Trackmania DS

Trackmania DS brought to Nintendo's handheld the concept of the popular PC series built around constructing and racing wild, acrobatic tracks full of jumps, loops, and dangerous shortcuts. The goal isn't to compete directly against other cars, but to set the best possible time on a given track, which places the game closer to arcade time trials than classic racing. Players could also use the editor to build their own circuits, giving the game a replayability far beyond its original content, though sharing your creations between players remained, understandably, more limited on DS than on a computer.

Given the DS's performance, developer Firebrand Games had to adapt both the visual style and the complexity of the tracks, yet still managed to preserve the key feeling of the original — the joy of precision and repeatedly shaving fractions of a second off your own time. Controls combined buttons and touch, with the bottom screen used for a track overview and quick adjustments, making it easier to navigate even the trickier sections with multiple possible routes. The music stayed in the background, with the main emphasis on smoothness and track readability at high speed, where every wrong move from the player meant lost centiseconds.

Trackmania DS appealed above all to players who knew the PC original and wanted a way to take their favorite game on the road without giving up track creation. Although it couldn't match the scope of the PC version's community content, as a pocket getaway into the world of stunt-track racing it worked reliably and offered dozens of hours of content for patient players. Today it stands as an interesting example of how a demanding and specific genre like time-trial racing managed to find a place even on the limited hardware of a handheld console.