Midtown Madness 2
More Cities, More Chaos
Midtown Madness was
a success. It was obvious that this game was going to have a follow-up,
and indeed, it did in September 2000 with Midtown Madness 2. While
released in 2000, MM2 embraced the carefree spirit of the 90's. A decade
where one could just par-take in fun and consequence free arcade gaming
to their hearts content without a care in the world
While the gameplay was the same, MM2 added another cities and more cars. Their was one very notable difference between the two games though: mods. It was possible for the user to add their own cars and cities to the game. Combined this with the fact that the Internet was becoming much-more widespread, these user-created mods were finding themselves in more game installs.
While MM2 was mostly the same, their were visual enhancements as well, provided by the latest version of DirectX. Like the last game too, the game looked horrible in software rendering. At the time, before graphic accelerators became common, one didn't notice this much. The satisfying feeling of causing destructive mayhem in two open-world cities (more with mods!) would have been enough back in the day. However, one doesn't need to subjugate themselves to the horrors of software rendering anymore!
While the gameplay was the same, MM2 added another cities and more cars. Their was one very notable difference between the two games though: mods. It was possible for the user to add their own cars and cities to the game. Combined this with the fact that the Internet was becoming much-more widespread, these user-created mods were finding themselves in more game installs.
While MM2 was mostly the same, their were visual enhancements as well, provided by the latest version of DirectX. Like the last game too, the game looked horrible in software rendering. At the time, before graphic accelerators became common, one didn't notice this much. The satisfying feeling of causing destructive mayhem in two open-world cities (more with mods!) would have been enough back in the day. However, one doesn't need to subjugate themselves to the horrors of software rendering anymore!
Their were two
additional cities: London and San Francisco. San Francisco, like
Chicago, had always been a favorite for movies that incorporated
car-chase scenes. Bullitt was shot in San Francisco, while the Blues
Brothers was filmed in Chicago. On one hand, I'm surprised that London
was included, as it's not really a good city to build a racing game
around, as the streets are typically two constricted, and consumed with
heavy traffic. As one could probably expect, liberties were taken in the
design of both cities to make the city as "insane-friendly" as
possible. With that noted, the major landmarks in both London and San
Francisco, as with Chicago in the previous game, are represented in MM2.
Multiplayer in MM2 was supported over the serial cable connect, dial-up modem, and the Internet as well through the MSN Gaming Zone, which was operational until it went offline in 2006.
Like the last game, this one was developed by Angel Studios, and published by Microsoft. Angel Studios did a very good job with the sequel as well. Granted, it was still mostly the first game with support for mods and extra cities, but it still works. When the game provides fun arcade driving while causing mayhem in the streets, who can complain. The ability to add mods has expanded the longevity of this game as well.
Multiplayer in MM2 was supported over the serial cable connect, dial-up modem, and the Internet as well through the MSN Gaming Zone, which was operational until it went offline in 2006.
Like the last game, this one was developed by Angel Studios, and published by Microsoft. Angel Studios did a very good job with the sequel as well. Granted, it was still mostly the first game with support for mods and extra cities, but it still works. When the game provides fun arcade driving while causing mayhem in the streets, who can complain. The ability to add mods has expanded the longevity of this game as well.
It's Time To Trash More Cities Now (No VM this time)
As a proponent of
virtual machines, I decided to get this game running under VMware, my
virtualizer of choice. However, I couldn't successfully get this game to
run under any configuration. Their were various graphical glitches and
performance issues which made the game unplayable. The early Microsoft
DirectX titles are typically notorious to try to get running under
virtual machines. When they do run, it's often using the software
rendering. As a result, I just decided to run this game directly on my
host that's running Windows 7 64-bit.
Even this posed compatibility issues. However, I gotten around them, and got MM2 running. I decided to use the dgVoodoo wrapper. This wrapper imitates the graphics functions found on the 3DFX Glide library and early DirectX libraries and maps them to more modern DirectX/OpenGL equivalents.
