A few days ago I had purchased the game Big Rigs in a sale for about two dollars; the shop looked pretty worn-down, and had few customers on that date, but they were all in another section: I was in the video games section.
Where I decided to buy the game. I didn't have much money, but I certainly did have $2 on me at the time, and it was the only game which sold for $2.
I had previously heard about the infamous game and it's large collection of bugs and decided to play the game for a few laughs.
The cover looked pretty well designed (albeit for a few bumps and dents near the back of the box), however I had heard about the misleading claims in it (the non-existent police in the game, for example) but I decided to let that slide for the time being, anyways.
Returning home, I took out the CD from its cover and opened the CD drive of my laptop. Seeing as how Big Rigs was a pretty old game, I figured it would run on my 2009 laptop. After taking out the CD, however, I did notice some black splotches on the CD, but decided anyways to put it in, as the worst that could possibly happen was that the computer would crash, and viruses were impossible seeing as I had bought and installed a pretty good antivirus just a few days ago.
Since I had AutoPlay disabled by default, I ran the file Setup . exe, followed the instructions (except for the part of reading the T&C -- I almost never did that) and pretty soon Big Rigs was installed on my computer; apparently the black splotches did nothing to hinder the progress of installation.
Although I had pretty much the whole afternoon remaining, I decided to play the game instantly because of my sheer curiosity; I had seen Alex Navarro review the game and I found it pretty funny, but I couldn't say for sure what the game was like unless I experienced it firsthand.
I went to All Programs and ran the file from the shortcut—I had Windows XP—and the screen quickly switched to black and after a while showed the normal Big Rigs title screen. I didn't pay much attention to this anyways, since most of the programs I installed that automatically switched to full screen made the screen flicker for a little while before straightening out.
I selected Custom Race from the menu and selected the truck MEGAONE, and clicked "Done"; soon I was taken to the track select screen, and I had 5 choices in front of me. I switched windows (Alt+Tab) and went back to Wikipedia's article on Big Rigs: It mentioned that there were 5 tracks, although the track "Nightride", on opening, made the game crash, so in actuality there were really only 4.
Since I didn't want the game to crash on my first attempt, I chose the first track, and played the game—it ran pretty smoothly except for a few dropped frames when I encountered a place that had a lot of lights and buildings—and tried everything that had previously been done.
It was funny for a while, but soon got pretty boring. After finishing the "race", I decided, for the sake of it anyways (and the fact that my curiosity was piqued—maybe the blotches had some significance?), to select the Nightride track. Knowing that the worst that could happen was a "fatal error" message and a CTD (called "Crash to Desktop" for those of you who didn't know).
As soon as I clicked "Race!", it cut to black, and showed the level, for some reason. I didn't expect this to happen. I had heard that the level caused the game to crash and the"patch" released by Stellar Stone just substituted the Nightride level for a mirrored image of the first track.
The beginning was similar to that of the screenshot of the Nightride level in the track select screen, although there were some flickering lights in the distance that switched on and off depending on your speed—in my case, it was off all the time since I hadn't started playing yet.
I surveyed the landscape for a while, taking note of the lack of movement of the other trucks, and soon accelerated, playing as if it was a normal level. I don't know why, but for some reason, I could hear myself repeating the very same words (silently) I had heard a long, long time ago: "You shouldn't have done that."
After a while, I saw more anomalies—the track frequently "disappeared", even though I was still in the level, and there would be intermittent sounds from the left side of my headset (I should mention I was wearing a headset at the time), each gaining in volume when I reached a checkpoint.
Seeing as how it was risky for me to wear the headsets any longer without damaging my ear (due to the loud noise in the left), I decided to take off the headset; I put it away, although it was still connected. (I should mention that although I took it off, I could hear it from afar)
The underside of my laptop soon began to heat up rather quickly, much faster than when I was playing relatively graphic-intensive games, and the CD-drive started to whirr and vibrate at a high frequency.
That's when I decided to force-quit the program, but just as I tried to, the truck increased speed, the sounds increased in volume (it's a good thing I removed the headset) and the drive began to vibrate very quickly.
(Ctrl+Alt+Del did nothing; neither did Alt+Tab, nor Ctrl+Esc)
I tried to eject the drive, but it didn't eject—the last time the drive vibrated, it had hung and I had to send it for repairs.
Things became hopeless, when suddenly all the noise stopped.
A few seconds later, I heard a soft noise.
Beep. Beeep. Beeeeep.
It was the oh-so-familiar noise that occurred when the computer hung. The sounds would repeat, and they would increase in volume; the only way to shut the program was to switch off the laptop via the power button. I pressed and held the button, expecting it to shut down in anywhere between 5 to 50 seconds. Only this time, it didn't. Not even after 5 minutes. - I knew I shouldn't have bought that CD.
It has been a few years from now and a while since I bought a new computer, this time a desktop with a much better graphics card. I managed to salvage the CD from the old laptop and decided, for nostalgia's sake, to keep the CD tucked away in the drawer near the computer, and I may open it again one day...