TrackMania 2: Lagoon Track: Lightning - Loop Cross

A couple years ago, TrackMania Turbo was announced as the next game in the TrackMania series, with multiple environments to race in, including a completely new one, Rollercoaster Lagoon. I was sorta excited for the latter, as it had rollercoaster pieces that allowed your vehicle to stick to the track. Ah, the possibilities for said pieces were basically endless, but only one thing stuck in my mind: "This really reminds me of another great game series..."

Hopefully you saw it coming with a blog post title and first paragraph like that one; Yes, the only thing I could think of was F-Zero, specifically F-Zero X and F-Zero GX, which used tracks that constantly changed orientations and shapes, sending your machine on a rollercoaster, practically! Now, I didn't pick that particular track in that video for no reason; I'll get back to it after finishing my story.

Years went by and other games distracted me from TrackMania Turbo's release. I forgot about Rollercoaster Lagoon, let alone what the other environments even were... Eventually, however, I heard about "TrackMania 2: Lagoon". Now, hold on, isn't that Turbo's unique environment? Reading more, I found out that TrackMania Turbo was never meant to be the "next game in the series", but merely a console spin-off, contrary to what Ubisoft made everyone believe.

NADEO ported the Lagoon environment back to TrackMania 2 due to the previous points and that deep down, TrackMania Turbo is just TrackMania 2 with a fresh coat of paint. Due to this "new environment" being added to TrackMania 2 (and since Turbo is dumbed down from the second game anyways), I purchased TrackMania 2: Lagoon instead.

So, what's the first track I made using it? Well, not counting a test track, I remade the track you saw in the video above, Lightning - Loop Cross from F-Zero GX! Here's a video of a non-F-Zero machine racing through my recreation three laps:

Impressive, huh? This proves the TrackMania series isn't near a fast as F-Zero's games, but still can be vaguely similar thanks to the new track parts Lagoon added. Of course, these parts have limitations:

• The only helix parts that are included make the track curve sideways, so the first helix in the original track had to be made identical to the second one.
• Rollercoaster track parts can only go upside-down by curving downward once to become a wall then downward again, which is why the track goes a bit off to the left after the second helix.
• Stupidly, the starting line has two grey parts sticking up on the sides; If they hit your vehicle, they separate it from the magnets, making it drop to the track below. I added a warning as the player approaches this to warn them about aligning their vehicle with the center of the track.
• Lastly, there's something odd about the ceiling-to-wall transition part! For whatever reason, if your vehicle is going too fast while going over it, the magnets don't work and your vehicle will fly off of the track, which is why the "free wheeling" track parts are used, to limit the player's speed before these potentially-frustrating parts.

Still, other than those points, this track is good, and can be fun to race around, though it gets old by the third lap. To download the track, open your ManiaLink browser in TrackMania 2: Lagoon, then navigate to TheXSite. Choose "lagoon" at the top then you can try out this track without downloading it or extract it to your TrackMania 2 "Maps" folder.

Unfortunately, that won't work yet as it hasn't been fully set up (though the Valley part of the ManiaLink website works)! Download this ZIP file and extract it to C:\Users\[your name]\Documents\ManiaPlanet. This will add all of my TM2 Valley/Lagoon tracks to your game, along with any custom music they may use. You may need to refresh your track list, but after that, enjoy!