Twisted Metal is a vehicular combat video game developed by SingleTrac Entertainment Technologies and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation.  Released on November 5, 1995 in North America the game is the first installment in the Twisted Metal series.

The game places players in control of various modified vehicles in a competition to destroy all other vehicles in a contest to be the last one alive.   Once a year a mysterious man named Calypso who lives beneath the city of Los Angeles holds a competition called “Twisted Metal” which places contestants against each other in a battle to the death.  This year’s contest takes place on Christmas Eve of 2005 on the streets of Los Angeles and is the tenth annual running of the competition. The winner of the competition gets to meet the organizer of the competition, Calypso, who will reward the winner with a single wish.

The conception of the game began when Sony Computer Entertainment appointed David Jaffe of Sony Imagesoft to head the design of a game for Sony’s first home video game console, the PlayStation.    Jaffe along with fellow Sony Imagesoft employees Mike Giam and Alan Becker met with Evans & Sutherland, a commercial and military computer simulation firm that was contracted by Sony to create a game for the upcoming PlayStation console.  Initially the development team struggled to come up with an original concept for a game and ended up coming up with a concept after their brainstorming sessions while stuck in traffic.  The development team were inspired while being stuck in a traffic jam on Interstate 405, when they jokingly fantasized about using guns and missiles on the other vehicles to clear their way through the traffic.  They envisioned a Michael Bay style action movie going down the 405 freeway in L.A., with car combat scenes out of Mad Max.

The design team presented their idea for a vehicular combat game to the programmers at Evans & Sutherland who ended up modifying their idea into a pizza delivery simulation game.   The designers from Sony rejected their prototype and insisted on the more violent combat concept.  Employees from Evans & Sutherland joined the game designers to form SingleTrac Entertainment Technologies in the spring of 1994.   The newly formed studio was given a 12-month timeline and provided $2 million in advance royalties by Sony to develop two games for the PlayStation.