Cro-Mag Rally

Cro-Mag Rally is a kart racing game developed by Pangea Software and published by Aspyr, which takes place in caveman times. It was originally released for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, and was later ported to iOS, Xbox 360, Android, and Windows Phone 7.

Gameplay
Inspired by Mario Kart, the game centers around two caveman racers, Brog and Grag, in vehicles made out of materials associated with cavemen, as they race through stages of ancient history. The goal is to guide the caveman through different sets of tracks that include hazards, such as pits and tornadoes. Each course is unlocked from the start, and are made of 3 laps each with several difficulty options. During the race, the players can pick up power ups (including bombs, nitro, tire traction, and oil slicks) that can be used against the opponents. Every one of them will last 15 seconds. At the beginning, only a few vehicles are available. They all behave diversely, making a distinction in control, speed, suspension and traction attributes. However, as progress is made, all eleven vehicles can be unlocked.

The iOS version uses the accelerometer for steering left and right, with specific touch-screen buttons for driving forwards or backwards and using weapons. A variety of options can be adjusted separately, like steering sensitivity. It has two game modes: Race, with a focus on beating the others to the finish line, and Gather, which relies on picking up arrowheads on the track as fast as possible.

The single-player mode consists of a Practice Mode, where the players can test the vehicles and tracks, and a Tournament Mode with nine stages divided between three periods: the Bronze Age, the Stone Age, and the Iron Age. To progress in the game, the player has to finish a race in third position or higher, while collecting eight arrowheads across the level at the same time. There is a Physics Editor, which allows the player to alter elements of play such as speed, acceleration, suspension, and traction of each car, as well as gravity.

Cro-Mag Rally has multiple multiplayer modes. In the original Mac version, the game allows up to six players to compete via LAN. A number of modes are available, such as Race, Tag, Survive, and Quest For Fire. Race is the usual mode with the players having a battle for first place. There are two versions of Tag, both being each other's opposites: Keep-Away and Stampede. Keep-Away begins with one player being "it", with the goal of being the last man standing by avoiding elimination by not being "it" and ends when all but one of the players have been eliminated by being "it" far too long. Meanwhile, in Stampede, the winner is whoever has managed to be "it" for two minutes. Survive has the players fight by slamming into each other and firing weapons until one player is left. Similar to the game Capture The Flag, Quest For Fire splits the players into two teams, trying to seize five torches from the enemies and move them to their base.

Release
Cro-Mag Rally initially released for Mac OS 9 in October 2000 as the third in Pangea Software's line of 3D games. Following the developer's transition to focus on iOS development, a port was released for iOS in 2008. Three years later in 2011, a port for Windows Phone 7 was produced by Citizen 12 Studio. The same studio released a port for Xbox 360 in January 2012, and an updated "Extreme!" version the following month. The Citizen 12 Studio ports offered multiplayer via Xbox LIVE, while the iOS port offered four-player multiplayer via Game Center.

In 2022, game developer Iliyas Jorio released a free and open-source updated port of the game on Itch.io for Windows, Linux, and macOS with the permission of Pangea Software. In keeping with the original release order of Pangea Software's games, Cro-Mag Rally was the third game rewritten to be playable on modern operating systems, following Bugdom and Nanosaur.

Reception
Cro-Mag Rally has received mixed reviews. A reviewer for Inside Mac Games gave the original Mac version an 8.5 out of 10, praising the game's graphics, gameplay and audio. A reviewer for Windows Central gave a negative review of the Windows Phone port, criticising the controls, gameplay and graphics, and compared it to a straight port of E.T the Extra-Terrestrial with Xbox achievements.