It was originally released on the PC (for DOS) in 1997, but has since been ported to Nintendo 64 (2000) and Game Boy Color (2001).
In Carmageddon, the player races a vehicle against a number of other competitors in a (usually) surburban setting. The player has a certain amount of time to complete a specified number of laps of a course, but more time may be gained by going through checkpoints, collecting bonuses, damaging the competitors' cars or by running over pedestrians.
In many countries (including England and Germany), the game when released contained zombies instead of people, as running over the undead was considered more acceptable to the general public. Unofficial "blood patches" were rapidly released by members of the community to replace the zombie graphics and sound with the more gory versions.
The tag-line for the American release was "The racing game for the chemically imbalanced".
Later on in 1997 an expansion pack entitled the Carmageddon Splat Pack was released. This added a lot of extra tracks and cars, and added support for GLIDE, the API used by the dominant line of 3D accelerators of the day, 3Dfxs Voodoo range.
The other games in the series are: