12] Big Rigs has been cited as one of the worst video games of all time by GameSpot (2004),[13] Kotaku (2012 and 2015),[14][15] Computer and Video Games (2013),[16] Hardcore Gamer (2014),[17] GamesRadar+ (2017),[18] and PC Gamer (2019).[19] Steve Haske of GameZone regarded it as the "most abysmal" racing game in 2011.[3] On X-Play's March 2004 "Games You Should Never Buy" segment, co-host Morgan Webb described Big Rigs as "the worst game ever made" and refused to score it, as the program's rating system did not allow for a zero score.[20][21] The NYU Game Center exhibited the game as part of its Bad Is Beautiful: An Exhibition Exploring Fascinatingly Bad Games at the NYU Game Center in April 2012.[22]

Alex Navarro reviewed Big Rigs for GameSpot in January 2004 and criticized the game's high amount of bugs (including the absence of collision detection, enemy movement and game physics), lack of proper gameplay, and poor truck controls.[4] Additionally, he labeled the game as "easily one of the worst-looking PC games released in years" and "almost completely broken and blatantly unfinished in nearly every way", declaring that Big Rigs was "as bad as your mind will allow you to comprehend".[4] Navarro rated the game a 1/10 (described as "abysmal"), the lowest score on GameSpot up to that point.[4][23] He later remarked that the game only received a 1/10 because it was the lowest possible score on GameSpot, arguing that the site should have introduced a 0/10 rating specifically for Big Rigs.[23] The game remained the only to have received that rating from GameSpot until 2013's Ride to Hell: Retribution.[10] For the site's 2004 year-end accolades, Big Rigs was named the "Flat-Out Worst Game" and the editors stated that they would henceforth use the game's winning trophy as the representation for the award.[13]

In 2014, Alex Carlson of Hardcore Gamer determined that, due to Big Rig's lack of a challenge, incentive to play, or ability to lose, it could not be accurately described as a game.[17] According to Steven Strom of Ars Technica, "Big Rigs isn't just a failure of programming (thanks to numerous bugs and crashes). It's a failure of creativity."[24] Hardcore Gaming 101's Garamoth was torn between calling Big Rigs "hilariously campy or just shamefully terrible".[2]

Legacy

Jason Schreier, writing for Kotaku in 2012, opined that the humorous video accompanying Navarro's review of Big Rigs "immortalized" the game.[14] Big Rigs has attracted a cult following, with yourewinner.com forming a dedicated fansite.[2] David Houghton of GamesRadar attributed the game's popularity to its bugs, saying that, otherwise, "Big Rigs would simply be an unremarkable, long-forgotten racing also-ran, rather than the festival of hilarity it currently stands as".[25] Navarro performed a speedrun of the game for the January 2015 Awesome Games Done Quick charity event.[15][26] Titov went on to work for Riot Games on League of Legends before releasing The War Z in December 2012.[14] In September 2008, he stated that he was still in possession of the source code for both Big Rigs and Eternity, but could not release the former because the game was still owned by Stellar Stone and GameMill.[7]

Notes
  1. With a "1.0" patch dated November 2003, the opponent starts driving along the road but stops before the finish line.[2][5]

References
  1. Stellar Stone (November 20, 2003). Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (Microsoft Windows). GameMill Publishing. Scene: Credits.
  2. Garamoth (April 30, 2009). "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing – Windows (2003)". Hardcore Gaming 101. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  3. Haske, Steve (November 16, 2010). "The Most Abysmal Racing Games Ever". GameZone. Archived from the original on November 15, 2011.
  4. Navarro, Alex (January 14, 2004). "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing Review". GameSpot. Archived from the original on October 27, 2013. Retrieved September 10, 2017.
  5. "Support". Stellar Stone. 2003. Archived from the original on December 6, 2003.
  6. "Company". Stellar Stone. Archived from the original on December 6, 2003.
  7. "Q and A with Sergey Titov, CEO of TS Group". yourewinner.com. September 21, 2008. Archived from the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  8. Titov, Sergey (March 3, 2000). "Eternity 3D Engine". TS Group Entertainment. Archived from the original on December 3, 2003.
  9. "Week of 11/16/2003". GameSpot. Archived from the original on December 4, 2003.
  10. Gerstmann, Jeff; O'Dwyer, Danny; VanOrd, Kevin; Watters, Chris; Mihoerck, Dan; Tay, Erick; Kish, Mary; Shaw, Josh (February 11, 2015). 1 out of 10: The Worst Games Ever Reviewed on GameSpot. GameSpot. Event occurs at 2:24–5:03. Archived from the original on March 11, 2015. Retrieved September 10, 2017.
  11. "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing Critic Reviews for PC". Metacritic. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  12. McDonell, Jess; Tran, Edmond (November 24, 2014). The Gist – 5 Broken Games That Launched Anyway. GameSpot. Event occurs at 3:18–4:32. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  13. "Flat-Out Worst Game". GameSpot. 2004. Archived from the original on December 29, 2004.
  14. Schreier, Jason (December 19, 2012). "The War Z Mess: Every Crazy Detail We Know So Far [UPDATE]". Kotaku. Archived from the original on October 6, 2019. Retrieved October 6, 2019.
  15. Klepek, Patrick (January 9, 2015). "Watch Someone Beat One Of The Worst Games Ever Made In Three Minutes". Kotaku. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  16. Wilson, Iain (May 25, 2013). "The 21 worst games of all time". Computer and Video Games. Archived from the original on May 26, 2013.
  17. Carlson, Alex (January 2, 2014). "How the Worst Game of 2013 Is Actually Better Than Big Rigs". Hardcore Gamer. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  18. GamesRadar Staff (August 9, 2017). "The 50 worst games of all time: Page 5". GamesRadar+. Archived from the original on June 8, 2020. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  19. Kelly, Andy; Senior, Tom (June 25, 2019). "22 of the worst PC games of all time". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  20. Satterfield, Shane (March 23, 2004). "Games You Should Never Buy". G4tv. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  21. Johnson, Stephen (November 12, 2007). "Nugget From The Net". G4tv. Archived from the original on January 10, 2013.
  22. McLean, Owen (April 12, 2012). "Why It's Okay That GoldenEye Totally Sucks". Kotaku. Archived from the original on October 5, 2019. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
  23. Navarro, Alex (November 1, 2004). Frightfully Bad Games. GameSpot. Event occurs at 3:02–3:35. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  24. Strom, Steven (August 7, 2016). "What I learned playing Metacritic's all-time worst-scoring PC games". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on September 11, 2016. Retrieved September 10, 2017.
  25. Houghton, David (September 6, 2011). "Good glitches, bad glitches, and why patches are really the gamer's enemy". GamesRadar+. Archived from the original on February 8, 2016. Retrieved October 6, 2019.
  26. Navarro, Alex (January 8, 2015). "Alex Did a 'Speedrun' of Big Rigs for Charity". Giant Bomb. Archived from the original on March 11, 2015. Retrieved September 10, 2017.

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