Midnight Club: Los Angeles for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will be released on September 9th in North America, publisher Rockstar Games announced today. European racing fans will receive the Rockstar San Diego-developed open-world title three days later, on September 12th.

Joining the console iterations on the September 9th launch date will be a freshly announced PSP version, titled Midnight Club: LA Remix. Further details on the handheld game were not released, though it is being developed by Rockstar London.

via 1up.com

Oh, Data Design. Why do you hate us? We just wanna have a little fun with our Wii and here you are churning out disgrace after disgrace and calling them "games." Classic British Motor Racing is another in a long line of terrible offerings from the company, along with classics like Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing (2.0), London Taxi: Rush Hour (1.0), and Myth Makers: Orbs of Doom (2.9). The developer licensed 13 vintage cars from BMW and MG Rover. I'm going to assume that's where all the budget went and there just wasn't any money left over to make a game.

This is probably the most boring racing game I've ever played. The basic concept of cars racing to a finish line is here, but there isn't a single bell or whistle. The cars don't take any damage, the scenery is dull, and there aren't even any collision sound effects. All of the graphics are jaggy and blocky. Wins will unlock new cars and tracks, but that's not much of a reward for trudging through the game. There is one licensed pop song that plays during every race.

via wii.ign.com

From the outside looking in, NASCAR and the video games inspired by the sport are just a bunch of people turning left. But stick yourself in the middle of a pack of 43 cars, all fighting for position in a crowded field, and you can immediately appreciate the kind of skill it takes to find success in this kind of oval racing. For years now, EA Sports has been working to find a balance between re-creating the intense racing action of the actual NASCAR racing events and appealing to the broad NASCAR crowd, some of whom might not be ready for going wheel to wheel with the likes of Dale Jr. and Jeff Gordon.

via gamespot.com

When Mario Kart DS was released toward the end of 2005, it set the standard for racing games on Nintendo's newest handheld extremely high. Now, with the arrival of M&M's Kart Racing, there's a new benchmark against which to compare would-be competitors, though at the other end of the scale. This candy-inspired kart racer does almost nothing right as you negotiate its 11 uninspired courses, and it doesn't even try to do a lot of the stuff that you might expect to be standard over two years after Mario Kart DS. Even if you're allergic there's more fun to be found in a packet of M&M's than there is here, and given the game's dearth of modes the candy could conceivably last longer, too.

M&M's Kart Racing's eyesore of a menu screen affords you access to only three gameplay modes: Tournament, Time Trial, and multiplayer. Only one circuit and two different vehicles are available from the outset, but if you spend an hour or so playing through the Tournament mode you'll unlock everything else that the game has to offer. Regardless of which difficulty setting you choose, Tournament mode lacks any real challenge because you can retry each race as many times as you need to before unlocking and progressing to the next one. Because achieving any podium position in a field of five racers is good enough to progress you, you shouldn't really need to restart any of the races. But don't feel bad if you do; the game's AI doesn't play by the same rules that you do, nor does it appear to be hampered by the same awful vehicle handling and collision detection that you are.

via gamespot.com

Ubisoft has announced plans to race to the Wii scene this May with "an open world rescue driving game" called Emergency Heroes. While details remain sketchy, Ubisoft has confirmed that the game will feature two-player co-op and 16 different police, fire, and EMT vehicles to drive about while protecting the city of San Alto.

Strapped into the driver's seat on this Wii-exclusive project are both Ubisoft Barcelona and Ubisoft Reflections, the latter of which has more than a few racing games to its credit. Even so, we remain unsure of how to feel about Emergency Heroes, as while Reflections struck gold in 1999 with Driver, since then the company has become better known for having driven the franchise off a cliff with all of the gusto of a man with a death wish.

via joystiq.com

With little more than a week before Gran Turismo 5 Prologue finally hits Europe, anticipation for the game is reaching fever pitch. Sony has certainly pulled out all the stops for the series' unveiling on the PlayStation 3; it's nearly impossible to avoid the TV advertising campaign in the UK, and if you're a car fanatic then you've probably heard that the first British showing of the Nissan GT-R will take place at a Gran Turismo media event on March 27. With so much excitement around, it was nice to receive a surprise email from Sony this week inviting us to download the game. Naturally, we wasted no time in doing so to report back.

As with all previous games in the series, Gran Turismo's love of cars is obvious from the moment you load it up. If you're a casual racing fan, you might actually find this automobile obsession almost to the game's fault, given that it prevents you from actually racing anything before you've spent a good few minutes setting everything up. This isn't helped by the car-selection setup, which doesn't filter out the cars that you can't actually afford. With a measly 35,000 credits to spend at the beginning of the game, your choice is quite restricted, and you have to root through the various cheaper manufacturers to find something such as a Mini to start you off.

via gamespot.com

THQ has announced their next foray into the racing genre with Baja, an off-road racer for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Under development by 2XL Games, a new studio comprised largely of ex-members MX vs. ATV Untamed developers Rainbow Studios, Baja will see store shelves in August of this year.
Off-road fans will be tickled to hear that Baja will feature over 40 vehicles across 8 classes, including buggies, Trophy Trucks (pictured above), and 4x4s. The game will also feature robust multiplayer options, complete with endurance challenges, Open Class races, and obviously off-road excursions. These tracks can be played online or in a LAN against 11 other motorheads, with three of your friends in split screen, or if you're selfish, on a multi-screen panoramic view.

via 1up.com

Nintendo has announced that its frantic shell-flinging racer, Mario Kart Wii, will see its long-awaited US release on April 27th. The game will include the "intuitive" Wii Wheel, otherwise described as a large hunk of plastic capable of housing your Wii remote. We envision it being less useful for the actual game and better suited to the imaginary car we'll be driving everywhere, complete with lip-powered puttering and unexpected honking to annoy the coworkers at the office.

