Planet of Death

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POD: Planet of Death (titled simply POD in North America) is a futuristic racing video game for Microsoft Windows released by Ubisoft in 1997.

Set in the distant future, the game's backstory tells that of a planet called Io (not to be confused with the similarly-named moon in Jupiter) which was colonised by humans. An accident in one of the mines unleashed a deadly virus, plunging Io into chaos. Most of the human population fled Io, though a few survivors left behind. With only one escape ship left remaining, the survivors tuned their cars and raced them in a series of tournaments, the winner taking the last ship and escaping to safety, leaving everyone else to die.

An expansion pack, subtitled Back to Hell (also known as Extended Time in France) was released in late 1997, adding 19 circuits and 15 new vehicles to the game. The base game, along with Back to Hell plus a new sound set, would be re-released as POD Gold.

The game was later followed by a Dreamcast-only sequel titled POD 2: Multiplayer Online (released as POD: Speedzone in North America). It follows a similar premise as with the first game, in this case a viral outbreak on Saturn's moon Titan.

Tropes used in Planet of Death include:

• Apocalypse Wow: The virus ultimately turned Io into a flowery planet-sized entity in the end.
• Beach Episode: The aptly-named Beach track in Back to Hell.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: While you can obviously trade paint with opponent cars, ramming them out of the track (and thus destroying them) isn't possible in-game unlike what was depicted in the intro.
• Excuse Plot: You're a colonist caught up in the cataclysmic viral collapse of a planet in the distant future. Are you a bad enough dude to race your way out of the wasteland?
• Full Motion Video: Specifically, the intro and ending sequences, as was customary at the time.
• Game of the Year Edition: The first game, along with its expansion and a new sound set, was re-released as POD Gold.
• Market-Based Title: The first game was simply titled POD in North America, while its sequel, POD 2: Multiplayer Online, was released in the states as POD: Speedzone.
• The Plague: The titular Pod virus, which was unleashed in a mining accident.
• Silliness Switch: Some of the content in Back to Hell—namely the beach track, a pirate ship and a witch riding her broom—were clearly added for fun's sake as it did not otherwise fit in with the game's futuristic setting.
• Storyboarding the Apocalypse: The game's narrator in the intro cinematic described Io's rise as a mining colony and tragic downfall when the Pod virus outbreak wreaked havoc in the planet.
• Subsystem Damage: Individual parts of a car can take damage, shown in the HUD as coloured segments representing the front and back sides as well as the wheels.
• Tech Demo Game: POD was one of the first games to utilise Intel's MMX instruction set (which was marketed extensively by Intel at the time), with OEM versions of the game bundled with certain computers running on Pentium or Pentium II MMX processors, and some AMD K6 systems (In practice however, the game's MMX support was limited to stereo and Dolby sound effects, and that's despite the fact that MMX could have been used to aid in software rendering on low-end hardware.) It was also one of the first games to support 3D acceleration out of the box, initially only supporting the Glide API used by 3DFX's Voodoo 1 GPU, with Voodoo 2 and Direct3D support in later patches; the OEM 1.0 release did not come with 3DFX support and required a patch to run on said hardware.