By Jim Rossignol on April 8th, 2011 at 8:03 am.

Exquisite excitementation! The sequel to my second-favourite ever racing game is starting to give up some secrets, including this image (click for full size). It’s not telling a whole lot, other than Trackmania features a big yellow muscle car and a canyon, but we are expecting something to happen after E3 this year, due to comments made by Nadeo’s boss person. (You might recall that a beta for the game was expected last year.) It seems that the delays might have something to do with the company developing three new games at once, with the other games being “Shootmania” and “Questmania”. Don’t know much about these right now, but obviously they are FPS and RPG templates for Nadeo’s user-generated ways of doing things, and could be really interesting. Roll on June.


The best racer there’s ever been.
Ever.
There’s just something so much fun about massive, unlikely jumps, and instant restarts. It’s the Super Meat Boy of racers.
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I’ve never thought about it as the Super Meat Boy of racers, but it really works as a comparison.
Looking forward to this, had no idea it was in development.
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It was announced a couple of years back, and a shakycam video of the announcement showed up on Youtube. I’ve been waiting for more news since then.
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More like Super Meat Boy is the Trackmania of platformers. Amirite?
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This is excellent news. What a great way to start the day.
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Awesome!
Trackmania is the only racer I’ve ever been addicted too.
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Off topic, but could someone check RPS’ email for an Email from Gabe? He’s been sending lots of games sites pictures in relation to the ARG, and you got a picture for the Mac announcement, so might get one for this.
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No worries, I’m on it.
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I checked and there was only a 6 gig wav file of duck calls.
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Alright! I didn’t even knew this game was in development, what a nice suprise. I really liked Trackmania (well, the free worldcup edition not so much) and also the Stunts-alike editor it had. What I didn’t really liked was the multiplayer part of it, so I hope they make that more interesting, and less like racing real time ghosts.
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The multiplayer was the best part. It’s unique, very different than your average racing game.
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But failing once in multiplayer really set you back, making it next to impossible to regain your lost positions. And yes, this was despite the instant respawn. Though, I have to admit, I only played it for a few hours with slightly better roommates that kept winning and winning. Guess losing caused a mental scar… :(
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local multiplayer is really much better with “tries” rather than “time”. basically, you have a set number of lives to complete the track, and whoever has the worst time has to go again.
it makes for neat races where you need that last 0.05 second to not get knocked out.
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I am beyond terrible at TM but I loved how chaotic the multiplayer was. It’s astounding the variety of gentle turns and easy jumps that people would barrel into at all angles, spinning helplessly off into the distance or wiping out messily on a nearby wall. If they put in a destruction derby type mode, I would seriously play nothing else.
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That is a joke, right? “Shootmania” and “Questmania”? Sometimes I’m not sure if it’s a joke or the games industry. sounds like something i did in game dev story.
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I feel the same way. Do I got a sense of humour fail?
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sounds like something i did in game dev story
Heh yeah. Ninja Kill 14 was my first 10+ million seller. Won tons of awards too. I was surprised how poorly RoboBlast 2 sold though. But then I came back with Ninja Kill 15 and sold more copies than the install base of the console it was developed for, which is a neat trick.
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If there’s one thing that TimeSplitters can show us (other than How To Do A FPS On A Console), it’s that it’s entirely possible to create a deep FPS map editor using tiles. Hell, you can make single player maps using it.
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TimeSplitters was the only console FPS I enjoyed, maybe its why I like Crysis 2′s MP so much as well…
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I think I might just buy this. Nations really grabbed me (190+ medals) and if the sequel is any good they deserve £30 from me.
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Time to revisist the excellent 1k project video me thinks!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a6s3uUf5cY
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Oh my, this video made me buy Trackmania a while back, gotta watch again now…
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Can’t wait…because I expect this to lead to a price reduction for Trackmania 1!
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Great news. Trackmania is the first racing game I have really enjoyed since Stunt Car Racer.
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Obviously fantastic news, and like commenters above it’s the only game about cars wot go fast (and also upside down) that I’ve ever really made much of an impression on (and vice versa).
Are we to take from this that quite a lot of people actually paid to upgrade, despite the generous plenitude of the cheapskate edition?
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So, Jim, is No 1 Burnout Paradise?
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Shockingly underrated series despite nations being free.
I hope the new one is the one that lines the guys at Nadeos pockets. They totally deserve it.
*Very excited*
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I really loved this game. Why the hell don’t I play it more.
Everytime i’ve played it i’ve had great fun and then it seems to get lost in my steam list, and when i finally login again it rewards me with lots of coins because i haven’t connected for 100 days. Why the hell don’t i play it more, it’s great
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Isn’t this really more like Trackmania 3 now?
1st Trackmania, then there was Trackmania Sunrise, which was all new environments and shiny graphics. Then there was Trackmania United, which was kind of a Sunrise 2.0 with all of the first games stuff added in along with Nations.
Developers can’t count, its clear.
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Ubisoft? Pft.
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omfg say that gfx is real i cant bahleev it. might be DX11
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Woot! And yeah, this is more definitely like Trackmania 3; the Forever/United/Sunrise editions were vastly improved FX-wise over the boxy (but still fun!) original.
Great news and I hope it goes well for Nadeo.
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