Monster Jam (2007 video game)

***Monster Jam*** is a 2007 arcade-style racing game developed by Torus Games and published by Activision, based on the monster truck league and live event tour of the same name. It is the first Monster Jam game published by Activision, the only one released during Live Nation’s ownership, and the third overall to be released (after Ubisoft's *Maximum Destruction* and *Monster 4x4: Masters of Metal*). It features twenty real-life trucks, including ones owned by Live Nation Motor Sports and independent racing teams.

The gameplay centers around various racing and freestyle competitions in large off-road areas or stadiums, with players competing against AI-controlled trucks or each other. In the Championship mode, the player can compete to unlock more trucks and venues, eventually arriving to the World Finals in Sam Boyd Stadium. The game features commentary from now-former Monster Jam announcer Scott Douglass, narrating over in-game events via prerecorded voice lines. The soundtrack is made up of both licensed songs and original compositions by Finn Robertson.

*Monster Jam* was released for seventh-generation consoles, PlayStation 2, and Windows personal computers on November 13, 2007 in North America, May 28, 2008 in Australasia, and May 30, 2008 in Europe; the North American Wii port came out on November 21, 2007. It received generally poor reviews from critics at the time of its release, with complaints directed at its slippery controls, bizarre physics, and simplistic gameplay. A sequel, *Urban Assault*, was released in October 2008, with refined controls and a focus on city environments.

## Gameplay

*Monster Jam* is a racing game in which players must drive a monster truck of their choice in various competitions. The single-player mode involves them attempting to beat AI-controlled trucks on either a race track or by scoring more points than them, while the multiplayer mode almost entirely consists of head-to-head racing. The game’s physics are highly unrealistic and exaggerated, as trucks can flip through the air, plow through almost anything with minimal effort, and survive crashes that would destroy the chassis and cause serious injury to the driver in real life. Strewn about each course are various destructible obstacles, including but not limited to crush cars, motorhomes, metal containers, wood logs, trees, crates of lemons, excavators, water towers, metal shacks, cacti, helicopters, billboards with the Activision or Taurus logo, gas stations, military aircraft, cargo planes, pirate ships, space shuttles, and UFOs.

The truck’s rear-wheel steering is controlled separately from the front wheels, moving in the opposite direction of the left control stick or directional keys (e.g., turning left makes the rear wheels turn right, and vice versa) and allowing them to perform donuts. The player can manually boost their truck's speed, visually indicated by fire shooting from its exhaust pipes. However, each use boost fills the red Overheat Meter in the bottom right corner; when filled, smoke will emanate from the engine and prevent the player from boosting for roughly 15 seconds. Destroying objects adds a blue “bonus boost” to the Overheat Meter, which can substantially extend a truck’s boost time. The player can respawn their truck at any time if it’s stuck or unable to recover, though this comes with a 2-second penalty. In stadium events, a truck's wheel can gradually become loose if it takes damage, and a hard enough hit will snap it off completely. Performing stunts and destroying obstacles adds to the Monster Points score counter at the top of the screen.

Destroying obstacles and performing stunts also add to the Monster Points counter (located at the top of the screen), which unlocks new trucks and Showcase videos. The player can respawn their truck if it’s stuck or unable to recover, though this comes with a 2-second time penalty. They will also respawn if they enter an out-of-bounds area (such as the audience). In stadium events, a truck's wheel can gradually become loose if it takes damage; a hard enough hit will then snap it off completely.

### Events and tracks

*Monster Jam* features thirty-eight total events, with twenty in large outdoor areas and eighteen in open-air stadiums. There are twelve Circuit tracks, four Stadium Circuit tracks, five Stadium Racing tracks, and nine Freestyle tracks.

Outdoor races are in one of four gigantic maps, themed to an excavation site amid industrial architecture (South East), a pine forest with a ski resort (Midwest), shipping port and naval base (Coastal), or military air base in the desert with UFOs (Southern). Each map has three racing tracks, with different directional signs and out-of-bounds areas changing the course. While the first two are relatively short and have three laps, the third is significantly lengthier and has only two laps, with One Hill Resort (Midwest) in particular taking at least 6 minutes to complete. Four types of outdoor races are available to the player: Circuit, an ordinary three-lap race against five AI-controlled trucks; Eliminator, in which the track is run in reverse and the truck in last place disappears after every other competitor clears the finish line, continuing until only the leading truck is left; Time Trials, where the player must complete a single lap around the selected track; and Cross Country, where the player is free to explore around the giant map without any opponents, laps, and restrictions. The PlayStation 2 version lacks the longer tracks, instead having one of the other tracks in reverse in its place.