I got MM2 running eventually. For a old game from 2000, it runs very well, which isn't actually that surprising considering that in the year 2000, most new desktop PC's were shipping with Pentium 3 processor with around 64-128MB's of RAM with Windows 98/ME. Several lower-end machines still used SVGA VESA video modes, while the higher-end computers typically used integrated graphics, which while a improvement over SVGA, was still a far-cry from the GPU accelerators like the 3DFX Voodoo 2 and soon-to-be offerings from both ATI (Radeon) and Nvidia (GeForce). 3D accelerators, while becoming more common, was still not a everyday thing for many computer users in the 90's.
Even this posed compatibility issues. However, I gotten around them, and got MM2 running. I decided to use the dgVoodoo wrapper. This wrapper imitates the graphics functions found on the 3DFX Glide library and early DirectX libraries and maps them to more modern DirectX/OpenGL equivalents.
I got MM2 running eventually. For a old game from 2000, it runs very well, which isn't actually that surprising considering that in the year 2000, most new desktop PC's were shipping with Pentium 3 processor with around 64-128MB's of RAM with Windows 98/ME. Several lower-end machines still used SVGA VESA video modes, while the higher-end computers typically used integrated graphics, which while a improvement over SVGA, was still a far-cry from the GPU accelerators like the 3DFX Voodoo 2 and soon-to-be offerings from both ATI (Radeon) and Nvidia (GeForce). 3D accelerators, while becoming more common, was still not a everyday thing for many computer users in the 90's.
Back in the day,
MM2 was set to software rendering as I often played on computers that
didn't have those fancy accelerators. At the same time, in today's age
where such power is often taken for granted, their really isn't a reason
to play the game in software mode. Like the first Midtown Madness, the
second game looks horrible in that mode, and begs to be played with all
the visual effects taken to the max.
Installing game mods were very straightforward. Just download them from the internet and extract the contents to the root game folder. The cars and maps usually come in AR files, which are just ZIP files with a different extension.
Installing game mods were very straightforward. Just download them from the internet and extract the contents to the root game folder. The cars and maps usually come in AR files, which are just ZIP files with a different extension.
Retrospective
I played this game a lot back in the day. It was loads of fun with horrible accidents being the norm. I would end up in the
Pacific a lot of the time. I'm very sure that those virtual Londoners
didn't like the mayhem that I caused in their city either. In today's age
of various open-world driving game with massive environments to drive
around in, it's hard to comprehend a time when these type of games were
the exception, not the rule. One needed a very powerful computer to such
games. The consoles of the day, while capable of bringing open-world
driving games to the masses, couldn't do it in such detail. GTA III
wasn't even a thing yet when this game was released.
MM2
was the most amazing thing back in the day, and it still brings a smile
to my face now. I felt so delighted revisiting this title. At the same
time, the games of today are very different. Arcade-style gaming
dominated the scene, and these games provided those quick 15-minute
burst of fun. Such games though didn't age well with the march of time,
where now, at least to open-world driving games are concerned, a good
story is essential.
I'm not going to do direct comparisons when comparing the graphics
standards of this older title to newer games. It's expected that the
graphics of a game isn't going to hold up as time passes. One has to put
themselves into the mindset of a late 90's PC gamer, and not judge the
game graphically to modern standards. It was a different time with
different hardware. For the time though, MM2 was a visually impressive
game. Also, different trends dominate. The emphasis was causing mayhem
in fast muscle cars in good fun. MM2 was a product of the care-free
90's, which carried over into 2000. A time where one could drive around a
city without purpose causing doing cool stunts for the sake of it,
without a care in the world.
Midtown Madness 2
WIKIPEDIA
WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
Midtown Madness 2
FANDOM.COM
MIDTOWNMADNESS2.FANDOM.COM
Midtown Madness 2, Racing, 2000
Internet Game Cars Database
WWW.IGCD.COM
MM2 Extreme
MM2X.COM
MM2X.COM
MMArchive
WWW.MMARCHIVE.COM
WWW.MMARCHIVE.COM
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