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POD - Planet of Death is a race game of extra class. On 16 futuristic courses the driver has to demonstrate his skill. This is not so easy, for he has to master extreme jumps and difficult tracks. Although the game was published already in 1997, it makes a lot of fun even nowadays. The reason for this is the genial graphic and the very good drive behaviour of the racing cars.

While designing the raceways, the designers let their phantasy free run. Since the races happen on planet Io, the physical rules of earth seem to play no role. The sky shines often with the craziest colours, the landscape remembers at surrealistic pictures of Salvador Dali.

Ubisoft achieved with POD the big hit. Intel buyed 2,6 million pieces of the title in advance, because it was optimized especially for MMX processors. These POD versions were enclosed computers of Dell and other manufacturers. The OEM versions, however, contained only 10 to 12 tracks and were also slightly restricted in comparison to the retail version.

POD - Planet of Death is a race game of extra class. On 16 futuristic courses the driver has to demonstrate his skill. This is not so easy, for he has to master extreme jumps and difficult tracks. Although the game was published already in 1997, it makes a lot of fun even nowadays. There’s a literal need for speed with UbiSoft’s Planet of Death. Hightailing on the wave of late 90s 3D gaming is POD (Planet of Death). Playable on both MMX and non-MMX machines with acceleration support for the 3Dfx, ATi Rage, and S3 Virge chipsets (though with no support for straight Direct 3D), POD is one of the few games to support. The basis of the game is due to a virus outbreak on a recently colonized planet Io, you are one of the last people stuck on the planet doomed for destruction (POD stands for Planet of Death). Using parts from factories that have been shut down, you soup up your car to.

Ubisoft offered the owners of POD the chance, to download new cars and tracks for free from its website. A network modus increased the fun of the game additionally. Up to eight persons could play against each other via network, Internet or modem connection.

At the end of 1997, Ubisoft issued an expansion with the title “Back to Hell”. This add-on offered 19 tracks which were for the most part obtainable from Ubisoft’s website (except Beach, Hellway and Night). The CD contained also 15 new cars. The tracks of “Back to Hell” were even stranger than those of the original game. One track lead on a long sand beach to medieval castles. Another through a giant cemetery with dusky gravestones.

Late in 1997, Ubisoft issued also “POD Gold”. This version had instead of 16 now 32 tracks. The number of the cars had doubled as well. It was now 16 instead of 8.

POD was one of the first games that were optimized for graphics cards of 3dfx. Firstly, this pertained only the Voodoo1. Later Ubisoft published patches for the Voodoo2 and also a Direct3D-Patch. However, especially the latter is not up to date anymore. On some graphics cards it may happen that all textures are missing.

To bypass this problem, there are three different possibilities:

1. Buy POD Gold of the companyGood old Games (GOG), download and play it. This new version of 2011 is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7! However, the maximum resolution is limited to 640x480 (800x600 with PodHacks).
2. Download nGlide and install it! nGlide is a free glide wrapper. With its help you can play many old games. For further information regardnGlide - Compatibility list.
3. Download dgVoodoo and copy it into the installation folder of POD (see below)! dgVoodoo is a glide wrapper as well. But its handling is a bit more complicated.

If you want to use nGlide together with POD you have to pay attention to a few things:

• in order to install POD with 3dfx Glide support, a glide driver has to be in C:WindowsSystem32 (C:WindowsSysWow64 in 64 bit version of Windows 7)!
• install POD in compatibility mode for Windows 95 (see below)!
• install 3dfx-Patch and Forcefeedback-Patch (if necessary, see below)!
• copy POD_P4AMD_Patcher or PodHacks into the POD folder and execute it (see below)!
• set 'Vertical synchronization' Option to 'On' in nGlide configurator
• if you encounter a grSstWinOpen error, delete ir32_32.dll and ir41_32.dll files from Windows System32 (or SysWow64) directory

Here is the method to play the original retail version (full version) of POD from the year 1997 with dgVoodoo (users of graphics cards of AMD/Ati should regard the hints below that):

