Twisted Metal 4

Twisted Metal 4 PS1 is a 1999 vehicular-combat game developed and published by 989 Studios for the original PlayStation. As the fourth main entry in Sony's destructive driving series, it returns to the Twisted Metal contest, where armed drivers enter enclosed battlefields and fight until one vehicle remains. This installment changes the tournament's power structure: the murderous clown Sweet Tooth has seized control from longtime organizer Calypso and offers the victor the familiar but perilous prize of a granted wish. Calypso is no longer merely the figure behind the contest; he joins the field as a rival contestant.

The basic match is built around choosing a vehicle and using its speed, armor, handling, weapons, and character-specific special attack to outlast the opposition. Drivers roam arenas searching for pickups, then use projectiles, mines, and other attacks to wear down enemy health while trying to avoid the same treatment. Every machine has a different specialty, so the selection affects how a player approaches a fight. The PlayStation controls combine driving with weapon firing and evasive movement, creating a compact arcade contest in which positioning, item collection, and knowledge of the arena are as important as landing a shot.

Twisted Metal 4's stages are not simple racetracks. They are multi-level combat spaces with routes, elevated ground, concealed spots, hazards, and objects that can be used against opponents. Construction Yard includes a magnet that can hoist a car before dropping it, while Neon City has a train passing through the battleground. Those mechanisms make an arena part of the tactical contest rather than just scenery. Exploring the layouts can uncover weapon pickups and safer approaches, but it can also leave a driver exposed to attacks from another level or direction.

Tournament play carries a chosen driver through a sequence of battles and finishes its course with boss encounters. It can be played solo, with a computer-controlled ally, or cooperatively by two players. The separate Deathmatch options broaden the local competitive side of the game, supporting split-screen play for up to four people. That mix lets the same PlayStation disc serve both as a single-player series of fights and as a couch multiplayer game, with the arena rules and available vehicles providing the structure for quick battles.

A defining addition is Create-a-Car. Instead of being limited to the established cast, players can assemble and save a custom combat vehicle to a PlayStation memory card. The feature offers a choice of vehicle bodies, visual treatment and fittings, a selected special attack, and a battle cry. It is a deliberately game-like form of customization rather than a simulation workshop, but it gives players a way to put a personal creation into the tournament's explosive framework and makes the character-and-vehicle concept central to the game.

The roster combines new drivers with returning Twisted Metal names, while the story presents Sweet Tooth's circus-flavored rule of the tournament and Calypso's attempt to answer it. Each combatant brings a vehicle identity to the match, and the game treats those machines as both weapons and characters. Music is another noticeable part of the presentation: the soundtrack includes material associated with several bands, and musician Rob Zombie appears in the game as a playable contestant driving Dragula. That crossover fits the exaggerated late-1990s style of the series without changing its focus on vehicular battles.

Twisted Metal 4 arrived late in the PlayStation's original run, following Twisted Metal III and marking 989 Studios' second and final released game in the series. The developer had brought the franchise in-house after original creator SingleTrac moved on, and the 1999 game expanded the arena interaction, multiplayer options, and vehicle customization available in its immediate predecessor. Within the PS1-era Twisted Metal lineup, it stands as a colorful, self-contained variation on the tournament formula: choose a driver, learn the battlefield, collect the right weapons, and survive the last car war on wheels.