Dvader said:

^ Wow that does not look like it sucks. I am shocked. I never heard of any of those companies making it. It's the Wii's Modnation Racers.

Trackmania is a long running and popular series of indie PC racing games. They're some of the most fun and unique games in the genre, even though you haven't heard of them. The Wii port looks very faithful, almost identical to the PC version, with a few less bells and whistles. The same company did the surprisingly competent DS port that was also very well done, though it lacked online multiplayer which kind of defeated the purpose of making tracks and what not, but they're fixing that with the DS sequel and the Wii port which sports online and 4 player local modes.

Anyway, everyone, you can play Trackmania Nations for free (the retail game is called United, and is the same but instead of only having the "stadium" car and track theme it has additional themes, each with its own car and handling (most of which are also in the Wii port). It kicks other racers' ass with unique, 100% skill driven, concurrent time trial gameplay and insane tracks, some of which will be challenging to complete a lap in, nevermind actually doing the best lap. The only thing that is not certain to be awesome on Wii yet is how they'll let you share tracks and play online, but hopefully it will resemble the PC games in some form, than have some crazy restricted system, which could ruin the game's core since it's a very social competitive kind of game (not necessarily among friends, thanks to compehensive leaderboards), though the local multiplayer should make up for some of it if you have willing friends. Other than that, entertainment is guaranteed, and for less than full price.

They're also preparing Trackmania 2 for PC (possibly consoles too I guess, now they've done the first steps) but that's a long long way off in 2011 or whenever, there's only a teaser so far showing nicer graphics and possibly collisions (meh) in a normal-looking racer (meh) then at the very end the cars hit a ramp and fans go "oh yeah!".

And yes phantom. you can make shortcuts but those will only be good once through then everyone, once they discover it, will act as if the main road doesn't exist at all with the type of simultaneous time trial based gameplay it has. All you need is to set checkpoints that need to be passed through for the lap to count, so if you want a shortcut you must simply make sure that the way the track is built no checkpoints will be missed if you take the shortcut, by spacing them apart at that point, only placing them before and after, not during that section.

People are also making some crazy tracks that do INCREDIBLE stuff with the physics where the driver just presses the gas yet goes through an awesome roller coaster ride. Kind of like those Super Mario Bros. no-control stages. Not anything to "play" then but just to go "cool" at the creator's skill in calculating everything. Like this one:

Sure, it's not something to play but it shows you some of the shit you can do with the editor (honestly I actually couldn't find the one I wanted, this is far from the best or most complex track), and it will work exactly like that every single time you just press gas, showing there's no random factor with the physics, only proper calculations every time (not realistic or anything, but always the same) so in normal play it's always up to your own skill and understanding of the track and gameplay, not any other factors. And that's just part of what the community comes up with, really crazy stuff can be done, I'm sure some crafty Wii owners will pick up on a lot of it. Though I guess there may be some extra limitations to keep the performance up, but from the videos, this stuff seems possible.