Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This has me grinning like a loon at eight in the morning: 250 Trackmania players racing round the same track.

God, I love Trackmania.

You find our bickering crew mid-insult, as they talk bad about John’s mum and make fun of Kieron’s general confusion in the face of existence. But there’s a purpose to this gathering, and it’s to discuss the most recent Trackmania games. Let’s see how we get on.

John: We should totally print this. A verdict on how Kieron can’t do jokes.
Kieron: Kieron can’t read, Thankyou.
Jim: I have no idea what game we’re verdicting – Trackmania Unified Nations Forever United?
Kieron: United?
John: United’s a year old game.
Alec: Nations Forever is free. United Forever is the latest retail version.
Jim: Forever Nations Mania TrackNited?
Kieron: Yeah, we’re lost. Can we just have a verdict on their ludicrously stupid naming scheme?
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[Since the new Trackmanias are tearing up the internet, I thought it'll be a good time to dig out a Making of interview with Nadeos's Florent Castelnerac. This interview was performed in the lead up Trackmania Sunrise and focuses primarily on their first game. Florent was agreeably driven and funny, even through the occasionally broken English. Re-reading this a few weeks after I wrote about the rise of the PC arcade game in the Eurogamer review of Trials 2 amuses me.]

Any independent developer immediately has an uphill battle. They face opposition in the form of an industry that seems to think that any such initiatives are frankly impossible in the days of EA’s three-hundred men teams. However, PC arcade developers have it even harder. While the giants of PC gaming like 3D realms and ID originally made their names with freeware arcade 2D shooters, the idea that the consoles are where you go for simple play and the PC audience always demands something more (or, at least, something more deliberately cerebral) has become entrenched. Well… at least something more cerebral which doesn’t involve shooting in the first person perspective.
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The latest version of anything-goes arcade/puzzle racer Trackmania is out, and it’s free. Unfortunately the Trackmania Nations Forever website is currently taking more of a hammering than would, if I had a hammer, the morning, and the evening, all over this land. Having eventually had it working long enough to reach the download page, turns out it’s actually a forward to Filefront. The download is 504 of your Earth megabytes.

And, as I discovered after having previously downloaded 900 useless Megabytes from Gamershell, it’s all terribly confusing because Nadeo have also just released Trackmania United Forever, a free 900mb upgrade for the retail Trackmania United. Ugh. This naming system seems about as smart as someone giving birth to twins, and deciding to call one Jonathan and the other Jonathon.

Anyway, we’ll doubtless be sharing thoughts on the game later, once the right version has finally finished trickling down the RPS thinpipe.

Things we don’t talk about much on RPS: deforestation, owls, pudding, longjohns, Sonic the Hedgehog, and cars. Well, let’s fix that latter at least.

A car game we can all get behind is smashy finger-steering fun ‘em up Trackmania. On April 16th, the latest version, Trackmania Nations Forever is to be released. And it’s free! Free! Free like the pudding-soiled longjohns Sonic the Hedgehog would doubtless donate to a shivering owl left homeless by deforestation!

Hopefully we’ll be talking about it loads come the day, but meantime here’s the new trailer:

More details here