Almost all stadium events share the same appearance and model, albeit with different signage featuring the logos of real-life stadiums, including the Florida Citrus Bowl, Qualcomm Stadium, the Metrodome, Reliant Stadium, Ford Field, the Edward Jones Dome, the Alamodome, and Dolphin Stadium. The last venue unlocked in the game, the World Finals, has a unique stadium model resembling Sam Boyd Stadium and a track based on World Finals 8. Stadium Racing and Stadium Circuit events both require the player to race against a single opponent in separate lanes—while the former is very quick and consists of a few jumps and turns, most of the latter’s tracks utilize a form of Over-Under Style and take up to a minute to complete. Meanwhile, Freestyle puts the player on a stadium track filled with ramps and obstacles, giving them 2 minutes to perform the most stunts possible and score enough Monster Points to win the competition. The game’s mechanics and physics are slightly different in Freestyle, as trucks can perform wheelies easier, cannot be manually respawned, and do not gain any bonus boost from destroying obstacles.

### Modes

*Monster Jam*’s single-player modes include Single Event, in which the player can select any available events and tracks, and Championship, where they must compete in four series of events consisting of Circuit and Stadium competitions and themed to one of the four outdoor racing locations. Finishing first in every competition of each series rewards the player with a corresponding trophy and unlocks the World Finals series, which only consists of Stadium Racing and Freestyle. Championship is the primary method of unlocking new trucks, events, and Showroom videos.

In the Multiplayer mode, the Xbox 360 and Wii versions of *Monster Jam* support up to four local players, the PlayStation 2 version supports only two, the Nintendo DS port supports online multiplayer via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, and the Windows release has no multiplayer whatsoever. Circuit, Cross Country, and Stadium Circuit events are available in this mode, alongside a modified version of Freestyle titled Battle Royale.

The Showroom gallery displays the first-place trophies and music videos unlocked in the Championship mode.

### Playable trucks

*Monster Jam* features twenty real-life monster trucks, including trucks owned by Live Nation Motor Sports and independent racing teams. It marks the first video game appearance of 2Xtreme Racing trucks, as well as Monster Mutt, Pastrana 199, Team Suzuki, Brutus, Monster Mutt Dalmatian, and Captain’s Curse—the last two debuted in the same year as the game’s release. The chrome twenty-fifth anniversary Grave Digger, run exclusively by Dennis Anderson at World Finals 8 earlier that year, is also included.

Trucks available from the start are **bolded**.

* Avenger
* Blacksmith
* **Blue Thunder**
* **Bounty Hunter**
* Brutus
* **Bulldozer**
* Captain’s Curse
* The Destroyer
* El Toro Loco
* **Grave Digger**
* Grave Digger 25th Anniversary
* Iron Outlaw
* **King Krunch**
* Maximum Destruction
* **Monster Mutt**
* Monster Mutt Dalmatian
* Pastrana 199
* Predator
* Scarlet Bandit
* Team Suzuki

## Development

On March 21, 2007, American video game publisher Activision announced a multi-year exclusive rights agreement between itself and Live Nation to publish games based on the latter’s Monster Jam live event series. Australian developer Torus Games worked on the first, then-untitled game with plans to release it by the holidays of that year. Only two days later, a demo was available for attendees at the Monster Jam World Finals 8 pit party, meaning it most likely entered development sometime in 2006.

Aaron Thompson, one of the game’s producers, shared several details of its development in an interview posted on Monster Jam’s official website less than a month before its release. According to him, Torus “worked closely with Live Nation and all the race teams to make sure that the digital representations were as close to the real thing as possible.” They “wanted to give the player the opportunity to take a monster truck outside of the stadium and experience environments that are fun to race through,” such as “an airplane junkyard, a ski resort in the mountains, [and] a shipping yard,” leading to the inclusion of the outdoor circuit races. They also wanted the levels to be very open-ended: “...We have multiple ways or paths to get through a race in the outdoor environments… The fun of all this is you can race three laps and each lap was completed by a different route.” Torus recorded the truck’s engine sounds at Digger’s Dungeon in Poplar Branch, North Carolina, which Thompson described as “by far the coolest part of the making of the game.”

### Release

The NTSC version of *Monster Jam* was released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, and Windows on November 13, 2007 in North America; a Wii port was released a few days later on November 21. The Windows port received a version 1.01 patch, released on January 10, 2008; it solved many issues related to the game’s audio, as previously, many sound effects would either not play (including the boosting sound, stadium audience, and water splashes) or become extremely garbled and loud. A few months later, the game was released for PAL territories, namely Australasia on May 28 and Europe on May 30.

## External video playlists

* Gameplay
* Soundtrack
* Miscellaneous

## See also

* List of Monster Jam games
* List of monster truck games

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 “Activision Signs Exclusive Multi-Year Agreement For Monster Jam”. *Gamasutra.com*. 22 March 2007. Archived October 14, 2023, at the Wayback Machine
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 “Monster Jam Video Game Announced”. *Gravedigger.com*. 21 March 2007. Archived October 14, 2023, at the Wayback Machine
3. ↑ “Monster Jam World Finals”. *CBS Sports Spectacular*, CBS, 2007.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 “Interview with Monster Jam Video Game Producer”. *Monsterjamonline.com*. Archived October 14, 2023, at the Wayback Machine
5. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20080312234449/http://www.torus.com.au:80/index.php?page=news