1. Unpack the glide driver for the Voodoo1 into the System32 folder of Windows XP (e.g. in C:WindowsSystem32). If you play POD in the 64 bit version of Windows 7, you have to copy them in the SysWow64 folder (e.g. in C:WindowsSysWow64). With the help of the glide driver for the Voodoo1, you can install POD with 3dfx support. Hint: The glide.dll and the sst1init.dll can later be deleted.
2. In Windows you have to click the setup.exe of the POD CD-ROM with your right mouse button and choose the compatibility mode for Windows 95 in “Properties”!
3. Install POD with the option “Middle installation for MMX with 3Dfx” or ”Large installation for MMX with 3Dfx”! The middle installation needs 81 MB on your harddrive, the large installation 198 MB. To see all options, click during installation first the “Change” button, and then click the “Show all” button.
4. It is possible that the installation fails with the notice that a video driver could not be installed (e.g. “Failed to make 1st IV41 registry entry”). In this case you should install POD once again. This time, click on the button “Test software...” and disable the test “Indeo VFW”!
5. After POD has been successfully installed, reboot your PC and install the 3dfx-Patch for POD (not necessary for POD Gold)! If it does not work, simply start the “UsePatch.exe' again or click it with your right mouse button and choose the compatibility mode for Windows 95 in “Properties”. Owners of AMD-CPUs should after this install the Forcefeedback-Patch!
6. Create a shortcut for the podx3dfx.exe (or the wpod3dfx.exe) that is now in the POD directory on the desktop. The old shortcut can be deleted. Hint: You can play POD without the shortcut, too. Simply double click the podx3dfx.exe (or wpod3dfx.exe) later.
7. Copy all files of dgVoodoo 1.50 Beta2 in the installation folder of POD (e.g. c:UbisoftPOD2_0). With the help of the dgVoodooSetup.exe you can configure options of dgVoodoo. You can increase the game resolution to 1024x768 or more in the menu “Glide” in “Resolution” ! Important: In Windows it is possible that you have to click the dgVoodooSetup.exe with your right mouse button and choose the compatibility mode for Windows 95 in “Properties”!
8. Reduce the colour depth of your graphics card from 32 Bit to 16 Bit! If you try to start POD in 32-Bit mode, you get the warning: “POD cannot run in Win95 8/24/32 bits graphic mode”. Hint: It isn’t necessary to use the 16-Bit mode, if you apply the POD_P4AMD_Patcher or PodHacks!
9. To prevent that the racing cars are too fast in POD, you should activate the vertical synchronization (vsync) of the graphics card!
10. If you have an up to date processor, execute POD_P4AMD_Patcher or PodHacks! They should be for simplicity reasons in the installation folder of POD before started.
11. Start POD with the shortcut on the desktop (or by double clicking the podx3dfx.exe resp. wpod3dfx.exe).

Owners of the OEM-Version of POD must proceed a little bit different:

1. In Windows you have to click the setup.exe of the POD CD-ROM with your right mouse button and choose the compatibility mode for Windows 95 in “Properties”!
2. Install POD with the option “Middle installation for MMX” or ”Large installation for MMX”! The middle installation needs 82 MB on your harddrive, the large installation 199 MB. To see all options, click during installation first the “Change” button, and then click the “Show all” button.
3. It is possible that the installation fails with the notice that a video driver could not be installed (e.g. “Failed to make 1st IV41 registry entry”). In this case you should install POD once again. This time, click on the button “Test software...” and disable the test “Indeo VFW”!
4. After POD has been successfully installed, reboot your PC and patch POD with the 10x21E.exe to the retail version! Start the 10x21E.exe, let the files be unpacked to C:PODPATCH and execute from there the UsePatch.exe.
5. Now install the 3dfx-Patch for POD twice! Owners of AMD-CPUs should after this install the Forcefeedback-Patch!
6. Create a shortcut for the podx3dfx.exe (or the wpod3dfx.exe) that is now in the POD directory on the desktop. The old shortcut can be deleted. Hint: You can play POD without the shortcut, too. Simply double click the podx3dfx.exe (or wpod3dfx.exe) later.
7. Copy the files of dgVoodoo 1.50 Beta2 into the installation folder of POD (see above).
8. Reduce the colour of your graphics card from 32 Bit to 16 Bit! Hint: It isn’t necessary to use the 16-Bit mode, if you apply the POD_P4AMD_Patcher or PodHacks!
9. To prevent that the racing cars are too fast in POD, you should activate the vertical synchronization (vsync) of the graphics card (see above).
10. If you have an up to date processor, you have to execute POD_P4AMD_Patcher or PodHacks! They should be for simplicity reasons in the installation folder of POD before started.
11. Start POD with the shortcut on the desktop (or by double clicking the podx3dfx.exe resp. wpod3dfx.exe).

