Trackmania Sunrise is the best racing game ever

The Trackmania series first started in 2003 with its first game that was simply called “Trackmania”(Later called Trackmania Original). It was an over-the-top racing game that allowed you to also build your own tracks. It introduced the content and gameplay that would be the foundation of the next few games in the series. This game had great success considering the developer, a French company called Nadeo, was pretty much unknown at the time, and everyone was expecting the next game in the series to be even better.

The next game in the series was released in 2005 and was called Trackmania Sunrise. Not only was it better, it turned out to be in my opinion the best racing game ever made. It still remains to this day the best game of the series for Trackmania enthusiasts and when you ask people about it they’ll probably tell you something like this: “I think I played Trackmania Stadium/United Forever (the game that came after, in 2008) more but for some reason I still enjoyed Trackmania Sunrise the most”. Why is that ?

The content

Trackmania Sunrise had three environments called Island, Bay and Coast. Each had their respective vehicle : Island had a very fast car that drifted easily, Bay had a SUV that could take hard turns without drifting and Coast had the more realistic vehicle, that was slower, drifted very easily and required you to pace yourself to make sure to not go straight into a wall at every turn. These three environments all had their own characteristics, but they were all a great success and while players may prefer one over the other, there was never one that was unanimously disliked.

The game modes include race, puzzle, platform, stunt and crazy. The first two were already there in the original game, but the last 3 weren’t. Puzzle is a game mode in which you are given the start and the finish point of a race, sometimes along with a few checkpoints you need to pass through, and left on your own to build the track that will give you the fastest times possible. Platform is like a normal race, where you are not trying to get the fastest time but rather to not fall and restart to the checkpoint. The goal is to get 0 points, which means you never had to restart to the checkpoint and therefore completed the race without hiccups. Stunts will put you in an environment to make stunts, the idea is to get as many points as possible from the stunts you make within the time limit. Finally, Crazy will make you race the same track 16 times but every time the minimum time to achieve gets smaller and smaller, being able to finish the race 16 times in a timely fashion will earn you the best medal.

There are 4 medals you can get in this game. The bronze, silver, gold and author medals. The author medal is the score/time that the author of the game achieved. If you get this medal it means you beat that score/time, pretty straight forward.

You can also design your own vehicles, build your own tracks and this game also introduced online-play.

The overall design of the game

The design of this game was a complete success from start to finish. The menu was very well made, it was quick and easy to use, with a beautiful video of one of the races in the campaign tracks (Snake) playing in the background.

The graphics were simplistic while still looking good. Seeing as the game is very dynamic, keeping the graphics simple is very smart as it will give everyone a better chance of achieving better FPS (Frames Per Second), and a better gaming experience. I would go as far as saying the simplistic graphics allowed the gameplay to really shine.

Every medal had its own car (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Author). There even were cars for “semi” medals (semi-silver, semi-gold, semi-author). You could race against them in the campaign, beating them meant getting the medal, or knowing you are halfway between two medals depending on which car you beat. I personally think it was a mistake not to include "Medal skins" in the following Trackmania games.

The Music

One of the major upsides of this game was the music. I only realized it when playing the more recent Trackmania games. I think the importance of music in a video game is very underrated, and Nadeo really nailed the soundtrack of this game. Starting with the menu music and followed by the great music for each environment that really sets the mood. The following Trackmania games were never on the same level in this department, apart maybe from the Trackmania United Forever menu music, which also was pretty awesome.

It has the It factor

All of the above combined give you a game that has that It factor. That’s why so many people still see this Trackmania game as their favorite, even though they spent more time on other Trackmania games. Trackmania Sunrise gives you feelings that cannot be described, the feelings you only get when witnessing, or playing in this intense, pure greatness. I personally couldn’t resist the nostalgia and as soon as I figured out how to make this game work on Windows 10 I started playing it again. I actually started a Youtube series on my channel, you can see it by clicking on my channel name : Lilian Robinson. This is why Trackmania Sunrise is the GOAT of racing games. Thank you for reading.