>>717258908
I feel like part of it is that the basic Twisted Metal roster covers pretty much every segment of vehicle you'd expect- truck, cop car, hearse, semi tractor, obligatory construction machine, motorbike, military Humvee, and so on, and the stuff that's original ends up being so unique like Axel that it's unmistakeable. To not directly imitate that roster, the other games tend to have to either get 'weird' with the designs (school busses, the Weeniemobile, UFOs...) or just take a bunch of panel vans and stick shit on top of them (TM3/4, looking at you). I mean not even Twisted Metal itself is immune to it with the multiple Not-Specters in the PS3 roster and totally not cloning Rogue Trip's ambulance which is also totally not cloning the Ghostbusters Cadillac. but basically there are only so many wheeled types of death to pick from and by virtue of being first on the field, everyone else has to work around it.