Before Rocket League, there was Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. But there was something before that, too, and it was a pretty different game.
The original pitch for Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars was called Crash Course, which looks awfully familiar to the games we know today—but focused on car combat.
The game’s developer, Psyonix, revealed gameplay footage from Crash Course back in February:
There are no bouncing balls to be found in Crash Course! But there were weapons to destroy your opponents with, and a huge focus on environments with ledges that lead to your death.
Oh, and GIANT TRUCKS THAT COULD CRUSH THINGS WITHOUT THINKING.
That game could have been pretty cool, but it wasn’t meant to be. It somehow became a soccer game with cars. That’s quite a leap! What happened?
“We were trying out some ideas during a company wide idea day called Kismet Monday,” said Psyonix tech director Jerad Heck in the game’s forums. “Psyonix-Adam [Adam Beckwith, art director] dropped a ball in the game, added a few goals, and made a new genre. We had so much fun with it that we couldn’t stop playing it long enough to do work, so it just became the game. And here we are almost 8 years later.”
Wild!
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.