It appears that Carmageddon, "the racing game for the chemically imbalanced" that debuted way back in 1997, may be making a comeback at some point in the not-too-distant future. THQ Nordic, which has previously breathed new life into games including Darksiders, Red Faction, and Jagged Alliance, announced today that it has acquired the game from original developer, Stainless Games.
THQ Nordic has been growing at a remarkable pace over the past year. In February it swallowed up Deep Silver parent Koch Media, which gave it the rights to popular series including Saints Row and Metro, and more recently it snagged Kingdoms of Amalur, a bunch of previously Microsoft Store-exclusive games including ReCore, the Alone in the Dark series, Wreckfest developer Bugbear Entertainment, and Goat Simulator studio Coffee Stain. (Which does quite a bit more than just Goat Simulator, but that's the one we all know about.)
The acquisition is only for the Carmageddon series, and not developer Stainless Games, which will presumably carry on with other things. Aside from Carmageddon, Stainless has previously developed Magic Duels: Origins and Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers for Wizards of the Coast, and ports of old Atari arcade games for the Xbox Live Arcade.
The announcement says nothing about what THQ Nordic plans to do with the series, or when something might happen: the Carmageddon series was most recently seen in Carmageddon: Reincarnation, a crowdfunded sequel that was released in 2015. (A mobile game, Carmageddon Crashers, came out last year, but I'm not counting that.) It wasn't great, but the trailer below will give you a pretty good idea what it's all about.
