Kingpin: Life of Crime is a first-person shooter developed by Xatrix Entertainment (now a part of Treyarch) and published by Interplay Entertainment in June 1999. The game begins with the player character wounded and beaten up by the Kingpin's henchmen, and the story follows his thirst for revenge. Released shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, the game attracted controversy which led it to be dropped from various retailers, despite receiving moderate critical acclaim.
The soundtrack for Kingpin was provided by the rap group Cypress Hill, and featured three tracks from their album IV. They were:
- 16 Men Till There's No Men Left
- Checkmate
- Lightning Strikes
Alongside the full versions of these tracks, instrumental versions with the vocals removed were used as backing tracks. Cypress Hill also provided some of the voice acting for the game.
Kingpin has quickly become one of my favorite games. I was interested in it when I was younger because it was a Quake 2 engine game and I love the blocky brush-based level design, but I could never get past the beginning of Kingpin. The game does not have a tutorial and you have to stealth a segment at the start that I couldn't figure out. I'm so glad...
Kingpin: Life of Crime was made by Xatrix Entertainment (eventually became Gray Matter Interactive) who also made Redneck Rampage, Quake II: The Reckoning, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. KP is an original one-of-a-kind grungy, industrial, thuganomics FPS with some RPG elements like a pawn-o-matic shop and gun mods. You play a nameless thug (he's...
