I love a good arcade racer. Over this generation of consoles, a good racer has been extremely hard to find. It certainly can’t help that Criterion set the bar so high with Burnout: Paradise and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. Little did I know there was a crazy racing revolution happening on the PC in a niche title (at least here in the US) called Track Mania. That niche title has since morphed into Track Mania 2: Canyon.
The Track Mania series started way back in 2003 with a design philosophy that kept the overall game relatively simple. There are no sim-like stats to tweak on your car, no new cars to be earned and no weather conditions to worry about. Every one races with the same car under the same conditions and the goal is simply to earn the best time on each track.
To overcome the potential boredom, the Track Mania series is also defined by a track editor and robust online community where you can upload tracks and compete against folks from all over the world. Races will vary anywhere from 15 seconds up to 3 minutes, and the goal is simply to lock in the best lap time on that track.
To test your mettle against the rest of the World’s elite, you can join any open server and immediately join the fray. The tracks rotate on each server every 6 minutes, giving you time to learn a new track and try to perfect your run before the next track is offered. Since 16 players can be active on a server at a given time, there is no car collision with the other drivers. This alleviates additional network strain and helps to basically eliminate any lag.
Since learning the tracks and crashing is an integral part of the experience, a simple button press will reset your car to either the last checkpoint or to the beginning of the track for more attempts at beating the track records.
The community for the Track Mania series is extremely devoted and puts a lot of effort and love into their tracks and their records. That is not to say every server has great tracks, there are certainly a few that are annoying at worst, maddening at best. But the community tries focus on the best tracks and you will eventually settle in your preferred servers and their rotation of tracks.
At 24.99, and with UbiSoft now backing the developer, Track Mania 2 is an absolute steal for arcade racer fans. With an included track editor and the original Track Mania holding 6 Guiness World records including one for “Largest Content Base for any Racing Game”, you will never be wanting for content. And if you get bored of what is out there... well go make your own. I’ll see you online.
