POD (known as POD: Arcade to differentiate itself from the original game) is a futuristic racing video game that was being developed for Arcade systems since 1996. The game was shown off at E3 1997 with a prototype cabinet at the UbiSoft booth, but no footage of it is known to exist, only screenshots. The game was cancelled sometime after, leaving POD: Arcade lost forever.
Gameplay[]
The gameplay was much the same as that of the original version, the only difference is that it was more focused on Multiplayer. As it is an arcade title, it likely lacked Singleplayer-focused features such as a Championship mode or Time Attack.
Cars[]
POD: Arcade featured 4 cars, each with 2 different paintjobs, bringing the total to 8 like the original.
Of these cars, only Jagg was released to the PC version of POD. It was released under the name "Jaero".
Track[]
POD: Arcade only featured one track. However, it was incredibly large, taking minutes to complete one lap. It was also a much easier track compared what one would expect from POD, likely because of the arcade setting.
History[]
Note: The following documentation comes from a private interview by Stiletto on May 10th 2002. As such, the information should be taken with a grain of salt.
Supposedly, in 1996 a representative from Intel saw the 3Dfx Voodoo version of POD (PC) and said that there could be a real market for an arcade version using a fast CPU and a 3Dfx Voodoo graphics card. So, someone from Ubisoft's marketing department went to POD's lead programmer and asked what he could do if given a top-of-the-line CPU and graphics card. POD's developers took the POD engine, added tons of polygons and textures (twice as much as the biggest track on POD retail), and made more complicated animations with more keyframes. The track was made easier (more arcade-like) and longer.
(Perhaps this was a first attempt by Intel at the ArcadePC specification.)
Ubisoft received two prototype 3Dfx cards during development (with a special version of the 3Dfx Glide SDK). These cards were each effectively two 4 MB Voodoo Graphics ("Voodoo 1") cards on one PCI card, giving a total of 8 MB of VRAM and two GPUs. We believe this might be a prototype of the Quantum3D Obsidian prior to their spinoff on March 31, 1997. Reportedly these cards were "made by Rendition" but that does not make sense because as far as we know Rendition only ever designed/made Vérité chips before eventually being acquired by Micron Technology. Regardless, in theory, only two prototype 3Dfx cards means that only two prototypes were ever made.
It has been theorized that POD Arcade was not released due to Ubisoft's inexperience at the time with marketing a game to the arcade game market and the challenge of making a Windows game stable enough for the arcade (not exactly easily patchable later). Also, the cost of the hardware when development of POD Arcade was almost finished would have been too expensive.[1]
Sadly, the original firmware was lost. However, fans somehow were able to get a hold of the track featured in the game and made it playable in the PC version. Although the cars were not recovered.
Trivia[]
- For whatever reason, screenshots of POD: Arcade were used to promote POD 2.[2]
- Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of several Nintendo franchises, played POD: Arcade on E3 1997.[3]
Gallery[]
References[]
| Games & Versions | POD ( POD: OEM · POD: Gold · POD: Extended Time) · POD: Arcade · POD 2: Multiplayer Online | |
| Story | Archives · POD: Alternatives · IO Gazette | |
| World | Cars · Tracks · Opponents · Characters | |
| Other Media | Credits · Soundtrack · Tools · Player Car Voting · Fan Sites | |