Jill Grant has been fixated on trying to drive over pedestrians while controlling one of the game's zany vehicles — a feat made impossible by the game's engine — since she was 9 years old and remembers the moment vividly. Era Error reached out to Jill for more details on the momentous journey.
"It all began one gloomy Friday night in 1999 at my family's humble abode. I had nothing to do because I was a loser, so I decided to boot up our family desktop computer. Luckily I found an icon of Midtown Madness and I double clicked to boot it up."
"Instantly I was hooked. As I started the single player portion, a disgusting Chicago accent told me to explore the city, so I did. Unfortunately being a 9 year old girl before the new millennium, my gaming skills were super shit and I was spazzing around all over the road. My little brother came in the room and started laughing at how fucking crap I was, which seriously pissed me off. It was at this moment I decided to take my rage out on the virtual road and attempted to run over some pedestrians."
"No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't do it. The little fuckers would jump out of the way! My brother then told me that he managed to run one over a few hours ago as he ran out of the room in a fit of laughter. That snarky comment spurred me on my quest to kill some innocent, virtual people!"
"Unfortunately the internet wasn't all that prominent back then and for many years I didn't know that the developers were forced to program the game to make it impossible to collide with pedestrians as Microsoft was scared of virtual mass murder (obviously no longer a concern). With my naivety in tact, I was still determined to achieve the pointless, degenerate feat so alas I persevered. For many, many years in fact."
"It didn't matter how many sources told me it was impossible to run over people in Midtown Madness; My brother said it was possible so it had to be true! I wasted 18 years of my life before I even came close to completing the redundant objective no one in their right mind would give a shit about. I live-streamed everyday for the past 5 years and I developed quite the following from dedicated fans who would encourage me with reverse psychological phrases to complete the task at hand. I thought they were being mean at first, but one subscriber definitely re-assured me that his insults were aiming for the opposite effect so I began to embrace it. It was during one of those streams that the seemingly impossible finally happened."
"I was still trying to ram every prick down using the same useless method from the past 18 years but expecting a different result. And do you know what? It fucking happened!!! The game blinked black for about a second and after that magical frame, the piece of shit Ford Mustang Police car rammed right through that soulless bitch and ended her life! All that hard work paid off and I have no one to thank but myself for this life changing achievement!"
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| The significant moment was captured via stream in front of Jill's endearing fans |
Interestingly however, we were able to reach out to Jill's younger brother Andy (now 24) which paints a different picture to the story.
"Well I think it's pretty obvious that I never ran over anyone in Midtown Madness. I was just fulfilling my role of being a shithead little brother. If I knew that attempting to run over a pedestrian would consume Jill's life and become an obsession for her over 18 years I never would have done it."
"It had just reached a point where she needed to stop! Luckily I now live near Bill Gates in Redmond, Washington and I asked him for a favour. He owed me for convincing Sony executives as a junior play-tester that Lair had the sickest control scheme and should be a focal piece of the PS3's early days."
Bill Gates says he is very generous with his donations to charity and Jill's struggle would not be an exception.
"Jill Grant's case is an immensely sad story of someone being such a stupid fucking idiot that I felt no choice but to help end her public embarrassment as I'm a charitable man and well... Off the record if I may?"
*We said no under our breath*
"To be completely fucking honest she was hurting the image of our new Mixer streaming platform as that became her program of choice. When she was using Twitch or Youtube I didn't give two fucks about her but after her switch to Mixer she left me no choice but to shut the idiot down!"
"Back on the record now... Ahem. So I called a programmer I know on Skype which still lagged like shit despite it being 2017 and he agreed to splice some footage of a beta build of the game into her stream where it was still possible to mow down pedestrians. We believe it's going to be a happy ending for all now that the charade is over!"
We reached out to Jill Grant one last time to ask her what she was going to do with her time now that the "Madness" if finally over:
I'm going to try and murder more pedestrians in Midtown Madness 2!
