Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and Midnight Race Club: Supercharged!

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Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! "YOU'RE WINNER!"👎 Genre(s): Racing Platform(s): Microsoft Windows Release: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing November 20, 2003 Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! January 13, 2004 Developer(s): Stellar Stone Publisher(s): GameMill Publishing Country: Ukraine

"YOU'RE WINNER !"

— The victory screen from Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! are racing "games" developed by Stellar Stone and published by GameMill Publishing for Microsoft Windows on November 20, 2003 and January 13, 2004 only in North America, respectively.

Why THEY'RE LOSER! 🏆

1. False advertising: Despite what Big Rigs' front cover and every screenshot in the back cover might promise, none of the features the front cover has are in the game and every screenshot in the back cover is completely fake. Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! also features something that its cover has but not the actual game.
   • It was said that the game will involve police chases, illegal activities (like illegal cargo), as well as more areas and locations.
2. Both games feel like they were heavily rushed and look like they were made as some test games rather than actual ones. Both of them look like they barely even reached the pre-alpha stage and yet they got released despite being unfinished in many ways.
3. There's a huge amount of bugs and glitches, especially in Big Rigs:
   • In the unpatched version, there's a chance the player might win the race when they press the space bar or even as soon as they start the race.
   • Trying to install a patch for the game can prevent it from booting up.
   • Lots of ways of crashing the game are present.
   • The trucks can only drive forwards at a maximum speed of 80 miles per hour (about 128.75 km/h), but they can accelerate almost indefinitely in reverse (by the same principle as the famous backward long jump (BLJ) from Super Mario 64), emitting a painful, high-pitched, 80's Atari arcade-y-esque noise from the engine being at such a high pitch. The maximum reverse speed of the truck is 12.3 undecillion (1.23×10³⁷) miles per hour, or over 1,000 times the speed of light; this is fast enough to cross the entire width of the observable universe in 160 picoseconds (in the same period, light would have traveled about 2 inches). Above this speed (which takes about 50 minutes to achieve), a floating-point arithmetic overflow occurs, causing the odometer to change to "1. $" and every checkpoint to turn green, which means the player wins immediately. The same issue is present in Midnight Race Club: Supercharged!. The truck also stops immediately as soon as the player stops reversing.
   • The player's truck can travel faster uphill than on flat surfaces. This seems to be a glitch like Straferunning in the original Doom, where the games calculate the player's total speed when they are moving on more than one axis using vector addition (in this case horizontal speed + vertical speed).
   • The random race mode has the potential to cause the game to not function and cause the player's vehicle to get stuck in movement. Turning off the game does not fix this issue. Not even deleting and reinstalling the game helps.
   • The checkpoints (which are called Ultra-Nav in the game) are poorly programmed, and the game frequently counts them out of order, occasionally making the player win as they drive through the first checkpoint, forcing the player to either redo the race or go back to cross over every checkpoint.
   • For some reason, driving up hills causes the player's truck to go faster and reach a different area of the map, which makes no sense at all, the truck should've slowed down when driving up the steep hill. Although this was fixed in Midnight Race Club: Supercharged!, it's even worse, as trying to drive up hills causes the player's vehicle to slowly stop and not move, without even going down, forcing the player to go in reverse to get to them due to how poorly the reverse is coded, the speedometer gauge's needle somehow freezes/gets jammed during that, minutes later.
   • In addition, there is no option to switch to kilometers per hour, unlike a lot of other driving games. This has been a rare standard for some driving games, like Cars: Lightning League, exclusively available for mobile ports, which are Android and iOS.
   • Unlike most genuine semi-trucks, none of the trucks even have backup beeping sound effects when driving in reverse.
   • The ground clips through the road as if there are areas left unpaved, causing it to be glitchy. Some glitchy stuff can be present on the ground too.
4. There's no collision on anything but terrain. If you pass through something, such as the buildings and trees, you'll just pass through them like there's nothing there. You can even run through the opponent. Fortunately, this issue was fixed in Midnight Race Club: Supercharged!, even if you can get hit by something even if there's nothing there.
   • There is also no system for simulating terrain's effects on the truck: the truck treats every surface as if it is flat, you can't make your truck fly and fall, easily accelerating up even the mountains that are supposed to act as barriers at the edges of the track. This allows the truck to enter the formless grey "out of bounds" void, since the void still has collision, at some specific point you are driving, your truck will be crazy agitated, which is very bizarre.
   • Trying to cross the bridge makes the truck go under and pop up back, which is unacceptable because a bridge must necessarily have a collision.
   • Even despite the bugs and glitches, there are no mods to fix all of them.
5. The A.I. driver barely exists. In the unpatched version, the opponent will only stay at the start and will never move due to no AI programmed for them. The A.I. was later added in a patch, but they still don't cross the finishing line, instead, they just stop near it, making it impossible to lose the races. As a result, no plot or challenge exists in this game.
6. Extremely loud and frightening tire/braking and hitting sound effects, which both sound painful and would make you want to turn off the speakers due to how loud they are, even on the quietest volume set.
