Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense is a vehicular combat game developed by Luxoflux and published by Activision for PlayStation, Dreamcast and Nintendo 64. It is the sequel to Vigilante 8. Gameplay 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. 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. Plot 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 world's 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 mistake. 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. Characters Many of the characters who previously appeared in Vigilante 8 return