TrackMania Racing Construction Kit Revealed

Thanks to Eurogamer for their first impressions of PC racing game construction title, TrackMania. The preview explains: "Imagine RollerCoaster Tycoon where you can hop in a truck and zip around after you've laid the final block. That's TrackMania", and notes that "[the developers] Nadeo promise that track designs will be swappable, downloadable and just a few kilobytes in size." The marvellously-named Fappin has info on a public Beta test, as well as showing pictures of the crazier tracks for this "odd mix" of racing and strategy, which the previewer compares to cult 2D title Elasto Mania in terms of value.

Racing Destruction Set Anyone?

[Woodie]

Hey -

this sounds like the old Racing Destruction Set from Electronic Arts... Back in the day, on my C=64 setting the gravity to the same as the moon of Io. Sure, maybe it didn't look as nice, but the concept seems similar.

Re:Racing Destruction Set Anyone?

[Graelin]

Exactly my first thought. Also similar to a game called "Stunts." I believe EA published it?

I've always thought those were some of the best racing games out there.

Let's hope they put oil slicks and the other weapons for Racing Destruction Set!!!

Re:Racing Destruction Set Anyone?

[LostSinner]

god, i remember 'stunts' as one of my favorite games of all time. i used to spend hours building insane tracks just to see how wicked a crash i could manage to pull off. you'd smash into the corner of one of the ramps and somehow manage to go 300 feet straight up in the air. my brothers and i had an ongoing challenge to gain the longest airtime... as of a few years ago (yes, we still play it sometimes), we were sitting at about 13 minutes.

it was also one of the first games i remember which allowed you

Re:Racing Destruction Set Anyone?

[jgoemat]

Yes, I wasted almost an entire summer in elementary school playing Racing Destruction Set on my C64 with my brother and friends, let's hope it has all the options for cars, weapons, gravity, etc.

Re:Racing Destruction Set Anyone?

[Basje]

check!

I wasted at least a full year on my cbm64. That game was serious fun.

If this game is only half as good, it will be a hit.

/.er was remaking RDS

[John Harrison]

At http://rds.planetflibble.com/?news=all [planetflibble.com] a /.er was making a new port of RDS. Seems he has stopped for now.

Re:Racing Destruction Set Anyone?

[Rhys]

RDS was in fact very cool.

Now all we need is someone to re-release something like M.U.L.E. and I'll be happy.

Come on...

[Tickenest]

We've been designing our own tracks since Excitebike, for Heaven's sake.

Re:So it's Stunts... only 3d.

[Aggrazel]

You could also share replays with stunts. One of my favorite was some bug that made my car careen out of control and fly about 10,000 feet straight up in the air, and by some measure of luck, when I landed, I landed square on top of my opponent.

Ah... those were the days, when copy protection was beaten by memorizing sections of the manual. ;)

Re:So it's Stunts... only 3d.

[Apparition29]

Yep, Just signed up for the demo and here is what the email says "This version will give you the opportunity play the demo on the TrackMania dedicated server in the following modes : Solo, Hot Seat and Network mode."

How about Stunts?

[Smack]

That was even in 3-D (albeit flat-shaded), and you could do loop-the-loops.

Re:How about Stunts?

[zrail]

Now there was a great game. I remember playing it on my stepdad's old black'n'white vga monitor back in the day. It was one of the first games I ever pirated. Floppy copied it and xeroxed the code sheet.

Very old games...

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Reminds me of an up-to-date version of Hard Driving / Hard Driving 2 on the Amiga (probably on early PCs to) - they shipped with track editors as well, although I was always annoyed by the restrictions on track overlaps..

that screenshot!

[gnudutch]

This is a 6-year old's Tyco slot-racer fantasy....

Six?

[neostorm]

This is a 30 year olds Tyco slot racer fantasy!

Stunts

[TheFunkSoulBrother]

Does anyone remember Broderbund's Stunts PC game? It had a track construction kit, cars to choose (even a Indy racing car) and rivals to play against. And we used to share our tracks in floppies.

Re:Stunts

[srstoneb]

Stunts, aka 4-D Driving, is pretty easy to find these days. This site [kalpen.de] says it's "freeware", although their justification for this statement seems suspect. Still, you can get the game there if you believe in things like abandonware. There's a lot of tracks and replays to download from various Stunts sites.

stunts

[magic]

The Broderbund game 'stunts' was one of my favorites. It was not only among the first 3D games, but it let you build your own tracks and trade them with friends.

http://members.fortunecity.com/pboard/stunts.htm

The builder GUI was simple and fun, and it was a blast to drive an indy car off 16 giant jumps in a row or drive smack into a giant dinosaur.

-m

Long awaited update

[evilhayama]

From the posts so far, it looks like it's not just me that has been waiting for an update to Stunts for a long time. There have been a few efforts here and there, but this one is the only I've seen that seems to actually do more than stunts let you do.

I hope they let you make jumps of any distance, that was the one bad thing about Stunts.