DEATH RACE 2004! (GAMING THE SYSTEM, PART I)

Humvees, GTOs, Cooper Minis, and what looks sort of like the Flinstone's family car are rumbling back and forth in the closed raceway, and it seems appropriate at this point to put on my Hunter S. Thompson avatar, with the cigarette holder and the bottle of whiskey, while I watch a round of Route 66 Demolition Derby. The match I watch features a mouse and a giant green man and other competitors, and they proceed to biff each other like crazy, skittering around in the underground track, and then up the ramp into the open air course. Wheels, doors, whole chassis fly through the air, with each successful hit, and careen along the ground, sometimes in slow motion. Right now, most of the mayhem goes on in silence, and the crashes register with the default sound effect of generic objects banging together.

"Sound kills the sim," explains Bonecrusher Slate, Route 66's development team leader.

"Physics do, too," adds Ryen Jade, as he struggles out from under the smoking wreck of what seems to be a tribute to the "Dukes of Hazzard" muscle car.

"When you abuse the physics system like us," Slate continues, "sounds have to be cut for bandwith reasons."

"Sounds like a bag of coconuts!" I observe.

"Mmmmm," says Ryen, homerishly, "coconuts."