DJs unveils TrackMania Sunrise

It's been a while since we wrote about TrackMania, but we certainly haven't forgotten about it. Imagine our delight, then, when we got our hands on the first details, screenshots and indeed video footage of the full-blown sequel, TrackMania Sunrise, which is due out from Britsoft publisher Digital Jesters in Q1 2005.

For those who missed it, TrackMania was a quirky little racing construction kit style affair that not only let players race around Scalextric-esque looping tracks in all manner of different environments, but also let us create our own out of various track pieces - a selection later bolstered by the addition of tunnels and other show-pieces in freebie expansion pack 'Power Up!'

As you can see from the shots and the 30-odd-meg video available from Eurofiles, Sunrise is a lot faster, bigger and better looking - and, according to the DJs, still capable of running at speed on the same relatively low-end hardware that the original favoured.

The new environments are certainly impressive - there's a lot of water, cityscapes and track pieces that send cars up and down into the air like skateboarders. Track designers should be amply catered for; indeed, the map area is twice as large just to accommodate the increased block size. And even if you're not very creative in that department, the straight-up racing mode looks like it'll benefit from some ludicrously complex in-house track designs, and the handling model should be forgiving enough even for novices to enjoy them. Plus, there's the promise of two new modes: Platform and Crazy.

In addition to all that, Nadeo is building in a peer-to-peer network of sorts specifically so that players can swap their own creations - and not just tracks, either. TM Sunrise also allows for customisable car skins and avatars.

All in all, it sounds like quite a package, and we can't wait to get to grips with it. Expect to hear much more about TrackMania Sunrise in the near future.