Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

TrackMania Sunrise builds on the core concept of its predecessor by placing the power of track design firmly in the player’s hands. Using a versatile pool of building blocks, you can craft everything from simple sprint circuits to gravity-defying stunt challenges. The intuitive editor lets you snap rails, loops, ramps, and platforms together seamlessly, and adjust every piece’s height or curvature to create smooth or wildly unpredictable runs.

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The single-player experience is broken into four distinct modes—Race, Platform, Puzzle, and Crazy—each offering a different type of challenge. Race mode pits you against the clock in classic point A to B sprints, Platform mode transforms tracks into precision parkour tests, Puzzle mode demands thoughtful block placement to find the only viable route, and Crazy mode throws the rulebook out the window with wacky obstacles and unconventional track elements. This variety ensures you’ll never run out of new ways to challenge both your driving skills and your level-design creativity.

Beyond solo play, TrackMania Sunrise shines in its social features. You can save and review your best laps with the replay system, apply custom skins to your car for a personalized look, and—most importantly—share your custom tracks online. The multiplayer component allows you to download thousands of player-made circuits or upload your own, turning a solitary creation process into a thriving community exchange of ideas, strategies, and friendly competition.

Graphics

Graphically, TrackMania Sunrise strikes an appealing balance between vibrant style and clear visibility. The game includes three distinct environments—Island, Bay, and Coast—each rendered in bright colors and clean geometric shapes. Whether you’re racing along a sandy beachfront or weaving through industrial docks, the environment assets remain crisp and uncluttered, ensuring you can always see the next turn or ramp coming.

Sunrise makes clever use of four times of day—Sunrise, Day, Sunset, and Night—to dramatically shift the mood of each environment. Golden light bathes the tracks at dawn, midday delivers sharp shadows and bright hues, sunsets layer the world in warm reds and oranges, and nighttime races introduce neon billboards and reflective surfaces that sparkle under floodlights. These dynamic lighting presets help your custom tracks feel fresh every time you race them.

While texture resolutions and polygon counts may feel modest by today’s standards, this simplicity is a design choice rather than a limitation. Low-polygon models and stylized textures improve performance across a wide range of hardware, prevent visual clutter at high speeds, and contribute to the signature aesthetic that’s instantly recognizable to series fans. In short, Sunrise’s visuals are a perfect match for its fast-paced, stunt-centric gameplay.

Story

Unlike narrative-driven racers, TrackMania Sunrise places virtually no emphasis on a traditional storyline. Instead, the “story” unfolds through your own creations and the community’s shared content. Each race is a new chapter that you write yourself as you build tracks, tweak obstacles, and set up elaborate stunt setups for friends to tackle.

The sense of progression comes from mastering the game’s four modes and pushing the boundaries of what the editor can do. As you refine your building skills, you’ll find that you can tell mini-stories through track design—narrow cliffside runs that test your nerve, puzzle sequences that reward patience, or gravity-defying loops that dazzle both driver and spectator. In this way, the narrative emerges from gameplay mechanics rather than cutscenes or voiced dialogue.

The vibrant online community extends the game’s implicit storyline even further. Leaderboards, time trials, and multiplayer events allow you to measure your creativity and driving prowess against others around the world. The ebb and flow of new track releases, skin swaps, and record-breaking runs create an ever-evolving chronicle of what makes TrackMania so endlessly replayable.

Overall Experience

TrackMania Sunrise remains a compelling package for anyone seeking an arcade racing experience that emphasizes creativity, speed, and social engagement. Its robust track editor and four varied single-player modes deliver dozens of hours of experimentation, while the seamless integration of replays and car skins adds personal flair to each outing. Whether you’re crafting a perfectly balanced sprint track or a wild stunt course designed to make your friends gasp, the tools at your disposal feel both powerful and accessible.

The game’s minimalist visuals, dynamic day-night cycle, and three unique environments ensure that no two races ever feel the same. You’ll quickly appreciate how the simplicity of the art style supports the gameplay, keeping you focused on hitting checkpoints and nailing stunts rather than deciphering busy backgrounds or flashy special effects. Performance is rock-solid, even when dozens of players tackle the same track online.

Ultimately, TrackMania Sunrise excels at what it sets out to do: put you in the driver’s seat of a high-octane playground where imagination and competitive spirit collide. While it lacks a traditional narrative, the emergent stories written by your own creations—and those of the global community—more than makeup for it. If you love fast-paced racing, limitless creativity, and a vibrant multiplayer scene, Sunrise is a title you won’t want to miss.

Retro Replay Score

7.9/10