Wolfa
TrackMania Nations Forever
TrackMania Nations Forever (TMNF) is a neat, free, racing game. Forget about “Need For Speed”, “Forza” and “Gran Turismo” before you start this game though. It's not about super-realistic gear shifting and how many collision rays you can fit in one game. Ever played Stunts (or 4D Sports Driving as it is known in some countries) back in the old days when you could keep the polygon count on your left hand? TMNF is about crazy jumps, building your own tracks and, of course, the competition"TMNF is about crazy jumps, building your own tracks and, of course, the competition".
TrackMania is a racing series that has been in the heat since 2003, developed by Nadeo. In 2006 they released a free version that was supposed to promote the Electronic Sports World Cup as one of the events, TrackMania Nations (TMN). The game was basically a stripped version of the former games. There was only one car model available and one kind of scenery (stadium, compared to desert, snow etc.). It contained 100 single player tracks, ranging from beginner difficulty to pro. However, it was called a multiplayer game, since there were online scoreboards and you could download ghost cars from other players.
The problem with TMN was not in the game, but what came with the game. It is called StarForce. StarForce is a software copy protection mechanism developed by Protection Technology. The software was installed with the game (even though it was free!) and was set to run on your computer even when you were not playing. When you uninstalled the game, however, StarForce was left, still running in the background"When you uninstalled the game, however, StarForce was left, still running in the background", on your computer. As if that wasn't bad enough, the software itself was pretty unstable and was said to cause a lot of computer crashes and hangs. In 2006, the popular blog Boing Boing called StarForce malware, claiming that it to degraded disk drive performance and weakened the security of the operative system.
In April 2008 , TMNF was released, without any borderline copy protection and with multiplayer support. However, compared to other racing games, the competitors' cars act like ghost cars (so you can drive through them). This may feel strange at first, but when the difficulty level starts to increase, you realize how hard it would be if those other 30 cars could bump you off the track. Still, you can follow the other players' cars and see how they take on that impossible left-turn-screw-jump.
And, I'm proud to say, in the last World Cyber Games (which ended November 15 of this year), Sweden, home of Lavasoft headquarters, not only come in second place in medal count but managed to take both Gold (Jesper Karjalainen aka KarjeN) and Silver (Kalle Mortlund Videkull aka FrostBeule) in TMNF. Way to go guys!
Go get the free racing game!
