MX vs. ATV Unleashed

MX vs. ATV Unleashed is a motocross and off-road arcade racer from Rainbow Studios, following on from the MX Unleashed series by adding ATVs, buggies, and other vehicles alongside the classic motocross bikes. The player works through a career mode, collecting sponsors and upgrading equipment, with the main draw being the sprawling free-roam (open-air) areas, where players can explore the terrain off the tracks, complete side challenges, and search for shortcuts — a concept that became the series' signature feature and set it apart from competing motocross arcade racers focused solely on closed circuits.

The game places emphasis on the physics of jumps, drifts, and position battles within a race, complemented by a trick system for aerial stunts similar to the sports arcade games of the time, and also offers local split-screen multiplayer for multiple players. The player's career takes them across several disciplines, from motocross through freestyle competitions to ATV races, with the money and sponsor points earned invested in new machines and rider upgrades.

The PlayStation 2 version launched alongside the Xbox in spring 2005 and did not differ in content — the same vehicles, tracks, and free-roam areas to explore. The differences were purely technical: PS2 rendered terrain with lower-resolution textures and a shorter draw distance than Xbox, which showed up as slightly sparser rendering of distant vegetation and landscape. For owners of the PlayStation 2, the most widespread console of the generation at the time, this still meant a complete and fully-fledged experience identical to the Xbox one.

The game's success kicked off a long line of sequels in the MX vs. ATV series, which publisher THQ continued to release with updated vehicle rosters and tracks for more than a decade after this release. PlayStation 2, thanks to its wide install base, became a key platform for the publisher, on which the game reached the greatest sales reach of all the era's versions and remained the reference release that reviews of later series entries would routinely return to for comparison.

Why play it: For fans of motocross arcade racers who want to experience the release that kicked off the long and successful MX vs. ATV series and became the reference point on PS2 for all its later sequels.