Monster Truck Madness!

Monster Truck Madness is an award winner!

September 23, 1996

Alright! I confess it! I'm a nut for games! I find interactive games a great way to release tension, make the world safe for democracy, and teach your friends who's boss!

Please allow me this humble moment of humility: I'm an expert gamesmeister at Descent II, Quake, NASCAR and IndyCar II. I've never been beaten and no one alive can beat me -- and now, thanks to the terrific new game from Microsoft -- MONSTER TRUCK MADNESS! -- I have yet another feather to add to my plethora of games mastered!

NASCAR, while exciting, can be difficult to master technically. Monster Truck Madness, on the other hand, is simple to understand and get going. You'll be up and racing 2 minutes after you install the program.

Monster Truck Madness is the most fun driving game I've ever had to pleasure to play. You climb mountains, go through mud, plow through water and pull cookies in the sand!

Monster Truck Madness is also the only game you can easily play via keyboard alone without feeling you're cheating yourself out of a cool experience. Set the CTRL key to be your accelerator and use the arrow keys to turn!

Monster Truck Madness lets you drive and race against these trucks:

Big Foot
Big Foot Power Wheels
Grave Digger
Bear Foot
Boogey Van
Carolina Crusher
Monster Patrol
Overkill
Rampage
Samson
Snake Bite
Wildfoot

Grave Digger is my favorite to drive because it handles the worst terrain the best. It's hard to tip over Grave Digger. Boogie Van is the easiest to land flat on its back. Big Foot is the middle ground of all the trucks and it's a good truck to learn how the game plays because it gives you a good feel for the fine line between stability and squirrelliness. All the cockpits are different for each truck, so you won't get bored trying each one. You can also set your joystick buttons to cry out "Yee-HAW" and toot your melodic truck horn if you like. Monster Truck Madness works really great with the Microsoft SideWinder Pro joystick.

You can race on a rookie, intermediate, or advanced level. You can choose your tire cut depth, shock handling and gear ratio. The difference between rookie and intermediate can be alarming -- so beware. Rookie is easily the most fun because the car drives itself and you can concentrate on banging into your opponents and hitting the ramps that send you flying skyward into the wild blue over there. Intermediate takes a bit more dedication to speed vs. braking and finding correct angles and precisely cutting the curves of the road.

You have five circuit tracks to race on in Monster Truck Madness. You'll feel every bump and grind in the road, so hang on to your trousers as you go up on your tippy-toes! Army Armstrong is the announcer for Monster Truck Madness and he'll call the race if you let him -- and let him -- because you'll learn to know where the other trucks are based upon the clues Army gives you as he does the play-by-play. You can take as many trips around the circuit as you like to make a race. I usually choose three times around the track for a race.

Rally Racing is also a great way to compete because you'll take one long rally through differing terrain. You'll go from sand to water to mud to volcano in one race! It's gobs of fun to try and stay the straight and narrow -- for if you don't -- you're off the track and doused in the ocean belly up! Don't sweat falling 50 feet into the river, though. You can press the "H" key and a helicopter will come and pick up your truck and place you back on the track.

Drag Racing is the toughest one for me to handle. You can drag indoor, outdoor, classic drag or J-style. At the rookie level all you really need to do is steer and you'll be at the finish line in under 3 seconds! Bump up the difficulty, though, and you'll be having to stage in 30 seconds, hit the throttle when the racing lights say GO and then trying to stay in your own lane as you race a fast competitor. It's a real challenge to get your machine winning at the advanced level and NASCAR has nothing on the technicity of setting up a Microsoft Monster Truck for dragging!

You can also race in Tournaments. These specialized racing events let you curry together individual racing events into a marathon of races. You can create your own or accept the preconfigured tourneys.

Tournament racing would be especially fun against live opponents via LAN or the Internet -- and Monster Truck Madness supports both methods of gang play.

With Monster Truck Madness in your games arsenal, you'll never want for fun or friends to run off the road and into the Arizona mud flats. At only $44.95 for the Monster Truck Madness CD, you couldn't wish for a better time for less money.

Monster Truck Madness comes packed with videos and interviews with the real life Monster Truck drivers. For more information, visit the Microsoft Monster Truck website.

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