Gamers Needed 13 Years to Find This Obvious Shortcut in Trackmania
One Trackmania Nations Forever player discovered a shortcut on the D06 Obstacle track, 13 years after the title's release, that allowed for new records to be set.
Trackmania Nations Forever, despite 13 years having passed since the game's launch on PC, surprised the group of devoted fans with an unusual discovery. It's all thanks to a player from Austria, known as Rollin, who while racing on the D06 Obstacle track, came up with an idea how to shorten the time needed to reach the finish line.
The shortcut seems pretty obvious once you know about it, but that's how it is with all seemingly simple solutions that revolutionize the way we think about things. Rollin decided to go against the grain and use the speed he's built up over the course of the race to jump into the air and avoid one of the more troublesome parts of the track, the D06 Obstacle. The result? A new course record of 0:57.35, better than the previous one (0:58.50), achieved by German DarkBringer in 2019, - by more than one second. You can watch the Austrian's feat below - the section in question appears around 5:20.
I don't know if this kind of discovery impressed you, but Trackmania players certainly were impressed. Suffice it to say that in the 10 hours since Rollin shared his find on March 14th, the ten best times so far - some set a few years earlier - have become obsolete, replaced by new records set using the shortcut he discovered.
At the moment, the best time on the D06 Obstacle - after a few changes on the top spot - belongs to Rollin and is 0:56.86. It seems like it would be impossible to break the 56 second barrier... but the same could have been said for the 58 seconds, which turned out to be quite easy (as long as you master the course to perfection) after the Austrian's discovery.
The matter could have ended here, if it wasn't for the fact that in recent days Trackmania Nations Forever players have discovered another shortcut on D06 Obstacle, which - if done correctly, which is hellishly difficult - is supposed to shave off another 2 seconds (you can watch it in the video above - just skip to 8:35). Not bad for a small racing game from 2008, with a maximum of around 1000 people playing it on Steam. What's more, the title is free (we can download it from Valve's servers or the DRM-free version from the developers' website, among others) and offers a total of more than 60 tracks, each of which may hide its own secrets.
