The Worst Driving Game of All Time Was Just Re-Released for $4.79

In the pantheon of awful video games, few compete with Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. I first became aware of this masterpiece watching X-Play on G4 as a kid, and it’s the sort of thing you never forget. Released in 2003 for the PC, it was supposedly made by an anonymous team in Ukraine and shipped while in pre-alpha—dev speak for “nowhere near done.” The result was legendary for many reasons we’ll get into, but we’re talking about it today because Big Rigs is back and available for purchase for the first time in decades on Steam for the low, low price of $4.79.

Is $4.79 worth spending on a game renowned for representing a medium at its worst? Is this the sort of work we, as a people, should reward? I don’t have the answers to those questions, but what I can tell you is that I’ve spent $5 on far less amusing things, so there’s an argument to be made here.

The game’s description—which has not changed in 22 years—hypes up players for “some brake jamm’in, CB talk’in, convoy roll’in action across America! From Portland Oregon to Miami Florida [sic], you’ll be hauling loads and trying to stay one step ahead of the law as you climb into your Big Rig for non-stop driving action.”

Sounds exciting, but none of these things actually happen in Big Rigs. Instead, you begin races where your competitor will either move choppily or not at all. If you attempt to drive over a bridge, you’ll instead fall through it into the ditch below and drive out the other side, unblemished. That’s usually players’ first sign that they’re in for something special here.

Inclines are not a problem in this game—they do not affect your truck’s drivability or performance whatsoever; neither do any environmental objects, like buildings or trees, as you can phase through anything in your path. You can even leave the map entirely and continue moving in emptiness for as long as you like. When you shift into reverse, you’ll accelerate at exponentially increasing speeds with no limit, as the speedometer’s needle runs circles. If you let go of the accelerator at that time, even at six-digit velocity, you’ll stop on a dime. Alex Navarro’s infamous video review for GameSpot from back in the day demonstrates all of this better than anyone’s written words ever could.

One of the amusing things about this new Steam release is that, for about a dollar more, publisher Margarite Entertainment will throw in the game’s soundtrack. This is odd because, as anyone who has ever played Big Rigs knows, this game has no soundtrack. Apparently there was always music on the disc—one of the songs can be heard in that GameSpot review—but it’s never triggered to play. There is engine audio, however, that pitches up to the tone of a cordless drill when you reverse for long enough.

We’re not done. For some reason, many captures show green numbers near the lower-left corner of the screen that appear to indicate the player’s coordinates, and they’re just…always there, perhaps proof of that pre-alpha build claim. There’s also a modified last-gen Toyota Celica shown on the loading screen, a car that never appears in the game. And, if you do manage to cross the finish line, you’re in for the greatest treat of all:

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is currently showing a “positive” consensus across 40 user reviews on Steam, with one of its most popular user-defined tags being “psychological horror.”

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