I will admit that, as a child, I once asked the question, “Have you played any of the previous Vigilante games?” It sounded unusual to me. Vigilante 8 follows the Twisted Metal formula of arena-based vehicular combat. The previous console generations were predominantly 2D. How would it have been pulled off? I did have a vision of an isometric vehicular combat game, and to be fair, there was a Game Boy Color version. But no, there was no Vigilante 1-7.

It’s a weird name. There aren’t eight vigilantes by my count; there are six. Technically, it’s a spinoff of Interstate ‘76, a name that makes sense even if there wasn’t Interstate 1-75 preceding it.

My household was Nintendo dominate, but I had a friend whose house I spent a lot of time at who had a PlayStation. We loved Twisted Metal 2. If the PS1’s laser could eat through a disc, it would have burned a hole into the ceiling with how much we had it spinning. I can’t remember the advertising campaign for Vigilante 8 that sold us on it, but we knew that was where we’d park ourselves next. And we did.

WHOOP! WHOOP!

While Vigilante 8 is a spinoff of Luxoflux’s PC classic, Interstate ‘76, it’s more of a vibe thing. There still isn’t really a game quite like Interstate ‘76 in terms of its quest design and detail. It was essentially Mechwarrior with cars. Vigilante 8 has much more Twisted Metal DNA in it. It’s simply arena combat involving vintage vans and mid-life crisis coupes with guns strapped to them.

Mainly, you just replace Twisted Metal’s adolescent edge with ‘70s funk. Awww, yeah, baby. It takes place in a similar setting to Interstate ‘76 – the southwestern United States. The story involves the 1973 oil crisis, but instead of ending the embargo, OMAR, (the in-game version of OAPEC, as far as I can tell) subsidized a terrorist group to attack America’s oil production to try and escalate things. So, some real right-to-bear-arms types strap guns to their vehicles and try to stop them. The Coyotes and the Vigilantes, respectively.

That sounds kind of grounded, but there’s this whole thing about the game’s version of Area 51 and one of the Coyotes is literally a brainwashed cyborg. One can control bees, while a vigilante has lightning powers. It’s simultaneously well-informed and completely batshit.

I MAY BE HALF MACHINE, BUT I’M ALL WOMAN

You only start off with eight characters to choose from; four from the Coyotes and four from the Vigilantes. Maybe that’s the eight, but that doesn’t make any sense. Rather than just having a progression of stages, like in Twisted Metal, each character has a progression of four levels with different objectives depending on who you’re driving with. It doesn’t just incentivize playing through multiple characters, it essentially makes it the goal of the game. If you clear a couple of adjacent characters, you unlock another member of their faction.

It’s a pretty good structure if you ignore the fact that the objective system sucks for the Vigilantes. The Coyotes just have to destroy something within a level, which is okay (though, you can’t view your objective after the round has started, for some reason). The Vigilantes have to protect something, and the buildings are constructed out of cardboard. Stray gunfire can take out an objective. This means that you get to wreak havoc as the Coyotes, but when you’re a Vigilante, your best bet is to keep the fighting as far away from the objective as possible. Enemies are more interested in torching your wheels than destruction, but if their target is in the vicinity, they’ll take potshots at it until it’s rubble.

That’s honestly the stupidest thing in Vigilante 8. These types of games were mainly aiming to be good multiplayer experiences, but since you need to play singleplayer to get the other characters, you’d think someone would have stopped and considered how un-fun the good guy objectives were.

It also lifts the worst possible thing it could from Twisted Metal: the button combos. You know how in the Twisted Metal games, you could press a series of directional inputs and, like, put up a shield or fire an ice blast? That’s in Vigilante 8, but each combo is tied to a specific weapon and will burn through more of its ammo. Like a special attack. Problem is, unlike Twisted Metal, they didn’t put the combos in the instruction manual, so they’re essentially secret codes. To be fair, however, you can totally complete the game without them, unlike in, say, Twisted Metal 2, where you need to know how to shield yourself.

BASSQUAKE!

The way that Vigilante 8 differentiates itself from Twisted Metal goes beyond its ‘70s aesthetic. It’s in the details. The cars all have more realistic suspension models, and they accelerate in a more believable way. Twisted Metal had the cars hopped up on amphetamines, which worked for its style, but since Vigilante 8 is a smidge more grounded, a more detailed driving system was worth the effort.

It’s most evident when it comes to firing your weapons. The standard weapons come in your normal rocket/missile flavours, but there’s also a mortar and a turret that pivots to aim at the nearest enemy. When the turret is facing sideways, a shot from it will move the weight of the car onto the other side’s suspension. When the mortar fires, you can see the recoil push the car toward the ground. Total realism probably would suck in this sort of vehicular combat game, but this little attention to detail makes things feel a bit more impactful.

Gosh, this, combined with Interstate ‘76’s detailed cockpit view, would be pretty phenomenal. Weirdly, you can get behind the dashboard in Vigilante 8, but the only thing you see is a goofy-looking steering wheel floating in midair with a hand clasping it. Part of me wonders if a more detailed dashcam was intended, but cut due to time or budget constraints. I can’t imagine anyone looking at the limited, bouncy, goofy point of perspective and thinking that it looks okay. Even in 1998.

GRIDLOCK

Vigilante 8 was released later on the N64, and… Oh, man, this is so boring. The N64 version has maybe better graphics. If you have the Expansion Pak, you can put it in Hi-Res mode, which makes it nice and slick. Thankfully, without tanking the framerate. It looks okay. As much as I love the N64, I hate its slobbery, blurry texture filtering, but it looks decent here. The cars look more detailed, and the physics are easier to appreciate. However, the N64 version lacks the FMV cutscenes (swapping them out for slideshows of screenshots) and the high-quality soundtrack. You can look at the cutscenes online, if you want, but the soundtrack really suffers. So, I don’t know. It’s give and take. I’d maybe prefer the PS1 version overall, but it doesn’t matter. That’s why it’s boring; it doesn’t matter.

Unfortunately, aside from the tedious hero objectives, Vigilante 8 is largely just a clone of Twisted Metal. It tossed out what made Interstate ‘76 really noteworthy. However, it’s a good clone. Able to stand toe to toe with Twisted Metal 2 or maybe shoulder to shoulder, I don’t know. They’re comparable, is what I mean. I could take one over the other on any given day. Maybe one day I want to soak in the details, while the next I want to blow up the ei… Wait, I was about to say something that might get me put on a list. Drive an ice cream truck. Let’s pretend that’s what I was going to say.

7/10

This review was conducted on an N64 with Expansion Pak using a cartridge copy of the game. It was paid for by the author. All screenshots are from the N64 version in high resolution mode.