18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker

Players start the game going from New York City, New York to Key West, Florida (shown here) driving a tank truck.

The main purpose of the game is to make it to the finish line with the truck's cargo. Players are given a set amount of time, but can ram into special vans that will add three seconds to the timer. There are several characters to choose from, each with a unique truck and attributes.

The game starts out in New York City, New York and players travel across the United States of America, ending in San Francisco, California. After Stage 1, the game gives the player a choice of trailer. One trailer is harder to haul, but provides a bigger payoff while the other choice is easier to haul but provides a smaller payoff. Money is deducted from the total when the trailer is hit. Players can sound the truck's horn to make other cars on the road yield and slipstream behind large vehicles to gain a momentary speed boost.

In addition to the time limit, players also compete with the "Lizard Tail", a rival trucker. Crossing the finish line before the Lizard Tail yields additional money. In between levels, players can park the truck in a minigame to earn more cash and upgrades for their truck, such as an improved horn.

The first port of the game was released on the Dreamcast. Released by Sega, it is faithful to its arcade counterpart, but the voice actors for the characters were changed and it lacks the arcade's cross-country map loading screens. One of the selectable truckers in the arcade version, Nippon Maru was now made available as an unlockable character. A split screen multiplayer mode was added, allowing two players to race against each other. The game was released by Acclaim Entertainment (who also released Sega's Ferrari F355 Challenge on the Dreamcast) on the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube after Sega stopped making consoles and became a software based company.

Reception

Review scores Publication Score Dreamcast GC PS2 AllGame [1] [2] N/A Edge 6/10[3] N/A N/A EGM 6.33/10[4] 5.5/10[5] N/A Game Informer 8.5/10[6] 6/10[7] 7.25/10[8] GamePro [9] [10] N/A GameRevolution C[11] N/A N/A GameSpot 6.5/10[12] 4.6/10[13] 6.3/10[14] GameSpy 6.5/10[15] 68%[16] N/A GameZone N/A 4.5/10[17] 6/10[18] IGN 7.8/10[19] 5/10[20] 5.5/10[21] Next Generation N/A N/A [22] Nintendo Power N/A 2.8/5[23] N/A OPM (US) N/A N/A [24] BBC Sport N/A N/A 72%[25] Maxim 6/10[26] N/A N/A Aggregate score Metacritic 67/100[27] 52/100[28] 61/100[29]

Rob Smolka reviewed the Dreamcast version of the game for Next Generation, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "18 Wheeler is definitely worth a weekend rental, but its lack of online play and limited number of stages in the arcade game flatten its tires."[22]

The home versions of the game received "mixed or average reviews" according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.[27][28][29]

AllGame gave the arcade version a score of three stars out of five and stated that it "does have a fairly thorough scoring system that some will take to, but it lacks the gameplay that great arcade titles such as Crazy Taxi possess. That isn't to say it's a bad game: it's beautiful to behold and will give you short term thrills, but it isn't one that you'll find yourself coming back to again and again after you've thrown down a couple of dollars playing it. In the end, it's a fun but short ride."[30]

• Big Mutha Truckers
• 18 Wheels of Steel
• American Truck Simulator
• Crazy Taxi (video game)

• "System 16: Naomi hardware". Archived from the original on 8 May 2006. Retrieved 23 May 2006.

• 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker at the Killer List of Videogames
• 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker at MobyGames