Now you can play POD on a current system - hopefully :-))

Important hints for owners of graphics cards of AMD/Ati:

1. Copy all files of dgVoodoo 1.31 into the installation folder of POD!
2. Run dgVoodooSetup.exe from there! Use “Windowed mode” in Global and “Emulate W-buffering” in Glide!
3. Copy PodHacks into the installation folder of POD! Run it and make sure that 'Prohibit confining the Cursor to the window area' is activated!

Tip: According to the graphics card and driver you have, AMD/Ati cards can also work with more current versions of dgVoodoo. In these cases, however, one should choose as Renderer API “Direct3D9” in dgVoodooSetup.

Here are the dgVoodoosettings of my system (Nvidia graphics card):

On big hard drives it is possible that you can’t install POD. This is likely, if the hard drive has several partitions (c:, d:, e: etc.) and if you try to install the game in d: or e:. It may happen that the message appears that there is too little storage space. In this case you should install POD in drive c:!

POD was developed at a time, when the Pentium 233 MX was the king of the CPU creation. On current systems the game is therefore much too fast. To avoid this, there is (as mentioned before) the possibility to activate the vertical syncronization of the graphics card. But you can also slow down POD in another way: By he installation of the Game Service 2-Patches (GS2). This consists actually on two patches - the GS2-Patch and the GS2-POD-Patch. Through the latter, POD will also be patched to the last current version (2.2.9.0).

The Game Service 2 was originally intended, to play against other POD fans on the servers of Ubisoft. However, Ubisoft offers presently no more possibility to play POD online. This is only possible for new titles like Rainbow Six 3, Far Cry, Ghost Recon or Splinter Cell. Because the two GS2-Patches make POD noticeably sluggish, you should only install them, if you really need them.

If you want to add new tracks and cars to your existing POD installation, you must use the CDPatcher (version 2). You can find the Readme here. If you want to use the CDPatcher.exe in Windows XP, it is important that you click it with your right mouse button and choose the compatibility mode for Windows 95 in “Properties”. For a proper install of new tracks and cars you should orientate yourself on following scheme:

In this example, CDPatcher.exe is in the folder “cdpatcher”. This folder must have two sub folders named “circuits” and “voitures”. In the sub folder “circuits” come the folders with new tracks (e.g. Azthec and Iceberg), in “voitures” come the folders with the new cars (e.g. Akura and Fuego).

Important: If you already have installed POD on your computer and you wish to install it new, you should remove it completely before! Reason: The uninstall program of POD removes the game not completely. If there remains something of the old POD on the system, this can lead to a failure in the new installation! Therefore:

1. Remove manually the installation folder of POD (e.g. c:UbisoftPOD)
2. Remove manually the Ubisoft folder in the windows directory (e.g. c:WindowsUbisoft)

Hint: If dgVoodoo is only replaced by a new version, a new installation is not necessary, of course.

Links:

• Planet of Death: Wikipedia article about POD
• Witnessteam: French-English page with new skins and sounds
• Ubisoft POD USB Patch: solves problems with some USB controllers (by Paul Geisler)
• POD Forum GOG.Com: Forum at Good Old Games
• Murmuran.net: POD forum in French and English

Here are the cheat codes for POD. If you want to deactivate them during the game, simply type them again:

Hint: Since the screenshot function of POD uses a special format (RAW), it is better to use dgVoodoo for screenshots. If you want do this, activate in the dgVoodoo setup “Screen capturing on”! In order to make pictures of the game, press the “Pause” button (Windows XP) respectively the “Scroll Lock” button (Windows 98). Besides, dgVoodoo saves the screenshots in the tmp folder of the partition where the game was installed (usually drive c:)!

Tips:

• With the F2 key, you can change the view during the race!
• It’s quite annoying, to permanently type “mirror”, if you want to race a track in the opposite way. But there is a trick to get the “Reverse” button: Open the Ubi.ini (normally located in C:WINDOWSUBISOFT) and make following entry in the [POD2_0] section:
  Tonneau=167 132 18 130 195 61 13 119 226 125

Credits:

Some of the above mentioned information were taken from the old POD Underground Website of RedLine.

I would like to thank Dege, the author of dgVoodoo, for the patch who makes it possible to see also the textures on the racing cars.

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POD is a 90s post-apocalyptic futuristic racing PC game. Remember when there was loads of these futuristic racing games back in the day? You’ve got your wipEouts, your F-Zeroes and among them all you’ve got this classic from Ubisoft, POD. The reason I remember POD so well is that we got this game free with our first family PC. Read my POD PC review below.

