Sony Interactive StudiosAs a huge majority of action movies have demonstrated, if you can combine cars with explosions, there’s a good chance you’re going to have a hit on your hands. From James Bond’s tricked-out Aston Martin DB5 to the heavily modified fighting cars of Mad Max, genre fiction has always had a thing for turning automobiles into weapons. And, there is, perhaps, no finer or more deranged example of that trope working on overdrive than the invention of Twisted Metal. On November 10, 1995, the original Twisted Metal for the first PlayStation dropped, and no aspect of gaming was ever the same again. Before Twisted Metal, we did had racing games, and games where you could fire missiles and guns and blow things up. But Twisted Metal combined these subgenres and tropes in a way that had never really been attempted before. And perhaps most crucially, because Sony’s PlayStation was so new at the time — having only been released in North America in September 1995 — Twisted Metal was the first game on this platform that really proved just how different and special the console was.For those who were teens and tweens in 1995, this might seem obvious. But the difference between what you could play on the N64 (released in 1996) and what you could play on the PlayStation was largely defined by the existence of Twisted Metal. And because PlayStation had nearly a full year on the N64, that game-changing four-player mode pioneered by the N64 hadn’t become a thing yet.In short, Twisted Metal changed the entire mood of what a party game could be. It was, of course, a combat game, which meant the thrills were similar to Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat — which had existed for homeplay on Sega Genesis and SNES for a few years — but the fighting here wasn’t about punching, but instead, driving and shooting.Twisted Metal was also raunchy and gnarly without being outright sadistic. Although there had never been a game quite like it, the films of Michael Bay and the future-tense popularity of the Fast and Furious franchise make it seem like this game always existed, when in fact, it was extremely unique for its time. The original PlayStation in 1995. | Nikos Pekiaridis/NurPhoto/ShutterstockThe success of Twisted Metal created not only a new kind of gaming experience, but also, almost immediately, a bunch of imitators: Burnout and, in a sense, Grand Theft Auto in 1997. Perhaps the strangest Twisted Metal rip-off was the game Star Wars: Demolition. Instead of tricked-out cars, Demolition reimagined various Star Wars ground vehicles as instruments of destruction. And, of course, that game hit the PlayStation first.The legacy of Twisted Metal is hard to pin down, partly because although there were some games that were influenced by it, the actual Twisted Metal series has no rival and no peer. By 1996, the N64 utterly changed the landscape of multiplayer games in groups, but in 1995, Twisted Metal, in terms of a great time of yelling at your friends, reigned supreme.The over-the-top, often funny Peacock TV series adapted from Twisted Metal might have renewed some interest in the classic games in recent years. But when it comes to sheer audacity and originality, no one will ever top that first game.