The Twisted Metal franchise is one of the PlayStation’s first big franchises. However, the vehicular combat game has long since passed its glory days. This has not stopped a television show from starting up, however.
Whether this will actually ends up being made has yet to be seen, but writers have already been tapped to pen the script. With this news, we thought it a good time to look back on the franchise and find ten lesser known facts about it. Even fans who have played every game since the 1995 debut entry might not be aware of some of these.
10 David Jaffe Worked On The Series
The name David Jaffe carries around some serious prestige. The man helped create Kratos and the original God of War, after all. Long before even that, he worked as a designer on the original Twisted Metal. Part of the idea for the vehicular combat came from him and his friend being stuck in traffic and fantasizing about clearing all the cars out of the way with weapons on the vehicle. Jaffe would also go on to direct the 2011 reboot.
9 Multiplayer Was An Afterthought
The original Twisted Metal went through numerous changes during the course of development, including cutting down the first four levels into separate arenas when they were once one area. Surprisingly, multiplayer was also a last minute addition.
One programmer decided to try and get it working by themselves just two months before release. It ended up being a standout feature of the title and series. Other iconic multiplayer modes, like GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64, were similarly added at the last minute without proper permission.
8 The First Game’s Unused Endings
The original Twisted Metal’s endings are just text over some still images. They were originally supposed to be live action movies, and they were all filmed. The endings did great in focus testing, but they were ultimately left on the cutting room floor because some members of the SingleTrac development team found them offensive. It was not the violence, apparently, but the scantily clad women in some of the scenes.
7 Sony Of Japan’s Wild Suggestions
The series has never been popular in Japan, and maybe it is because the developer never followed Sony of Japan’s weird suggestions. They wanted David Jaffe and the rest of the development team to replace the guns with fruits and vegetables, perhaps to sell the game to a younger audience. SingleTrac never seriously entertained this idea, which is probably a good thing because the game’s aesthetic is such a big part of the appeal.
6 Twisted Metal 3 And 4 Had Different Engines
People often talk about how the third and fourth games were significant drop offs in quality, and there are several reasons for this. For one, they had a different developer, 989 Studios.
Because the original developer had the rights to the engine, the new studio had to use their own tools, which explains their different feel. These are not necessarily bad games, however, but many feel they lack the trademark Twisted Metal feel.
5 SingleTrac’s Games After Twisted Metal 2
Even though SingleTrac did not handle the development of the third and fourth games, they still did some vehicular combat. During the PlayStation’s life, the developer did Critical Depth and Rogue Trip 2012. The former is a submarine combat game, while the latter is a more direct car combat experience with such a Twisted Metal feel it could be considered a spin-off. During this time, David Jaffe was working on a game called Dark Guns, which was cancelled after the budget had ballooned and results were going nowhere after three years. By his own account, David Jaffe says the game was terrible.
4 Twisted Metal: Black’s Original Idea
Twisted Metal: Black was originally going to expand upon the foundation set up by the second game, taking the world tour idea but bringing it to the United States and letting players battle on significant US landmarks. This idea soon changed to the gritty, rated-M vibe the final game received because of the influence of film’s like Jacob’s Ladder, Se7En, and photographer Joel Peter Witkin, the latter of whom’s work is blatantly NSFW. While the game was critically revered, it did not sell as well as the other entries in the franchise.
3 Warhawk Was Originally Playable In Black
The last boss of Twisted Metal: Black is Warhawk, whose name is an homage to an early SingleTrac game, Warhawk. Surprisingly, this vehicle was once meant to be playable. David Jaffe admittedly does not remember it, but he says it would have been cut because of the increased complications of making a flying vehicle playable just for one bonus. Having a flying vehicle seems pretty cheap and unfair to the cars on the road, so it’s probably for the best it was cut.
2 The Cancelled Twisted Metal: Black Sequel
Twisted Metal: Black’s gritty aesthetic was a big change for the franchise, and it never received a proper sequel. A continuation was planned called Twisted Metal Black: Harbor City, but it was eventually given the ax. One major expansion to formula was making most of the levels interconnected. While it never saw the light of day, several of the completed levels are playable as a bonus feature in the PS2 version of Twisted Metal: Head On.
1 Twisted Metal Black’s Cutscenes Were Controversial
Even by today’s standards, Twisted Metal: Black’s writing and cinematics are dark and disturbing. In 2001 this degree of brutality was unheard of. Sony forced some censorship, like a scene showing a child killing someone and a priest drowning someone he is supposed to be baptizing. Despite the cuts, the messages and themes remained mostly intact. In Europe, however, the cutscenes are completely missing, due to the more stricter rules regarding adult content in several countries in the continent.
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