   • The same thing applies to the collision detection sound in Midnight Race Club: Supercharged!, especially when on the loudest volume set. Otherwise, this even implies in YouTube videos of the gameplay too.
7. Abysmally ugly graphics that are worse than an early 3D mobile game, and probably even worse than the animation of the later 2006 mockbuster anthropomorphic vehicle-related film A Car's Life: Sparky's Big Adventure, a rip-off of Disney and Pixar's Cars from the same year, by Michael Schelp's defunct company Spark Plug Entertainment. They also look like an early PlayStation game as well. It is worth mentioning that both games were released in 2003 and 2004, instead of 1996. The 3D models are terrible, ugly, have poor texture quality, and won't make you want to look at them, the lighting effects and shadows are practically non-existent and some models have the wrong hue colors.
   • The brake lights on the trucks are disembodied and float out a noticeable distance from the actual truck model (this can be easily noticed when driving up/down a hill). Plus, they also look like they were made with the brush tool in Photoshop by a kindergarten kid, according to a video from AVGN.
8. Extremely long loading times. They take like 20 or 15 seconds to load anything, despite the low effort put into the stages, abysmally ugly graphics, and sadly the low amount of KB. Additionally, the games don't contain much content, yet they still take like forever to load.
9. There are only 5 stages, which is too small for a racing game. Not to mention, selecting the stage "Nightride" and/or "Small Town Road," crashes the game when trying to load it, but it was fixed in a patch. However, these stages are just a clone of the first track.
10. All of the trucks are pretty much the same thing. Both have no differences in their stats or their disadvantages and advantages (speed, weight, power, traction, etc.; despite not being shown). Their only difference is their design. That's it, nothing else.
    • There are also only 4 trucks to choose from (which are somewhat based on the Volvo NH12 and FH12) that are playable, with no discernible performance differences (again very small selection for a racing game).
    • However, selecting either of those two trucks, named the "Thunderbull" and "Sunrise W12" in the unpatched (first) version would cause the player to win instantly. This means you win in just 0 seconds without even driving at all.
11. The infamous "YOU'RE WINNER !" quote that is displayed when the race is won. This quote became mocked and parodied due to it being written incorrectly (the correct form is "You're a winner"), and it was only fixed in a patch and was changed and corrected to "YOU WIN !".
12. There are no sound effects other than generic sounds from the vehicle's engine, the brake sounds, and the hitting sounds (which the latter is present only in Midnight Race Club: Supercharged!. There's no hover-over button sound and/or a clicking sound whatsoever, which is unacceptable for a game, even by 2000s standards. There is a soundtrack (even more than just one, including a total of six songs), while actually somewhat fairly decent, but thankfully surprisingly not obnoxiously ear-bleeding and completely similar to the main theme of CrazyBus (see below on RQ #1). But none of it is programmed to play in-game. However, there is a folder with the MP3 files that would play the music within the disc.
13. Repeated engine sounds, and they don't vary on different trucks.
14. Very poor visuals: There are parts where you can find the ground under the bridge without water in it, instead showing a glitchy ground, which AVGN described as "the water trying to exist but can't". Additionally, every stage looks similar to each other, only with very little variety.
15. Poorly written and lazy vehicle naming confusion errors: Trucks are mistakenly referred to as cars, most notably seen in the truck selection screen, which is very pointless and makes no sense at all, but why are the tracks still referred to as tracks in the correct way which does make sense?
    • It may imply that the developers might've forgotten what was a "truck" called.
    • However, even the .exe file used to start the game is named "CarZ", which will become apparent every time the game crashes (or when checked in the game's program files folder). Not to mention that the game's original logo can be seen closely on the loading screen.
    • And even lazier than ever out of all: Despite the name, one track is called "Forgotten Road 1", even though there isn't a second.
16. The box for the timer is too small. The timer slightly leaves the boundary of the box, as if the box's size was unfinished. The same thing is present in Midnight Race Club: Supercharged!, however, the back of the box shows the timer fully inside the box, yet in the actual game, the box is the same size as in Big Rigs, creating more false advertising. Additionally, the speedometer is unnecessarily big and takes up a quarter of the whole screen.
17. For some reason, some signs appear on the middle side of the road, which makes no sense. In real life, signs do not appear in the middle of the road, as a real car would be broken if it could hit it. The signs are supposed to appear on the left and right sides, or even both sides at a time.
18. Players can find an unfinished, untextured, and uncolored model of a human and a car in the map "Forgotten Road 1". While it might look like an error, it could suggest that these models were scrapped but the developers forgot to remove them, giving further evidence that the game was never finished.
19. Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! is essentially just a reskin of Big Rigs, but with fixed collision detection and the ability to select others and even almost a lot more than only four vehicles (with 12 vehicles; sadly, if you count as 13, the "Firelight" is selectable, but this crashes the game, similar to the Nightride stage). It's an exact duplicate of the last game, just with some differences and a bit even worse, and now that they've rectified the collision detection, not to mention that it was released almost 2 months after Big Rigs. This game has no appeal at all, making it the saddest piece of software, whereas Big Rigs at least humorously demonstrated Stellar Stone's stupidity. Only a few bugs were fixed, and many were left in the game such as being able to drive up to 12.3 undecillion MPH in reverse. Also, the title of the game was stolen from Rockstar's Midnight Club, making it almost look like a crappy off-brand sort of thing.

