Kingpin: Life of Crime
Kingpin: Life of Crime is a first-person shooter developed by Xatrix Entertainment and published by Interplay Entertainment in June 1999. The game begins with the player character wounded and beaten up by associates of the crime boss The Kingpin, and the story follows his thirst for revenge. Released shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, the game attracted controversy which led it to be dropped from various retailers in the U.S., despite receiving generally positive reviews from critics. The game was also ported to Linux. In 2020, 3D Realms had announced a partnership with Interplay  Entertainment to release a remastered version of the game, titled Kingpin: Reloaded. It was initially planned for a release in the middle of 2020, but due to development issues was delayed to an unspecified date. Background. Set in a quasi-retro time period, "Kingpin" features a mix of 1930s art deco crossed with modern technology and ideas. Many inventions are conveyed through an art deco style design, like helicopters and monorail networks. The setting is described by the game manual as a past that never happened. According to artist Viktor Antonov, the game was initially envisioned as "like "Blade Runner  with a gangster touch, before hip-hop group Cypress Hill got associated to the project, which in turn influenced the setting of the game, causing the science-fiction elements to be phased out in favor of a "realistic city". Set in a city, the world of "Kingpin" revolves around crime and criminals. The game begins in the most desolate and deprived area of the city, Skidrow, a dystopia where the population consists entirely of criminal elements, prostitutes, and transients. It is here that the player character has been left, after being beaten up by some thugs under the employ of  Nikki Blanco, one of The Kingpin's lieutenants. For some reason not explained within the game, Nikki Blanco wants the player out of his territory for good, and the beating is a warning that should he ever return, he can expect much worse. "Kingpin" is a game about revenge. Picking up a piece of lead piping as a makeshift weapon, the player plots against Nikki Blanco and The Kingpin himself. The player's rise to prominence, and his lust for revenge will take him through various areas of the city: from chemical plants through to steel mills and train yards , and eventually onto Radio City, home of The Kingpin's headquarters. The game was influenced by the films "Pulp Fiction" and "The Big Lebowski" which features many lines of dialogue and characters lifted from both films. A few primary examples would be the main antagonist "The Kingpin" being heavily inspired by the Marsellus Wallace character from "Pulp Fiction". The boss player's encounter known as "The Jesus" shares the same name and personality as the John Turturro character from "The Big Lebowski". Much of the NPC dialogue is lifted from film characters. Many generic NPCs will say "Forget about it  huh", which is another line from "The Big Lebowski" and many female NPCs will quote Jules Winfield from "Pulp Fiction" with such lines as the "That's cool and the gang!" phrase. Gameplay. Gameplay in "Kingpin" was most noted for its profanity-laden dialog and its graphic depiction of violence. An idea incorporated into the game was that of area-specific damage: a shot to the head deals more damage than a shot on the leg. To complement this, each game character also has a deformable skin, which indicates where and how badly the character had been injured. Injured characters  also bleed, and leave a blood trail making it easier to follow them. Instead of having a universal armor value for the player, armor is split into three different types, helmet, body armor and leggings, with separate values for each one. Another innovative feature of the game is the use of weapon modifications. Various mods can be used to upgrade the weapons in the game. The pistol, for example, can be modified to increase its firepower, or its rate of fire, among other things. "Kingpin" also features heavy NPC interaction for a first-person shooter; the player can interact with  NPCs and choose between positive or negative responses. This can lead to various outcomes such as gleaning new information, hiring gang members, or provoking an enemy into attacking. The NPC response to the player also takes into account whether the player's gun is holstered or not. Some areas, such as bars and clubs, which acted as hubs for the chapters, force the player to lower his weapon. The player can also hire gang members to join him, and in some cases this is necessary as the player would need an AI character's specific skill. Another new feature is  the introduction of cash. Fallen enemies can be searched for cash, which can then be used to purchase weapons and ammunition at the Pawn-O-Matic, a shop found in every chapter, except in chapter five. Cash can also be used to hire gang members. Soundtrack. The soundtrack for "Kingpin" was provided by the rap group Cypress Hill, and featured three tracks from their album "IV". These were: "16 Men Till There's No Men Left", "Checkmate", and "Lightning Strikes". Alongside the full versions of these tracks, instrumental versions with the vocals removed were used as backing tracks. Cypress Hill  also provided some of the voice acting