Trackmania: The Modern Stunt Car Racer

This is Stunt Car Racer, the first racing game I ever obsessed about. There were others that interested me, Pitstop II and Buggy Boy among them but I really loved Stunt Car Racer. So much so, that when I got a C64 emulator working on a Nokia 7650, this game was the first and only game I put on it! (And eventually wore down the joystick nipple on it from so much playing!)

I’d dabbled with other racers over the last few years, first with NFS Underground (quite enjoyed), Dirt 2 (meh, got boring), then Blur (ARGH!), and finally to NFS Hot Pursuit (barely played). Not a good track record eh? What possessed me to buy Trackmania United Forever? Well, it was 75% off but then this tweet convinced me!

https://twitter.com/#!/retroremakes/status/73470101822779392

What can I say? It is as close as you’ll get to Stunt Car Racer in a modern racing game. That’s not surprising as the developer was a fan of Stunt Car when he was all of 12 years old!

It looks great, and beyond the “time attack” racing mode it also offers other more unusual modes. I love the platform mode in particular.

As a modern game it of course does online play, and that can be a mixed bag. I’ve only played a few servers and the borders of the screen can at times be littered with a huge amount of difficult to read information. There’s a web browser of sorts too where you can check out the mods, skins and maps other players have made. They’ll cost you though. Those “online stores” really let the game down. The ones I saw were garish and ugly and very slow to load. Often most of the page would load but important action buttons didn’t. AFAIR there’s no “loading bar” to tell you something is happening either.
The game has a currency, “coppers” which I’m still learning about. Here’s a great article about them. Not sure I like how you have to bet on getting an official time on a track.


This isn’t what a normal game of Trackmania looks like. This is what happens when you render 1,000 races all at once!


Next September the next installment in the Trackmania series will be released: Trackmania 2 Canyon. The developer is also going to be branching out, Shootmania is a version for FPS players. I can’t wait to see what that brings! Joystiq has a preview of it, and the latest issue of Edge also has an extensive article on the game which I’ll be reading later.

Want a new car? Check out Trackmania Carpark. Kinda disappointed nobody created an Alfa Romeo 147. I wonder how hard that’d be?

Finally, don’t forget the Steam forum for the game. Plenty of help there if you need it.

It’s gone back to full price now, $39.99 in the US and probably the same numeric price everywhere else (grrr) but there’s plenty of fun to be had in this game. Recommended.

Police Brutality in Barcelona

If you’ve been watching the news you probably missed the bit about the protests in Spain recently. I certainly haven’t heard anything about them on Irish radio stations and among those I follow on Twitter only Allan Cavanagh seems to be talking about it. Spanish TV stations aren’t talking about it either apparently:

Meanwhile, Barcelona TV has a cooking show; TV1 is covering an actress with depression; TV3 (Catalan) discussing bass guitars. #acampadabcn

He linked to a very distressing video showing Police brutality against unarmed protesters in Barcelona. Unfortunately (or thankfully depending on how sensitive you are to violence) I can’t embed it here.

I remember years ago a Spanish friend warning me that the Police there weren’t to be messed with, and she was only referring to traffic police.

THIS IS BARCELONA. THIS IS IN SPAIN WHERE YOU WENT ON HOLIDAY. WHAT THE HELL?

TF2: Heavy vs Spy

Just a short clip of me as a brazen spy flanking a hulking heavy, iTimoleagueDuck who was ripping my team apart.

We had some great games tonight though both of us are still noobs at it. We still managed to score highly on the leaderboards and I refuse to credit the fact we were playing with a few bots for that achievement. We rocked! (As much as any noobs will!)

Battlefield 3 pre-order perks for Xbox and PS3 too?

It’s bothered me that the pre-order page on the EA store only allows pre orders of the PC version. What about us poor (literally, you’ll need a reasonably high end machine to run the PC version) console players running 5 year old technology?

Well, worry no more. I found the game on Amazon and it’s available to pre order on Xbox 360 and PS3 and includes this delightful chunk of text in the description:

Limited Edition Content

Battlefield 3 – Limited Edition features the digital expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand at no extra charge. This themed multiplayer expansion pack includes four legendary maps from Battlefield 2 boldly re-imagined with Frostbite 2 physics, destruction and visuals. Completing the package are classic Battlefield 2 weapons and vehicles, unique rewards, new achievements/trophies, and more.

So, now all I have to worry about is for which platform do I get it first? Xbox or PS3?

Portable Minecraft (Video)

Minecraft running on Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play. It’ll come to other Android phones and iPhones later and I have to admit this does tempt me to buy the phone.

Two things put me off, the cost which is just over 200 Euro on my current, and there’s no indication that Minecraft will be network aware. I shudder to think how fast Minecraft would run through my measly 250MB/month data limit…

Oh, while you’re here go look here for the first part of the Portal 2 soundtrack! It has ringtones too, I used the “Science is fun” one for my phone. Someone ring me, eh? 🙂

(Both links via Kotoku!

Wow more Playstation problems The password reset form…

Wow, more Playstation problems. The password reset form on the various Playstation websites is vulnerable to exploit and allows malicious people to change the passwords of other users.

When will it end? A password reset form is a basic web form. How the hell did they get that wrong? The mind boggles.

Fortunately only their websites have been affected and are disabled. If you already logged into PSN and changed your password then you won’t be affected by this problem.

Next week hackers will make your PS3 play pirated Xbox 360 games. So there!