Winner Qualities 🏆

1. Big Rigs has a "so bad, it's good" charm due to how unfinished it is and its lack of collision detection.
2. As said on WQ #1, it can make up for a ton of unintentional comedy.
3. The front covers are very well made, despite the front cover on Big Rigs being misleading.
4. As previously mentioned on WTL#12, the music, despite not having the ability to play in-game, was fairly decent. The six songs were pretty good and catchy. At least there's thankfully no obnoxious soundtrack playing on the main menu screen, unlike with a lot of the other very bad games.
5. Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! fortunately fixed some issues that were present in Big Rigs, despite crushing the charm that Big Rigs had.

Reception

"What were they thinking?" The Shit Scale Games that are debatably bad High level of shit contamination The very high category The severe zone Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Major code red 👆 This game/console belongs to the "MAJOR CODE RED" category of the AVGN's Shit Scale.

Big Rigs received an overwhelmingly negative reception from critics, reviewers, and players. The game received huge criticism for its unfinished state, lack of collision detection, lots of bugs and glitches, bad graphics, and the fact that losing a race is impossible and it is considered one of, if not, the worst game(s) ever made and is compared to other games like Hong Kong 97, Action 52 or Superman 64. On Metacritic, the game received an 8/100 rating from critics, the lowest of any game on the site, and was featured on X-Play's "Games You Should Never Buy" list, though the user score is higher, sitting at 4.1/10, although most of those positive reviews are arguably sarcastic.

The Angry Video Game Nerd called it the most broken-down game he has ever played, including it in Shit Scale: "MAJOR CODE RED. Games that don't even qualify as games". He uploaded his review on YouTube on March 19, 2014, discussing its poor design and lack of gameplay. The video has since gained over 4 million views in two years. Later, he also uploaded a fake commercial taken from the review three days later, which has since gained over 500 thousand views.

YouTuber ThuN00b stated that "anyone can make a better game than Big Rigs even if they don't know anything about game design." To prove his point, he made his own game called This Game Sucks, But At Least It's Better Than Big Rigs! and published it on his DeviantArt gallery.

Angry Joe also mentioned these games in the Skull Island: Rise of Kong at the 3rd place on the list of Top 10 Worst Games of 2023, mentioning all previous Worst Games list Published by Gamemill Entertainment like Nerf Legends, Cobra Kai 2, and this games, which was released 20 years ago.

It was also rated at 1/10 on GameSpot.

Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! also received negative reviews. While some people were glad that it fixed some issues that were present in Big Rigs, the game also received plenty of criticism for not fixing some other issues. Both Big Rigs and Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! are considered as one of the worst games ever made.

Trivia

• Both Big Rigs and Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! were intended to be released both at once in a single package, but GameMill decided to split the two early in development.
• Electronic Arts' Skate 3 has an achievement titled, "You're Winner", referring to this game, which can be achieved through winning an online match for the first time.
• In Midnight Club: Los Angeles, the Land Rover Range Rover Sport (L320) that was won from the South Central Ballerz Tournament has a license plate reading YORWINR, a reference to the infamous "You're Winner" line.
• The game has a Metacritic aggregate score of 8/100, which was the lowest-rated game on the site as well as the only game to have a rating with only one digit number.
• This game is notorious and is frequently mocked for its broken and unfinished gameplay, lack of physics, and the infamous "engrish" catchphrase " YOU'RE WINNER! ".
• In 2004, Gamespot reviewer Alex Navarro published a review of the game, discussing its broken gameplay and poor design. The review was later reuploaded to YouTube on March 27, 2012, by ClassicGamespotRevs, where it gained over 90,000 views in four years. Navarro is solely responsible for the cult following the game would wind up receiving since its release.
• On December 25, 2010, Penguinz0 uploaded a gameplay and commentary video of the game, which has gained over 1 million views in 6 years.
• In 2011, the sarcastic website "You're Winner" was created for ironic fans of the game and other players who ironically played low-quality games.
• In fact, this game is frequently reviewed on YouTube by several users who talk about its poor quality and why it is known as one of the worst video games of all time.
• There is much debate as to the exact nature of the game. One theory is that the game was intentionally bad as a satire of shovelware. Another posits that it is a work of art with a deep philosophical meaning. One of the most outlandish theories is that the game contains instructions for building a working warp drive, since the trucks can reverse infinitely, and people have been using it wrong. The more plausible theories state that it was horrendously rushed by the publisher or even intentionally released in a pre-alpha state with false advertising as a scam. TV Tropes has another theory; that everything on the back cover was going to be in the game, but the people who shipped it out shipped the wrong version instead.

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