Once again, the comment I made on this video before it went live was deleted.

Anyway, had a lot of fun making this. Despite the fact that it took a whole month, it was quite rewarding to do. So fun in fact, I plan on doing the same thing for God Of War. Although I've come to realize there are so many God of War clones, that it would have to be a multi-part series. Also, because God Of War tends to be much more extensive, I'll probably only be covering 5 games at a time.

Just one more thing.

Are you brave enough to solve the secret codes in this video? Perhaps when you do, you might find out some secrets about the man behind the mask. Perhaps even... The other half. Also, don't scan that QR code.

V8 was my jam as a kid! Hours screwing around with the giant mutated ant! I still have my copy of rogue trip, bow down to big daddy!

Vigilante 8 was so good that it actually took the place as the alpha game of the genre between my friends and family; we used to play the hell out of that game, specially the first one

Fun fact: Vigilante 8 shares a universe with the Interstate 76 series. Taurus mentions Convoy trained him and even has a radio conversation with him during the I76 Nitro Pack intro

One major mechanic you didn't mention about Vigilante 8 is the fact that every weapon has a few special abilities that can be activated by inputting a sequence of D-pad inputs before firing. The homing missiles can be used to give you a speed boost, the turret can be fired in a buckshot spread, there are a bunch I can't remember. They're all written in the instruction book but nowhere in the game, so if you're emulating, easy to see why you missed them.

You get a Whammy when you hit the opponent with a combo. I think a vehicle special or weapon special has to be part of the combo. When you get one, your next attack does bonus damage. You can extend the combo to get double and quad whammies. So the idea is you use weapon specials to get a whammy, then use another powerful special like the buckshot to do crazy damage. The dune buggy with its minigun special is really good at getting double/quad whammies, letting you one-shot enemies with the buckshot.

Couple more things about V8 that differ from twisted metal

- Plot wise, the game isn’t the classic “Free For All” like TM is, where each vehicle has a certain wish they want to achieve.  The game instead pits certain vehicles in one group, the “Vigilantes”(good guys) against other vehicles, the “Coyotes” (bad guys).  If you picked a character from the Vigilantes, you would only face Coyotes vehicles, all except one.  This one you don’t face is essentially the “Final Boss” and would appear with an overload of weapons and specials in the final level after you beat all other players.

The weapons themselves have button combinations you can enter to enhance their abilities, these abilities could actually alter the map as well.  I remember one of the weapons shot something into the sky and would make a permanent dent on the map.  These special abilities were actually pretty awesome.

Story wise the game didn’t have much depth, but you could see in some endings that other characters on the same side would interact with one another.  It wasn’t as good as TM storytelling but some endings were interesting to watch.

V8 was definitely one of my favorite games of all time and I honestly liked the gameplay a bit more than twisted metal

That Vigilante 8 footage unlocked memories that were deep in storage. Wave of nostalgia.

When V8 came out I thought it was the next step in gaming evolution. Me and my friend would sit there and keep one enemy alive to destroy the whole town.

vigilante 8: second offense on the nintendo 64 was straight up my first ever video game, and it basically defined my love for car games and cars in general. i personally prefer it over twisted metal because of its less frantic controls and overall vibe, and it remains one of my favorite games ever. i absolutely love the “hotrod” upgrade system and the color customization. i personally mained the garbage truck as a kid, its special attack is basically mr slam lol
oh and about the stat drops from enemies, idk if you’ve already found this out but if you collect 50 of a certain stat a cosmetic accessory is put on the car(ram bars, spoiler, etc.) and if you collect 100 of every stat the entire chassis is upgraded to a badass “hotrod” version

Vigilante 8 was one of my favorite games growing up, to answer some of your questions: Whammies are basically combos, some weapons can be used that take longer to hit the enemy than others, causing 2 hits at the same time = a whammy. Totaling a vehicle is done with weapon specials (which you also failed to mention and I assume were not aware of), each weapon you pick up has 2 special attacks done in fighting game style button sequences. The game booklet that came with the game would give you one of the two specials for each weapon, and it was up to you to figure out the second secret one. The second one is the same code with the third direction reversed, for example if you equip the bullseye rockets you can do the weapons "roadrunner" special with the combination - UP, DOWN, DOWN, [Machine Gun] which launches a single missile out that will attach to an enemy vehicle and propel them against their will in whatever direction it goes, while the second special "Stampede" is done with the combination - UP, DOWN, UP, [Machine Gun], which fires all of its missiles like a machine gun really fast. To total an enemy- when you kill an enemy their car stalls and the horn begins honking, then after a few seconds they explode. The stall and horn is your "finish them" timeframe, landing a weapon special (one that does damage) on them will cause them to explode, leaving behind a black, charred frame of their vehicle

I'll say this for Vigilante 8 - it had a style. I still remember to this day Sheila's Tantrum Cannon. Also it had a leg up on TM2 by having animations for all the various weapons deploying out of your vehicle.

Vigilante 8 2nd offense was the first game that gave me the feeling of playing something like a next-gen game

also fun fact about vigilante 8 is that it also has combo system as well. An example of one of the combo's you can use turns the seeker missile into a turbo booster, another combo turns the mortar into a tactical nuke which can all be utilized using certain button inputs on the d-pad. This in turn gives Vigilante 8 and second offense a lot of depth to its combat.

I love Rogue Trip. It’s often considered the real Twisted Metal 3 and I used to play it as a kid way more than the other actual Twisted Metal games.

8:29 To give them credit: "No Deck Swabbers past this point" isn't as rude as "No losers allowed beyond this point" and the sign doesn't look like they trashed it like in TM2.

17:26 Totalling was using a special move on a wrecked car. TBP may not have known they existed: You would - for example - press 'left, right, down, fire' with the turret to perform The Cow Puncher; a green shot that used a few bits of ammo and launched your opponent into the distance! I think each of the mortar, missiles, etc, all had two unique and interesting special moves and obviously performing these moves while trying to keep the vehicle going where you wanted it to was super hard! An amazing innovation in the genre IMO

Vigilante 8 is my favorite. There is a code where you are alone on the level and have free reign to destroy everything. When creating matches, my fave was driving the bus and facing a swarm of those leprechauns.

I always saw Rogue Trip as the trurer Twisted Metal 3 than the actual TM3.

Ah man, Vigilantee 8, that was the car combat game we had during our time on the PS1. Still good memories of mastering the weapon combos and finding the secret areas (and infuriating my dad by abusing both of these on versus.) As far as total and whammy, iirc whammy is indeed as stated, where it's just multiple weapon attacks timed with each other, whereas Total is specifically hitting a dying enemy with a combo ability or special weapon to instantly destroy them. Just extra flairs.
Honestly the combo moves are always what makes Vigilantee 8 stand out to me the most, short little 3-button combos on the directionals that do these nice little effects. By far the one I always abused was Afterburner (Up-Up-Up Fire MG) with the homing missiles, as it allowed a much easier time getting into the hidden areas on levels with some of the slower, clunkier vehicles like Milo and his school bus.

For Vigilante 8, you are correct that the whammies happen when you stack more then one attack, however it isn't just a counter at the end, whammies multiply the damage done by the stacked attacks!  There are also two special attacks you can do for each weapon by imputing a simple 3 button d-pad command before hitting the machine gun button.