Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense

As in Vigilante 8, players control a vehicle and eliminate all other vehicles in the arena with the use of weapons and upgrades. The player can choose to play through a story mode, Quest Mode, or play with an assorted number of bots in Arcade mode. The game also offers a new two-player cooperative mode and a Grand Melee Deathmatch mode, wherein the player endures attacks by multiple AI opponents. Second Offense introduced the "Salvage Points" system, which allows the player to upgrade their vehicle by collecting Salvage Points from destroyed opponents, improving the vehicle's offense, defense, speed, and targeting abilities. The vehicle's external appearance is altered with more Salvage Points and turns into a completely different design when it is fully upgraded. Special icons scattered over the game zone allows the player to improve mobility over certain environments, such as hover pods, skis, and outboard motors.[2] The original game's five standard weapons - mines, rockets, autocannons, homing missiles, and mortars - are now supplanted by flamethrowers, with each weapon now capable of performing three special attacks using movements on the control pad. The Totaling and Whammy combat modes from the first game are also retained, as is the concept of stages with interactive features.

Completing secondary objectives in Quest Mode would also help unlock secret characters. Aside from being able to play music CDs, the player can also access the Vigilante 8 levels for multiplayer matches by inserting the game disc.

The game is set in September 1977, two years after the events of Vigilante 8. The southwestern United States has become peaceful in the wake of the Coyotes' defeat, but the Oil Monopoly Alliance Regime (OMAR) continues to dominate most of the global petroleum market, well into the 21st century. With new Coyotes leader Slick Clyde leading OMAR during the twilight of his life by 2017, Clyde thinks that a failure to conquer America (which has adopted nuclear and sustainable energy) would be his biggest regret. He plans to change history by stealing prototype time machines from Stanford University's quantum physics lab, travel back to the 1970s, and eliminate the Vigilantes to ensure OMAR's supremacy.

Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense was announced in 1998, initially with the title Vigilante 12, referring to the game's additional four characters compared to eight characters in its predecessor.[3] A school bus was featured in the game during development, but Activision expected to replace it with a prison bus because of "sensitivity to violence."[4] The Nintendo 64 version had production issues in its development, moving the release date to January, then February 2000.[1]

Brady Games released an official strategy guide on December 6, 1999. Written by Bart Farkas, the guide features all character information, walkthroughs, and cheat codes for all three releases of the game.

In December 1999, Chaos! Comics joined forces with Activision to release a Second Offense comic book. The comic further details plot elements that were barely tackled in the game, such as the aftermath of the Stanford University heist and Nina's rescue of Boogie. Although there was a preview issue, the series did not advance after issue #1.

The PlayStation and Dreamcast versions received "favorable" reviews, while the Nintendo 64 version received "average" reviews, according to the review aggregation website GameRankings.[5][6][7] IGN stated that the PlayStation version has improved in terms of car and environment variety, the physics engine, and gameplay, but the missions seem trite, adding that the game also bested Twisted Metal 4.[31] Joe Fielder of GameSpot lauded the same console version's upgrade system and the variety of songs in the game soundtrack, but was not as approving of the "aggravated" physics model and the graphics, which are just the same as the first game.[27] However, Greg Orlando of NextGen summed up the review of the Dreamcast version in just three words, "We take offense."[33] In Japan, where the PlayStation version was ported and published by Syscom under the name Vigilante 8: 2nd Battle (ヴィジランテ8 〜セカンドバトル〜, Vijirante 8 〜Sekando Batoru〜) on February 24, 2000, followed by the Dreamcast version on March 23, 2000, Famitsu gave it a score of 29 out of 40 for the former,[13] and 25 out of 40 for the latter.[12]

Despite positive reviews, Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense failed to sell well against its competitor, Twisted Metal 4. In October 2000, Activision declined to comment on a report that it had no plans to continue the series on the PlayStation 2 or any other new consoles.[35]

• Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense at MobyGames