Nitro Packing Up and Moving On

As I’m wrapping up playing and working through all of the Nitro parts of the site, I’m left with some mixed and nostalgia-influenced thoughts.

If Interstate ’76 is the movie, then Nitro’s the weekly TV series that inspired the movie. Nitro comes with both the good and the bad of having a new episode every week.

Overall, I’ve got mixed feelings on the I ’76 Nitro Pack. While later-sequel I ’82 would be different game and a different feel, it’s great to have another round of classic-I ’76-style auto-combat here. It’s also good to revisit the original characters and story, even if the tone seems to have shifted slightly out of dramatic and to comedy.

We hear more about Jade, Skeeter, and of course — the star of the show — Taurus. Though sometimes the mission plots seems a little reliant on the wacky character trope, it’s good to get the story lines with the crew together, hearing them interact, banter, and bicker with each other. Poor Natty Dread, though, doesn’t hardly get any character development before his missions become available. He’s just kind of there after finishing everyone else’s, leaving you wondering “Isn’t this just another creeper taken out by Skeeter? What’s the big deal?”

Patriot doesn’t stand a chance against Jade.

I don’t know for sure, but Nitro feels like it was was scaled back. I know the idea has always been to be an add-on/mission pack, so clearly it was made with a specific budget and specific development timeline. But, the lack of continuity in the missions and the lack of cutscenes means it lacks some of the original I ’76’s charm. That being said, the community callouts and ’70s references are great. I’m not sure how they decided who’d be in the game (I’d guess they picked cool names that didn’t infringe on any IP…), but I’m glad they made it. Not sure how many people get them nowadays, but it’s a fun reminder of how involved the I ’76 community was. Unfortunately, a lot of that seems to drop after the Taurus and Jade missions.

A CEO and his entourage lurk outside an airfield in the Nitro Pack mission Assassination.

Though a common complaint, I missed I ’76’s longer missions. A lot of Nitro missions seem to fall into “Drive down the road, hang a right/left, then kill everyone.” It makes for a tighter game and is probably better for casual players, but there’s a certain charm in cruising down the road for a few minutes with funk playing and just enjoying the ride until the fighting begins. To me, this a driving game as much as an auto-combat one. But, like the weekly TV show, you’ve only got a half hour to wrap up the story before you start a similar in another 7 days.

More cars, (a few) more weapons, more maps, more game modes, proper races… Nitro was designed for “us.” I feel like the new weapons were made to work around online I ’76 issues. Flamers always had issues in net games (beside the frame rate thing), so the “Ball-O-Flame” gave us a projectile-style flamer that would hold up online. Dr. Radars don’t work if someone has their engine off — now a 4Get-U-Not will. Mortars had become very popular, so here’s an even-more-lethal mortar type. Landmines and bloxdroppers aggravated lag issues, so here are caltrops; they flow like oil and fire, but will tear the shit out of tires.

This Manta has no chance against Master Taurus in the Interstate ’76 Nitro Pack.

Personally, my multiplayer Nitro experience was not great. Shots didn’t seem to register. Issues with lag and hit-detection persisted; a bug made it so you could no longer destroy cars by ramming them (rendering “demo derby” style matches impossible). Though promised, there was never an official patch (even if a few beta patches managed to leak). It’s a moot point nowadays, but it was a huge deal at the time. And, Nitro Pack’s online play seemed to further divide a dwindling player base. For being a stand-alone “add-on pack,” you couldn’t play with non-Nitro players, splitting the community. The bugs and the lack of players really killed the I ’76 magic for me.

I guess what Nitro reminds me of is the beginning of the end. I ’82 sucked. That was the death nail, for sure. But, you could see the start with Nitro. Not that it’s a bad game, but the bugs and timing killed its momentum. The single-payer side is great: new missions, weapons, stories, etc. are gladly appreciated.

Jade welcomes Hell Toupee back to the warehouse.

Unfortunately, these new features didn’t reignite the I ’76 online community. I’m glad we got the pack, though. I’d hate to not have had the extra missions in the classic I ’76 gameplay and with the old-school cast. Looking back nearly 30 years later, “Interstate ’77” it was not. But as a single-player add-on, Nitro is probably all it needed to be: A series of episodes that pumped you up enough to want to watch the next full-length movie.

Stay tuned for next week’s thrilling episode: The original Interstate ’76.