Early on Friday, Activision announced Vigilante 8: Second Offense for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Both games are slated for release this fall.

　　Second Offense is the sequel to the very popular vehicular combat game Vigilante 8, and it's being developed by exactly the same team at Luxoflux who created the original. According to producer Murali Tegulapalle of Activision , Second Offense is "still going to be vehicular combat game and we're still going to have some key characters and '70s overtones from the original to keep it within the Vigilante universe. However, we'll also be adding new features, vehicles, characters, etc., to take Vigilante 8 to the next level."

　　Some of these features are new weapons and power-ups (though there's no word yet on specifics), new cars (one car, however, will be returning from the original and several others will be probably available as secret cars), and new effects like fog, brake lights, exhaust, water effects, and other graphical enhancements. And Activision promises the explosions will be bigger and bigger than before.

　　Second Offense will have multiplayer, arcade, and quest modes. This time you'll have the option to play either alone or with someone in quest mode. "In addition to one- and two-player quests," says Tegulapalle, "we'll also have several variants on the arcade mode such as brawl, desperado, and team. Multiplayer modes on the N64 will include team and smear." Tegulapalle didn't specify exactly what each of these modes was, but if the names are any indication, they involve much car-crunching, either in conjunction with a friend or all by your lonesome (desperado).

　　The N64 version will also have three-to-four player modes and you can expect that the game will run faster that it did in the original. And in quest mode, which is purportedly going to have far more depth than it did in the original, "there will actually be a deeper story line for the sequel," says Tegulapalle. "We're still fleshing it out at this point, so it hasn't been finalized. However, it will be a sequel to the original." Which means you can reasonably expect to see some familiar faces.

　　"There will be some characters that will be returning," Tegulapalle says, and adds that there will be more new characters than old, and each will have his own weapons, currently being designed. "Since we're going to have characters that are even crazier than the original, you're going to see some insane special weapons."

　　The game will run on a modified Vigilante 8 engine but with a number of improvements. For one thing, the team is talking about adding a jump cam. The first- and third person cameras will definitely be available, but if the team can make it work, it will add a jump cam. And there are some additions to the modes as well.

　　Finally, Tegulapalle stresses that although this sequel will still clearly be a Vigilante game, it will not be a rehash of the original. "We're not going to make a sequel with just a few more characters, levels, etc. This is going to be far superior to the original in all aspects from the feature set, to characters and levels."