All the routes for all the races are wonderfully thought of, so that none of the vehicles of the game feel useless. There are Circuit races, Checkpoint races and countdown races called Blitz races. On the other hand, a pickup truck won't be the fastest vehicle, but it would easily mow through the heavy Chicago traffic, bear some hits from the police and plow its own shortcuts. Sure you can use a racing car to race the opponents until you are covering all the checkpoints, but your racing car may get thrashed and totaled if the route itself requires you to climb stairs and destroy objects in your path. That's because every car in this game has its own strengths and weaknesses. The beauty of this game is that even with the fastest car, you cannot guarantee yourself a victory. And if you think that its that straightforward, you're wrong. You would imagine that the races are just, races. Drive the police car, and the cops won't chase you !Ĭockpit view - 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback 3.
a 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback, one more Ford Mustang GT (regular version), a Panoz GTR-1, a Panoz AIV Roadster and finally, an 18 wheeler Freightliner Century. You have a Volkswagen New Beetle, a City Bus, a 1997 Cadillac Eldorado coupe, a 1999 Ford Mustang GT (police car), a 1998 Ford F-350. Once unlocked, you don't have to purchase them, you can drive them straightway. Out of these 10, you have only 5 cars available to drive. But all these vehicles are so carefully hand-picked by the developers that you won't ever feel the need to drive anything else. And yes, I'll keep mentioning this fact again and again. For 1999, these options were WAY ahead of their time. You want absolutely empty roads, all city to yourself to do high speed testing of your favourite car, you can do that. You want a lot of traffic, increase traffic density. You want a lot of police on your tail, increase the cop density (YES, YOU ALSO GET POLICE PURSUITS IN THIS GAME !). You can change the weather according to your preference. What more could you possibly want in 1999 ?Īnd now comes the game settings that you won't get in many games even in 2020. You get highways, streets, narrow alleys, shortcuts, breakable walls in places, bridges (yes, working bridges), a construction site, an industrial area, an airport with a small runway and even a small stadium. And the world itself isn't monotonous in any way. Many buildings, landmarks and roads are modelled from their real-life counterparts, and its possible to roam freely in the entire map. Yes, like modern games, you couldn't really get into a race from the free-roam (called "cruise") mode, but at that time, having an open world in a game used to be a HUGE deal. One of the features that made this game stand apart from the competition in 1999 was the open world that this game offered. I'd want to throw light on what all made this game a real deal, and how it turned me into a petrolhead.
It was so ahead of its time that even in 2020, its difficult to find some of the gameplay options that this game came with.
In fact, the Forza series can easily trace their roots back to this game. Midtown Madness is one game that truly raised the bar for racing games during that time, and games in general. Pixelated roads, car models and everything else absolutely basic and functional. I mean look at the earliest Need For Speed games. If you look at any of the games, except this game, from that era, you'd know the standards of graphics, gameplay and game audio from that time. Midtown Madness was released in 1999, an year after I was born.
I always had a digital copy of the game saved, because you never know, you might want to play an old game again, isn't it ? So, I scrabbled in all folders and found this game.