Trackmaniamania

I’ve suddenly got a liking for Trackmania again.  Just the other day I sat down and decided I should try creating my own track, and this time actually persevere and initially keep it reasonably simple.  Suddenly I found myself hooked on messing around with this one track, and making it incredibly complex with a load of tight hairpins and chicanes, and stuffing it full of a load of ramps so that a lot of the track practically creates a huge navigable lattice; and long straights with a load of boosts for crazy thrillrides, as well as split paths and jumps etc.  It’s epic and kind of hard to drive around, which is suitable for the game.

So last night I was thinking to myself that I need to get to bed early, but then it was approaching one in the morning when I suddenly wanted a quick go with the advanced editor.  A load of screwing around with superboosters on massive ramps; and finding ways of catapulting myself outside of the track’s stadium for exploration later, I decide to quit and check the time, and it turns out I’d pissed away two hours to realise it was three o’clock.  Goddamn.  From this I decided I couldn’t be bothered trying to get to sleep, thus staying up all night and having a couple of hours’ sleep in the morning, missing my brass lesson and staying in bed with the laptop on next to me, my glasses on, and drifting in and out of sleep until I barely had a clue what the hell I just happened the last few hours.  In other words, I’ve became so hooked on Trackmania that it’s fucked up my sleeping again, which is the first time an actual game has done this to me for quite some time.  This is pretty much my bag, though, since I used to be a massive trackfag and Formula One fan until the start of middle school.  I was obsessed with the thought of making my own complex, undulating tracks to race around, so I guess this harks back to those days of childish creativity over more geekish things, only this time it’s more real.