Stunt Car Racer fans...

... if you don't know of this game already, check out TrackMania (by Beware, published by Nadeo). Think of it as a cross between Stunt Car Racer and Skidmarks Construction Set. And it's pretty damn fun.

www.trackmania.com is the place to see a nice screenshot of the sequal, TM Sunrise, due to be released in... apparently about 38 days ;] Also you can buy TM and it's expansion pack for 20 pounds... which isn't too bad.

It has abysmal copy protection, though. It won't run with the CD in one of my drives and the cracks out there don't seem to run at all.

I don't usually go for NoName brand games, but the cover on this one grabbed my attention. Basically imagine your most feared roller coaster ride, add jumps and then race on it with a car.

The look and feel of the game actually reminds me a lot of that Marble game GarageGames published early on, except you're not a marble. Only thing that it's missing compared to Stunt Car Racer are animated tracks. Solo player mode sees you completing three sets of tasks : time trials (each race has 8 rounds), beating a time for a bronze, silver, or gold award (higher awards give you more credits, credits being used to build your own tracks from scratch. So the better you do the more insane stuff you can build) : puzzle mode sees you first building a track using only the track pieces you have been given and then time trialling that : and survival mode, which is horrible - compete against other racers and gain at least 3rd place to continue to the next round, do this for around 30 rounds and you win. I can't get past round two. =]

Overall, a highly enjoyable game and I will certainly be buying the expansion pack and sequal when it's available.

I own this. it is fun; It has a very Blitz feel to it.

The cover grabbed my attention too. excelent game.

Bizarre! I was googling for a sports 4D racer remake the other day and stumbled across that one! I've downloaded the demo just not installed it yet... looked good though.

You can get itfor about a tenner if you look around; Its impressive and worth the cash ;)

I played the demo of this months ago. It's a truly rotten game. Damn you to hell for even mentioning it in the same breath as the mighty Stunt Car Racer.

I loved the original, which was amazing back in the day,, for being 3D, real feel physics, and realistic controls. Was omne of the few racing games were I could veel the back end start to lose grip and kind of felt like I might actually be driving.

Never tried this game though lol. the thumbnails look nice.

Well, the graphics are pretty crappy tho the tracks look intersting. Although, GFK did say it sucked so...

Im with GfK on this one, the tracks are nice the handling seems more like a remote control car rather than a real one.

There are three car/land types in the game - the snow one (probably the one in the demo) is the easiest to control, but not very lifelike. There is an 'American' racer type car which is faster and handles a bit more like you'd expect and also a 'Rally' car that has no traction at all almost =] Great for skidding round corners...

I'm bumping this to inform about this game's latest v1.50 patch - TrackMania Original they call it - it reimplements the game using the sequel's engine (TrackMania Sunrise, which is very pretty and rediculously fast) so sports better gfx effects and more gaming modes!

First of all, a few things have changed... most importantly, the way turbo tiles are handled have changed, which I suspect makes PuzzleD3 impossible. The requirements to play higher levels in a series have been lowered, which makes it easier to access more, nore MORE! In addition, there is now easy, medium (original) and hard gameplay modes, which makes the tracks more or less challenging, to suit (I needed less:).

Platform mode, taken from the Sunrise mode, sees you racing a level in the least number of restarts as possible. As the name suggests, the levels consist largely of small strips of road with ramps at the end of them. Most times you have to hit the ramp at the right speed to make it. Can be very frustrating, but very rewarding when you finally make it =]

Stunt mode is a new one. As it's name suggests, you score points according to the complexity of stunts you can pull off, within a strict time limit. You still have to pass through all the checkpoints and finish before that timer runs out. A fun addition.

Last but not least, the game now takes control of Sunrise's best features - different sized maps for track making, editable track intros/extros/in game camera positioning, paintable car skins, campaign editor to string together your own set of maps into a series (or several series) and a download section for Nadeo-hosted community campaigns used in Sunrise to promote the top 5 places in map making competitions. The downloadable community campaigns available in Sunrise are amazing fun compared to Nadeo's default tracks, so it's always great when some new ones are released.

And the future is looking bright, too - TrackMania Sunrise sees an 'Extreme' upgrade patch sometime soon and TrackMania Original will recive it's long awaited Speed-Up upgrade patch some time after that. All in all, two fantastic games, which are continuously getting better.