When the Pentium 2 PC processor came out, a big deal was being made over its MMX technology. My parents bought a Pentium 2 PC 1997 and it came with a bunch of bundled PC games, optimised for these MMX processors. Among them was this futuristic PC racing game by Ubisoft, POD. Mate, this game. It blew my mind. I remember thinking it was the coolest thing. Crisp 3D graphics, CD quality sound and music; it had it all. I played that game for hours and hours with a Logitech Wingman joystick of all things. The worst part about POD though, is that because it was so optimised for MMX processors it basically didn’t work on anything else. Since my parents scrapped that Pentium 2 PC years ago, I never managed to play POD again. One of the reasons I built my MMX Pentium 3 retro gaming PC was because I wanted to run POD. I’ve kept the original CD-ROM all these long years, waiting for this opportunity.

If like me you have a physical version of the game, there’s a minefield of PC patches. There is a 3DFX patch for your 3D accelerators (In fact, POD is one of the first PC games to support 3DFX). POD 1997 can run in 800×600 with a regisrty fix, but it’s otherwise locked to 640×480 as seen in the screenshots. The GOG.com PC version of POD Gold is also locked to 640×480 but is all patched up ready to play.

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The story is pretty bonk, but then again driving games don’t need a story. POD is set on the planet Io. Some miners dug down into the deep and OH MY GOD they unleashed an ancient evil. It’s – I dunno – a big all-consuming virus that’s taking over the entire planet and killing everything. So everybody gets on ships to leave the planet behind. But there’s eight people left, and there’s only one seat left on the last ship leaving. So they do the only sensible thing imaginable in that situation and they have a death race by modifying and adapting mining equipment into SUPER AWESOME RACE CARS. Seven people will be left to their doom while one lives to race another day I guess.

The cars themselves are excellent. All weird shapes and grungey textures. Each car’s specs can be modified and customised by the player which I like. So essentially you choose the car you think looks the coolest, you don’t have to trade off. Set the speed / acceleration to your preference then get racing! You choose one of your eight cars (12 iirc in POD Gold), you go through all the fifteen courses. The courses are all absolutely bananas. They’re brilliant. These post apocalyptic, almost Mad Max-esque tracks are all built around the themes of abandoned cities or ruined mines etc. Fitting to the silly backstory, and a detail that’s probably better-realised than it really needed to be. The courses are pretty detailed for a 1997 PC game and they’re all tied together with this great 90s grungey aesthetic that 12-year old me just loved. Oh, there is also a giant spiders nest though, which I have no idea about.

The game plays out in a very typical racing game fashion. First place gets 8 points, second place gets 7 points; all the way down to 8th place who gets one point. After 15 races whoever’s got the highest score is the one who gets on the shuttle. Quality. Physics was a bit of a novel concept in 1997 and so Ubisoft are clearly trying to show off here. Heavier cars stick to the road like glue but lighter cars skate around corners as if they’re driving on glass. The cars lose LOADS of momentum going uphill, but they don’t half put some mustard on it when they’re going downdale. Hitting two cars together causes them to rattle off one another like snooker balls which can be pain in the arse or a massive bonus depending on which car benefits from that inertia. On the higher difficulty levels the cars will even take damage, with a damage model dividing up sections of the car. The physics calculations even go toward how much damage is dealt out. Not a big deal now, but for 1997 it’s worth mentioning. But in a way, by adding in the damage model I feel that Ubisoft needn’t have bothered with all the physics stuff if they didn’t want you to be banging into each other.

One thing of note is the game had online multiplayer. In 1997. Don’t think servers are still up but you can do local split screen too which is really rare for PC games.

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POD is still a really fun PC racing game. For me there’s a lot of nostalgia attached, but objectively it’s up there with the best arcade racers on a retro PC. Arcade racing PC games are always fun and it’s a genre we don’t see too much of. I love a bit of Killer Loop, I love a bit of Rollcage and it’s nice to have some extra variety on that racing retro PC game front. I’ve got quite a lot of these 90s futuristic racing PC games so I’ll be doing a bit of a rundown or a best of at some point because this is a wicked genre, man. The reason I started Second Wind reviews is to talk about old PC games that you can play on both new and old machines, to give them a Second Wind yourself. POD is available on GOG for less than a fiver so for the price of a pint in a London pub you’re getting something that will last longer and almost certainly be more fun. Cheers!

Screenshots for this POD PC game review were taken from the GOG.com product page and from oldpcgaming.net

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[…] But I don’t want to sound like a total bellend so I’m going to go with Fury 3. Along with POD, Fury 3 came with my first computer, our family Pentium 2 PC. I have really strong memories […]