Once you stick Mario Kart Wii into your console, you'll be able to compete with up to 11 other drivers online across 32 courses (half of them recycled from previous games). You can also expect to encounter Mii integration, 10 battle arenas, alternate controller support and a festering hatred for blue shells.

via joystiq.com

We were mildly interested at the title Rig Racer 2, expecting some sort of hauling ass and taking names (names like Big Daddy and Snake, of course), flooring it over-the-sidewalk-and-through-the-buildings madness. After all, if movies have taught us anything, it's that a big rig is basically indestructible as long as you blast the horn when plowing into something. But what we got was a track barely wide enough for two trucks side by side - and while driving in circles is okay when our top speed is 260 MPH, it lacks a certain allure when we top out at 45 MPH.

via gamesradar.com

Initial D, a moderately popular racing anime in Japan and the US, is coming to the PS3. Like the show, expect lots of tuner-based racing. Don't get your hopes up, though. The PS3 release looks to be inspired by the arcade coin-op version. As in the case with all anime licensed games, it's smart to keep hopes low for the PS3 version. Maybe that way, we'll be taken by surprise at how the final product performs.

via ps3fanboy.com

A quick sit down with developer Blackrock Studio’s stunt-centric ATV racing game Pure had us exclaiming out loud such sophisticated phrases as “Whoa!” and “Dang!” and we weren’t even playing the game. Before we got to see it, however, director Jason Avent wanted to explain what he was going for in Pure.

He describes an example of going snowboarding, where you come over the crest of a hill, and a huge vista opens up before you, forcing your jaw to drop while at the same time inducing a sense of vertigo and the height and distance of it all. Bringing that feeling to Pure is one of his main goals. All the while that he’s talking, we’re staring at the back of a rider on an ATV at the starting line, with some admittedly nice details in the environment - including individual rocks in the dirt and wildflowers growing alongside the road - but there’s no vista to speak of. With such a big introduction of a concept that frankly sounds difficult to pull off, we were a bit skeptical.

via gamesradar.com

Twelve players might be a nice round number for straight-out races, but we've still been waiting patiently to see how many online opponents Nintendo will allow us in Mario Kart Wii's version of the classic battle modes. Jeux France reports that eight players will be able to duke it out in the game's battle modes.

To arrive at the magic number yourself, check out the radar in the lower-right of the above picture. Eight icons are clearly visible, making for ample amounts of balloons to burst, and stars to steal. We're sad that twelve-player support isn't possible in the battle mode, but we'll definitely take what we can get.

via joystiq.com

Like most EA franchises, the Need for Speed series has been quite prolific over the years. Through the franchise history, the franchise has donned a number of styles, never quite a quality that makes it distinctly unique. ProStreet focuses much more on the "Pro" side of things, losing the very urban street-based attitude it has featured over the last few iterations. Players will collect and tune cars, and will partake in a number of professional circuits from throughout the world.

The offering is pretty standard-fare, but should more than satiate the basic needs of the car enthusiast. The career mode has players completing various challenges in each course. Many trials involve crossing the finish line first. However, there are a couple of modes that keep things interesting. There's Speed Trap, which has players attempting to reach the highest speeds possible at each checkpoint. There's no need to be in first: rather, players must smartly approach each gate in a way that'll allow them to get the highest speed. Sometimes, that means cutting corners, or taking turns in rather unconventional ways. It's an interesting mode that takes advantage of a different kind of strategy.

via pspfanboy.com

In a move that will shock the industry, EA revealed to analysts that sequels to Burnout: Paradise and Skate are in the works. More specifically, EA Games president Frank Gibeau said the two series would "see extension" before April of 2009. Extensions? Can't you just taste the vision?

Gibeau also said that after a disappointing sales year, Need for Speed would be returning to the touchstones that made it a hit before, and adding open-world racing and a new "highway battle mode" -- does it count as stealing if you do it from your own company? It's a great time to be alive for people who love EA games, but hate being surprised.

via joystiq.com

Despite our affinity for playing the DS while in the car, we're not sure the DS is the platform we want to race cars in, if you catch our drift. Nevertheless, Codemasters is bringing the Race Driver: GRID franchise to Nintendo's ubiquitous handheld. Most notable is the game's track editor, first spotted in last year's Race Driver: Create and Race DS game. Online multiplayer functionality enables up to four-player races, online leaderboards, and track-sharing ability including the ability to upload and download new tracks from a central server. The DS version is scheduled to release simultaneously with the already announced PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 releases sometime mid-2008.

via joystiq.com