Twisted Metal III

Twisted Metal III for the original PlayStation is a 1998 vehicular-combat game developed and published by 989 Studios. It continues Sony's destructive car-combat series with a North American tournament set in a grim near future. Its central hook is Calypso, the mysterious organizer who promises one wish to the last driver standing, no matter how dangerous or impossible that wish may be. Players choose a heavily armed vehicle and enter a succession of arenas where survival depends on speed, weapons, and a working knowledge of each battlefield.

The basic contest is simple but demanding: destroy every rival vehicle before your own health and supply of lives run out. Every contender has mounted machine guns with unlimited ammunition, while stronger weapons are collected by driving over pick-ups scattered across the arenas. Missiles, bombs, mortars, and napalm expand the attack options, and health icons can restore a damaged vehicle. A display tracks health, speed, turbo, and remaining lives, making it important to decide when to charge into a fight, retreat for repairs, or search for more firepower.

Vehicle handling combines acceleration, steering, braking, reversing, turbo boosts, weapons, and tight turns. Each vehicle also has a distinctive special weapon that can be used again after it recharges. Beyond the normal arsenal, the game includes advanced attacks activated with controller-button sequences, plus combination attacks that link manoeuvres and weapons. Those systems give the PlayStation game more to learn than simply aiming and firing: vehicle position, weapon timing, and familiarity with an arena's routes can all affect an encounter.

The single-player Tournament is built around eight levels whose opposition grows tougher as progress is made. It begins with three lives and ends if they are exhausted, or if the player clears the full competition. A computer-controlled ally can join the player, with the option to share a life total; using an ally, however, prevents the ending scenes from being shown. The tournament's series of character endings follows the usual Twisted Metal idea that Calypso's promised reward can carry an unexpected consequence.

Twisted Metal III also supports Deathmatch for one to four local players, including split-screen play and PlayStation Multitap support for the full complement. Human players can battle one another with computer-controlled vehicles added to the match, and the selected arena can accommodate several enemy cars. This makes the game as much a local competitive vehicle brawler as a solo campaign, with the changing balance of its vehicle choices, pick-ups, and interactive terrain shaping each round.

The setting takes place in 2008, two years after Twisted Metal 2, and sends the contest through exaggerated international locations. Arenas include earthquake-ravaged Hollywood, the grounds around the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a North Pole stage, London, Tokyo rooftops, and an Egyptian area near the Great Sphinx. The concluding battleground is Calypso's airship, where the player must locate and destroy a device that allows defeated opponents to regenerate. Destructible landmarks and open spaces invite exploration as well as direct confrontation.

The game is the third main entry in the Twisted Metal series and the first fully developed by 989 Studios. The change followed the departure of previous developer SingleTrac from Sony's publishing orbit, leaving 989 to take over the PlayStation property. Its 1998 release was limited to North America and it returned in Sony's Greatest Hits line in 1999. That position gives Twisted Metal III a distinct place in the early history of the franchise: it carries forward the Calypso tournament, individual vehicles, special attacks, and arena combat while representing a new studio's approach to the series.

For PlayStation players looking for a late-1990s blend of driving and action, Twisted Metal III focuses on armed vehicles, arena secrets, escalating tournament battles, and four-player competition. Its mixture of vehicle-specific abilities, controller commands, weapon pickups, and large themed arenas rewards repeated matches, whether the goal is to see a character's ending alone or to turn the arenas into a local multiplayer showdown.