For such a simple arcade racing game, Trackmania has proven remarkably durable. The original came out in 2003, and last month Ubisoft announced that the latest version, Trackmania Turbo, will launch in November (although that's apparently been moved back a bit). A lot has changed over the years, but going by the "gameplay walkthrough" trailer released yesterday, underneath all the bells and whistles, it's still the same core game.
Like every other game in the series, Trackmania Turbo is ridiculously fast and utterly indifferent to the laws of physics, but it's also extremely easy to play. "We wanted [Trackmania Turbo] to be an arcade game. The key words and DNA are, 'accessible and simple,'" Tommy Francois, Ubisoft's director of IP development, explains in the trailer. "The controls are simplistic. You only need three buttons to control your car, not counting the restart button."
Trackmania Turbo will come with 200 tracks spread across four different environments, but the real fun comes by way of the track editor, which enables the creation of sprawling, sometimes incredibly difficult tracks that go way beyond what comes with the core game. The trailer also reveals what I believe is a new co-op multiplayer mode called DD—Double Driver—in which two players must cooperatively drive a single car. It makes more sense when you see it in the trailer, although I suspect that that these two Ubi drivers are better at it than most players will be.
The Trackmania Turbo entry on Steam says it will be out in November, as previously announced, but the Ubisoft site says the date is actually December 1. We'll figure it out and let you know which it actually is.
