TrackMania2 Canyon is now on Steam in the US for $20! Maybe this (or a Steam sale) will revive the game a bit?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/228760/

Wasn't it $20 when it was released originally? Not entirely sure how to feel about that.

No, I think it launched at $30.

Also, found out that the T2 version of Stadium is available for pre-order from Steam for $8.99, and you can download the open beta now for free.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/232910/

How come stadium is 10 bucks cheaper? Aren't these just diffrent environments, with diffrent tilesets and slightly diffrent handling? I have never played a trackmania game before, is there any reason to get Canyon rather than Stadium?

PSA: If you already have Canyon, your key should hook right into Steam.

Stadium is the most basic Trackmania environment (granted, 'basic' in the Trackmania universe still means tons of loops and wall rides). During the last wave of Trackmania games, the Stadium environment was free and the only environment in Trackmania Nations. Trackmania United had the other 6 environments but was much less popular because of its $40 price tag.

You can check out the Trackmania 2 Stadium environment for free right now, click 'Download Demo' on Steam and you'll actually download the open beta client. I think there're some limitations, but hey, free Trackmania!

I'm trying to contact Jeff to see if he wants to top up the old dedicated server for Stadium. If not, I have access to a pretty decent VPS and may try hosting something myself.

I get paid today. I might try to get this this weekend.

What are the servers looking like? Are there people still playing this game? Should I just buy Trackmania Stadium instead?

Fun Fact: If you already own it, it looks like you can redeem your CD key from the purchase confirmation email and download it through steam!

Edit:
Oh... looks like @bistromath mentioned that already. Whoops.

I just bought this a couple weeks ago. There's not a ton of people still playing it, but I always found some servers with folks, and the game is still crazy amounts of fun. I'm hoping that putting it on Steam and the Stadium beta will get more people back into it. It's a blast.

@samuraigarrin:

No, I'm pretty sure it was 20

The community has also dropped off hasn't it? And the giant bomb server is no more either eh?

@abendlaender: Seems that we're both wrong. The price was $24.99 at launch.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/08/12/trackmania-2-canyon-release-date-confirmed/

@samuraigarrin:

You know, I would say we were both right.

Oh sweet i already lost he key once was pain to get back now its less of a worry.

Would have been excited for this if it was solid as Trackmania United, after hearing Jeff talking about how much they keep messing up the servers or other things just turns me back to going into United if I want more Trackmania.

Thank god. I had an awful issue of having a small 60gig boot SSD and the ubi installer FORCES 60-70% of the install to be on the boot drive so I have had to miss out on TM action for a while.
lets hope stadium and Valley can get enough hype to bring back the launch activity that this game once had.

An intresting little side note is that you can also activate your shootmania storm key in to steam now too :)

Get hype.

Awesome. Now I have to figure out which hoops to jump through to find my key.

Search for "maniaplanet" in your email. Your confirmation email in purchasing Canyon should have the key at the bottom of the email.

Yes! Finally! Updating Shootmania and Trackmania was painful every time I started up the games, now I can update them before I want to play the games. Yes, you can add Shootmania retail keys to steam too.

EDIT: I haven't played TM2 or Shootmania for about 5 months so I definitely will be going to some servers tomorrow. Is the GB server still up for TM2?

Thanks for the heads up. Bought the game at their site. Getting it through Steam right now. After it finishes installing, I'll just uninstall the other one.

Thanks, this helped me find it. Not sure if I'll ever want to play the game again but it's nice to have it on my Steam account.

Rock on! Thanks, duder :D

If Jeff doesn't, I might consider looking into whatever he did last time. I'd like to see this community rebound with good racing and plenty of bad spectacular dubstep.

Sad my code from my e-mail doesn't work. Anyone else having issues redeeming the code into steam??

@pseg: You convinced me to buy it. Good work, pseg.

Jeff used TrackmaniaServer.Org, a somewhat-managed dedicated host with a pretty good web interface. If you're interested in paying for it (or want to spearhead a donation drive or whatever) then it's probably the best solution.

Jeff is waiting to see how quickly the track building community gets to work on Stadium before he reups the Original Classic server. For now, I'm up for trying to get a server running off of my VPS if you'd rather not pay for it.

@karsh: Huh, that's reasonably affordable -- thanks for that. I guess my willingness to buy a server might be impacted by the success of your VPS experiment, though.

Kind of silly that servers can't easily swap between Canyon and Stadium maps in a cycle, though not entirely unexpected. If that's completely the case, it makes the idea of two concurrent GB servers rather tempting.

Server's up, look for Giant Bomb Unofficial Classic.

Working on making it not suck right now. It's just on the TMStadiumA tracklist right now, which kinda bites.

edit: Thread for the server here

Had a bunch of fun on the server tonight, but man oh man am I rusty at TrackMania.

Yes. I emailed Ubisoft support and was told my code isn't valid and I'd need to buy the game again. Awesome support service.

Yes. I emailed Ubisoft support and was told my code isn't valid and I'd need to buy the game again. Awesome support service.