Atlus bringing Trackmania DS stateside
Today's award for Most Unlikely Publisher goes to RPG stalwarts Atlus, who have just announced they'll be bringing Firebrand Games' Trackmania DS to the U.S. in March of 2009, and even for 'just-slightly' casual fans of racing games, this should be happy news.
It's no mistake that the franchise has one of the largest and most dedicated audiences in the genre: the series excels at joyfully purist arcade design mixed with puzzle and stunt elements and a fully-featured track editor, all of which, European reviews have very happily reported, have perfectly made their way to the portable version. Essentially, if you have any nostalgia for racing classics like Stunts and Racing Destruction Set, or, quite simply, like to move things quickly around a track and make awesome jumps and loop-de-loops, this is the game you want.
Try the free Steam version, Trackmania Nations Forever, for a taste of what the fuss is about.
Trackmania DS [Atlus]
Anonymous
7:50 PM November 19, 2008 – #1
This appears to be only slightly better than a game called "Stunts" which came out roughly 15 years ago... ouch! I think this shows just how far we have yet to go to come up with something new...
Teufelaffe
8:46 PM November 19, 2008 – #2
While the Trackmania games are addicting...and fun...Trackmania Nations (a FREE game mind you) includes the reprehensible Star-Force copy protection (which even BoingBoing reported as being malware a couple of years ago, if memory serves).
Using copy protection on a game you are selling is one thing, but putting it in a FREE game is more than enough to make me want to never give Nadeo a single cent of my money. Ever.
Brandon Boyer
4:15 AM November 20, 2008 – #3
To be clear, that situation changed in 2007: the original Nations did use StarForce, but the Nations Forever version on Steam does not, nor does Steam's United Forever, and as Wiki notes, both try to remove StarForce when they're installed.
It's also worth noting that the developer in question for the DS version is Glasgow's Firebrand, who obviously have had no sway in the earlier debacle!
Agies
7:05 AM November 20, 2008 – #4
Trackmania is similar to, but very different from Stunts. The real challenge in Trackmania is to beat the leaderboard times.
hohum
8:13 AM November 20, 2008 – #5
I've not played the PC version, but I'm getting pretty excited for this DS release. I don't really care if it is "only slightly better than" Stunts... Hell, I'd take a direct port of Racing Destruction Set (actually I probably prefer that one...) Both those games were some seriously fun times!