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. A look back

Nitro Rides

Check out the Interstate ’76 Nitro Pack Cars page. You’ll find screenshots of every car and paintjob in the pack, their weapon mounts, and their real-life counterparts.

Oh, and while I was at it, I figured I’d take some high-resolution (and better-textured) screenshots of all of the standard I ’76 cars, too.

One the one hand, it doesn’t seem like much. On the other hand, this was a lot of work, especially tracking down and verifying the real-life counterparts of these things. Future Plans and Updates

Nitro Pack Walkthrough Complete

The Interstate ’76 Nitro Pack walkthrough is complete! It’s the first one I’ve done with any video. If you’re sick of reading and would rather watch, just click the image with the play button on it and you’ll see the Youtube video play. I wish I could say I recorded my best playthroughs of each level, but… I think I was getting back in shape, to put it nicely. Future Plans

Local Ditch Gaming is on YouTube

Add this to the list of things I probably should’ve done 15 years ago: Local Ditch Gaming finally has a YouTube presence. I wanted to wait to announce it until I at least had something of consequence on there. The first project: a walkthrough for the Interstate ’76 Nitro Pack with video. At this point, I’m about halfway through writing it up, but you can check out the new page here or view the videos here.

For the most part, the plan is to complete the Nitro walkthrough, then try to get some of the other media items (music, video, etc.) on the site uploaded to YouTube. Upcoming Updates

Visioneering the Past

Hello. I found your page about I’76 recently. I was a minor-to-prominent member of its online community back in the day, and an Activision “Visioneer” at the time. I helped beta test the Nitro Pack. I’m getting old these days and longing for memories of the past. If you would like to discuss the old game sometime, or know of the whereabouts of any of the members of the old “gangs” that I could renew ties with, that’d be great. Regardless, was a pleasure to find your page, so few people remember this old game, and the few that do are tasteless suckers that prefer the likes of Twisted Metal and the abysmal Vigilante 8. I tested that game too… I told Activision exactly what I thought about it as well, they didn’t send me games any more after that B-) Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. Thanks.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the kind words! As far as finding people online, Interstate76.com is still kicking around. Oddly enough, a post on I’76 hacks here at Local Ditch Gaming seems to have become an impromptu talk about the old days, with some of the old community names dropping by and sharing their stories.

Links and links

Hello there! I hope you’re keeping well?

First off, I just wanted to say that you have an amazing site here, I came across it last year when I found my old Interstate ’76 CDs and wanted to get them working.

Finding Local Ditch was like a goldmine because of all the help and cool old files that aren’t hosted anymore, so thank you for that! I was also glad that there was still at least one site out there that worked haha 🙂

I just wanted to ask you as to whether you’d be interested in hosting a link for the old Hack76 program? I noticed there’s no link for it in your Downloads section so I thought I’d ask.

I found it whilst looking for a way to stop the AI cars acting all weird. “V-syncing” seems to be the modern answer but it doesn’t work for me anyway…

I found it on an old angelfire site: http://www.angelfire.com/co/i76nitro/

I also wanted to possibly suggest maybe adding the GOG.com Interstate Series forums to your Links page? It seems like it has a few useful solutions for users, whilst also helping with individual TRIP mission crashes.

The forum can be found here: http://www.gog.com/forum/interstate_series

That’s all for now, thanks again and keep up the awesome work!

Thanks for the message! I’m glad you like the site.

Yes, that’s a good idea to get a link to GOG on there. I think I’ve mentioned it in passing here and there on the site, but I’ll add a link in the links section and the FAQ to make sure it’s easily findable.

Thanks for the old Hack ’76 link. I’ll work on that one, too.

(Update: The I ’76 Links and Downloads pages have been updated since this message.)

Troubleshooting I ’76

My name is Joshua and I’m seeking help in restoring a piece of my childhood (like many others who try to revive this old, trophy game)! I’m using the original Interstate ’76 CD.

What I’ve been able to do:

– I’ve able to install the game with ease onto my Windows XP.
– I’ve been able to load the game with relative ease
– I’ve been able to play with sound
– I’ve been able to bypass any “rainbow” like textures
– Blow up enemies
– Roam around for a sustained amount of time

However my problem lies here; my game crashes every time I:

– Crash into a wall
– Get shot at
– Jump off a cliff and explode
– Force explode
– (Pretty much anything that has to do with damage to myself)

The harder thing to do would be to not get shot at, but even with “God mode” enabled, my game still crashes (This is when I thought of my sound being an option so I tried to turn off my Hardware Accelerator but to no avail did it work)

Though my analysis may be below par to that of a tech savvy person, I think it may have to do with the graphics and frame rate – the game seems to be running well above 30 fps (the wheels of A.I’s jump about, and “Taurus can’t drive to save his life”) in fact, many of the AI seem to be driving at a very slow speed. My computer uses an AMD graphics card so “V-Sync” is out of the question. I tried your DATABASE code rewrite and was considering to update the patch, but your link is broken so I can’t do much about that.

For AMD cards, there’s the MSI Afterburner software that’ll let you control various graphics-related items. It’s been a while since I’ve had an ATI/AMD card, but I think framerate is an option that can be set. I’d try playing with that and see if it’s a framerate issue. That’s definitely the cause of the wonky tires and bad AI.

I can’t say for certain what’s causing the crash when you get hit. That may very well be related to the frame rate issues, although I haven’t heard of a correlation between the two.

Personally, I’ve had corrupted textures appear when objects explode in the game. That’s not quite as common as just taking a hit, though. Just thinking off the top of my head, I wonder if the problem is sound related. If you run the game without sound, does the crash still occur?

Sorry for not having a definitive answer, but maybe those will give you a couple of starting spots to work with.

Yes, the site will stay alive. I tend to revisit I ’76 every few years — that’s when the site gets its share of updates. Then it usually goes slightly dormant after that.

(Update: Check the Interstate ’76 Install Guide & FAQ for other things to try.)