for the game. Prior to the game's release, the group's song "I Ain't Goin' Out Like That" was used for the initial trailer in 1998. The song and "How I Could Just Kill a Man" were initially going to be included in the game, but was scrapped in favor of the tracks off of the newer "IV" album. According to producer Drew Markham, Cypress Hill's involvement prompted the team to make a more grounded and gritty approach to the overall setting. On the initial UK release of the game , a free Ministry of Sound album was bundled with the game. Controversy. "Kingpin" received a fair amount of controversy due to its graphic depiction of violence and heavy use of profanity. The game picked up increased media attention because it was the first high-profile first-person shooter to be released since the Columbine High School massacre. At that point, computer games were facing increasing pressure from Congress and lobby groups seeking an answer to what had influenced the Columbine killers. Calls for Xatrix to cancel the game were made by various congressmen; the game was debated on the floor  of the US senate and was singled out for criticism in the National Institute on Media and the Family's 1999 report on violent video games. In a response to this, Xatrix implemented a "safe" version, a password-protected game mode, which meant that the game would play with low violence and bleeped out swearing. Xatrix also stressed that "Kingpin" was not in any way, shape or form aimed or marketed at minors, with a warning message during the installation stage from Xatrix CEO Drew Markham himself: Still, the controversy led various retailers to not stock the game, including Best  Buy, Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us. Xatrix team member Greg Goodrich would claim later that "If it wasn't for Electronics Boutique, the game might have never seen the light of day in North America." Reception. The game received average reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. Erik Wolpaw of "GameSpot" was particularly impressed at the way that Xatrix had used the then two-year-old Quake II engine, calling the game world a "beautifully depicted metropolitan nightmare". Jay Boor of "IGN" enjoyed the game, noting its excellent level design and the advanced NPC interaction. "PC Gamer UK  described the game as an incredible achievement in terms of graphics, AI and level design "and" a nasty, bloody swear-fest". Incidentally, the most scathing reaction to the game came from Stephen Poole of the publication's US edition, who felt that the game was too shallow, offered nothing new to the genre and was peppered with bugs and oversights. John Lee of "NextGen" said of the game, "Although it doesn't stick to its theme of street-level crime, there's more than enough action and shocks to keep your interest." The most positive reaction to the game came  from "PC Zone", who concluded, "If you've got a strong stomach and [you] aren't offended by foul and abusive language, then "Kingpin: Life of Crime" is a beautiful thing, and one which could open the floodgates for more adult games." Initially for July 1999, the game had ranked #19 as the best-selling PC game of the month, as tracked by PC Data in the US. NPD Techworld, the firm that bought out PC Data and also tracked sales in the US, reported 76,189 units sold of the game by December 2002. A writer for "PC Gamer US  opined, Inevitably, the game tried too hard to be controversial—the cartoonish violence undercut whatever shock value was to be found in the four-letter language. Developer Xatrix went out of business right after the game's release." Overseas in the UK, the game fared better, and debuted as the #1 best-selling PC game for the month of September, as tracked by ELSPA. It would sink to #6 in October and slightly rise to #5 in November before leaving the charts completely. The game was nominated for "PC PowerPlay"s "Best Music" and "Best Firstperson Shooter (Single Player)" awards, both  of which went to "Half-Life". Legacy. Multiplayer for "Kingpin" was previously hosted on both heat.net and Mplayer.com in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Afterwards, multiplayer was hosted on Gamespy Arcade. Once Gamespy dissolved in 2014, the multiplayer was shifted to be primarily ran by an online fan community which contains a large archival library of downloads and active servers. "Kingpin" would prove to be Xatrix's last game; on the day that "Kingpin" shipped, Xatrix Entertainment ceased to exist. Many of their team reformed later to create Gray Matter Interactive Studios. A sequel to "Kingpin" was in production  at Interplay in 2004 for the PC and Xbox with a 2005 release date, but nothing came of the project. In 2014, the long-thought lost source code and publishing rights for "Kingpin" was questioned by Slipgate Studios' Frederik Schreiber. In 2016, Herve Caen responded, and confirmed that Interplay still held the rights to the game, but did not mention the source code. These two interactions would ultimately manifest in a remastering of the game by 3D Realms (where Schreiber would later work for), announced in January 2020 as "Kingpin: Reloaded". Initially set to be released in the middle of  2020, the missing source code required the developers to ultimately reverse engineer the original game, resulting in a delay to an unspecified date.