Demo Derby

Friday night at the county fair. The grandstands are packed, the Ferris wheel is lit, the funk is pumping over the PA — and the demolition derby is about to start.

You’re strapped into the bucket seat of car #7, a red 1960s muscle car stripped for battle. Reach out, grab the steering wheel with both hands and turn it like the real thing. Right trigger is the gas, left trigger the brake — hold it to throw it in reverse and back into somebody, the derby way: your rear is tough, your engine is not.

Every hit counts. Panels crumple deeper with each crash, paint scrapes off to bare steel and rusts, lamps shatter, and a battered corner can tear a wheel clean off, dropping that end onto its hub in a shower of sparks. Hammer the back of a car again and again and its rear end folds up flat. The other drivers yelp when you nail them, and the crowd roars for the big ones.

Last car running wins the heat. Each heat adds another car to the pit, up to seven rivals hunting for you in the dust.

In trouble? Flip up the guard on the dash and punch the ejection button: the roof hatch blows, you rocket out of the car, and you drift down over the arena under a striped parachute — steer it in with the thumbstick.

FEATURES

• Real steering-wheel feel: grab the wheel with either hand or both, or steer with the thumbstick
• Fully built 1960s cockpit: analog speedometer, tachometer and gauges, a working cigarette lighter, rear-view mirror, pedals and shifter that move as you drive
• Crumple damage