TrackMania

the videos on youtube make this look mennnnntallll.

The DS version of Trackmania is coming out in the US in March from Atlus(!), but is already out in Europe since November. Has anybody on here tried it out?

apparently it's amazing; not tried it yet myself

no online seems like it'd be a shame

(in other racing related news I picked up pure for cheap today and haven't had this much fun playing a racer since I dunno mario kart?)

The no online thing seems to be the main criticism of the DS version (which did review well), but that doesn't bug me, as I almost never play the PC version online. For me it's all about time trials, trying to get golds / set better times. Online on the PC is kind of a gimmick anyway, as it's not traditional races, but more like doing time trials with a confusing ton of other people on the same track (all the other racers are ghosts). I think there's local single cart multiplayer though...

Pure is pretty awesome.

Pure is decidedly average, I'm afraid. Not fit to shine the shoes of this year's Motorstorm PR (a similar looking game, but with a lot more variety and better racing & no repetitive tricks), which is barely fit to shine the shoes of TrackMania.

I feel bad now for semi-dissing Trackmania's online mode, as I put a little more time into it & finally get it now + had lots of fun. The best thing about the online is that it works really smooth and it's a great way to sample all kinds of user made, crazy tracks. The only downside is that sometimes those tracks are kind of broken or just too confusing for a quick jump in and try out race against fifty (or whatever) other people. Great fun though when you find a good server, trying to improve your line & move up the leaderboard.

The free version of the game (online mode + 65 offline tracks) should be able to be run fine on most people's PCs, I think http://store.steampowered.com/app/11020/
Just saying

I got tired of pure pretty quickly : / I really loved the look and feel of the game but the repetitive tricking put me off a little. I think I'll go back to it, but GRID has superseded it for the meantime cos it's decidedly more 'pure'

anyway trackmania DS... this game is great. I think the N+ of racing games is quite a neat way to explain it; I'm very early on in it but damn if it isn't addicting

its the Y button tht makes this killer

Is that the instant restarts? It isn't out on DS over here till March 17th :(
Glad to hear it seems good though.

yeah, Y gives you instant restarts which basically means you can flog yourself against the gold standard over and over really easily until you realise a 38sec track has just swallowed 20mins of your time

don't know if you can upload times or tracks online but it would be great if you could; didn't bangai-o allow you to "record" levels via the sound out so they could be distributed as mp3s or something?

After playing a bunch of online over the last week, I'm currently in 638,374 place in the world rankings...

so apparently a lot of the folx who've played this heaps on PC can't get with the DS version at all; common complaints seem to be they've taken too much out, no online (ie no track and time share) and it doesn't handle like trackmania

I've not played the PC version obv bt I'm happy with this 'port'; sure the handlings a bit twitchy but really it has to be in order tht you can make some of the tricker corners (esp on the DS' small screen which tightens everything somewhat) and the unlock structure and instant restarts makes it compulsive

Yeah, the DS version is extremely disappointing. Controls are shitty. The tracks are difficult to see. Rally and desert mode are especially awful (stadium is just okay). Not being able to turn off the music (which I was already sick of from the PC version) is also a drag.

Looks like wii version is next in line...

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/reportages-videos-jeux/0000/00000273/trackmania-wii-premiers-pas-hd.htm

Releases beginning of 2010. Online play + 4 player local splitscreen. Track editor. They don't specify how many people you can race against online at the same time & they don't say if you will or won't be able to race custom tracks online. We'll see...

Trackmania 2 officially announced. No date give. PC only! 4-player co-op!!!
http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2009/00037249-trackmania-2-annonce.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjpV9DuoXSs

looks cool. how does co-op in a game like that work?

"Il sera en effet possible de jouer à plusieurs sur le même PC dans un mode Party (dans lequel les gens se joignent à la partie quand ils le souhaitent), un mode Cup (le même que sur les Trackmania que l'on connaît), le mode Par Equipe (sorte de courses de relais), et enfin, le mode coopération (il s'agit d'une campagne dédiée dans laquelle les médailles de chacun des participants s'additionneront)."

My rough translation - "it will be possible to play with several people on the same PC in Party mode (in which the players join the party when they wish to), a Cup Mode (the same as in the Trackmania we already know), the Team Mode (a kind of relay race), and finally, a Co-op Mode (a dedicated campaign in which the medals of each participant get added together)."