Trackmania Predecessors - Part 2

Ok, so we’ve looked at the most direct predecessor to Trackmania: Sunrise in part one, now its time to take a look at some other games that were crucial to the development of this game. We will do this by looking in more detail at the games mentioned in the “Trackmania Sunrise Mechanics” blog entry in more detail.

With Sprint 2 being the first car game actually offering racing (you raced against another human player) it seems sensible to start by taking a look at it. The game was released into arcades in 1976 and was made by Kee Games. Kee Games was a wholly owned subsidiary of Atari and the majority of their output was clones of Atari games. Despite the fact that Sprint 2 was a clone of the Atari series Gran Trak, the game did feature something special enough to ensure it was a franchise that ran well into the 80’s. That special something was that Sprint 2 was the first ever racing game which included a microprocessor. What this meant in practice was that the game had cars for the player to race against, better graphics and more tracks.

These groundbreaking features meant that Sprint 2 was a hit and the series was so successful that when Kee Games were merged back into Atari, the franchise survived and flourished even. The success of this game and the features it introduced, such as the ability to race against other people, are why I believe Sprint 2 is a crucial predecessor to not only Trackmania: Sunrise but to every car racing game since.

The fact that all of the opponents in TM: Sunrise are “ghost cars” is a pretty distinct feature, usually the ability to ram other players is seen as a good feature (see the destruction derby series) yet races here are against the clock essentially. The ghost cars are merely there to give you a marker as to how well you are doing. Therefore the races are like a rally. It took a fairly long time for games to feature a proper rally in the sense of having one car on the track at any one time. Even titles like Sega Rally and V Rally opted to go down the route of being pure racing games.

The Colin McRae Rally series, from Codemasters, was the first series of games to base themselves around this style of play. It is therefore generally acknowledged as the pioneer of realistic rally racing games with its damage-modelling and enduring courses. However, one of the first games to feature “ghost” cars was F-Zero, on the SNES. F-Zero is a futuristic racing game series from Nintendo. By performing well on the time trial modes you could unlock staff “ghosts” to try and beat.

These games were all fundamental to a game such as Trackmania existing and being as popular as the series has been. The features they introduced were, I believe, formed into an excellent game which manages to be successfully distinct enough from other racing games to allow it to find its own niche groups of fans, as opposing to being “just another racing game.”

Trackmania Predecessor- Part 1

The most obvious place to look for the predecessor to Trackmania: Sunrise, is the first game in the series, known as Trackmania. This was released in 2003. It offered the same blend of racing action and puzzle game that its sequel built on though with slightly less polish. For example, the sequel offers two new game modes (Platform and Crazy) plus customisable skins for the cars you race.

Despite this, the core mechanics of the game remain fairly similar throughout both of the games and the comprehensive track editor features in both games, as does the online play. One of the main differences between the games is in the car models. In the first game you only had one car for the whole game and the model was small and didn’t have much detail. However, Nadeo really went to town on the sequel with high detail models with some good customisation options included. There are also more car types in the sequel, such as the Jeep style 4x4. As well as this, the tracks look much better in Sunrise, with nice reflective lighting and better textures.

Being that they are overall extremely similar games, I think the main difference between Trackmania: Sunrise and its predecessor is the greater attention given to the models of the cars, and on track detail. The core mechanics of racing against ghosts and the stunt racing appear in both as does the blend of puzzle and racign action.
Overall I believe that this conclusion from Gamespot.com adequately sums up the two games:

"TrackMania Sunrise is pretty much exactly what you would want from a sequel to the original TrackMania. Nadeo has simply taken everything that was great about the last game, added a bunch more to it, and then killed off some of what wasn't so great. Like its predecessor, Sunrise isn't going to appeal to diehard driving fans, mainly because this isn't really a game for fans of racing so much as it is for fans of stunt driving and building the most ludicrous stunt tracks imaginable. Sunrise is more toy than racer, and that is in no way a bad thing. Fans of the first TrackMania will love the sequel, and any stunt-driving fans that ignored the first game really ought to give Sunrise a look, as they will find themselves pleasantly surprised by what it has to offer."

Trackmania Sunrise Mechanics

Trackmania: Sunrise is a hybrid racing/puzzle game, developed by Nadeo and published by the Digital Jesters. It’s blend of racing game and puzzle action make it one of the most unique driving based games on the market.

There are three main game modes to play in TM: Sunrise. They are Race, Platform and Puzzle. Race sees you competing against three other cars, bronze, silver and gold. Simply beat a car to gain that rating on the track, so beating the silver car will give you a silver rating. In platform mode the aim is to get to the end of the course in as few attempts as possible. The courses consist of several jumps and loops to navigate, making this a challenging mode. In puzzle mode you have to assemble a course using pieces of track given to you, to enable you to get from point A to B, often via checkpoints.

The mechanic of racing against someone/something is obviously key to Trackmania and dates back a long way in the history of videogames. Most early driving games simply involved driving round accumulating points though in 1976 Sprint 2 from Kee Games offered gamers the chance to directly race against other people (The 2 in the title referred to the number of players) and was very successful because of this. The game itself was a clone of Atari’s Gran Trak series, albeit with a second player present.

All of the opponents in Trackmania are “ghosts”, meaning that you cannot physically touch them. In turn this means that the race mode is essentially a rally. The idea of racing against time as opposed to people on the screen is a fairly new feature; even games like 1995’s Sega Rally featured real opponents to race against. It took the Colin McRae Rally series on the PlayStation to finally fully implement this way of racing into a game. However ghost cars were around for a long time beforehand, appearing usually in time trial modes, encouraging the player to keep racing to beat their best. The F Zero series, created by Nintendo, was amongst the first game to feature ghosts; you could unlock staff ghost time to race against for doing particularly well.

What makes Trackmania so distinct are the tracks. They feature a combination of insane loops and jumps, meaning the player has to be considerably skilled to get through in one attempt. There is a blatant disregard of the laws of physics here and the style is not of a conventional Formula 1 racing game. The mechanism of riding over such obstacles can be dated back to 1989 and Hard Drivin’, from Atari. Although Hard Drivin attempted to be a realistic driving experience, it featured a memorable loop section, something new in a racing game. Jumps in racing games came from around the same time, with a game known as Super Off Road, from the Leland Corporation. Incidentally this game was a clone of Super Sprint, the sequel to the aforementioned Sprint 2. In Super Off Road the players would view the action from a top down view, being able to see the entire track at once, and would compete on increasingly hard competitions.

I believe that Trackmania successfully blends these mechanics together to create a solid game that is extremely fun to play but sufficiently challenging to keep players interested. The game also comes with a comprehensive track editor, should you get bored of the existing tracks.

New Module

As of now, this blog is to be used for my work with Phil Carlisle, as opposed to Andy Williams