Midnight Club: Street Racing
Midnight Club: Street Racing is a racing video game developed by Angel Studios and published by Rockstar Games. The game focuses on competitive street racing and the import scene. The game was released for the PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance platforms, the former being a launch title for the platform. It is the first game in "Midnight Club" franchise, followed by "Midnight Club II". The title of this series is a reference to the Japanese street racing team Mid Night Club. In the late 1990s, they were infamous for their high-speed runs down the  Bayshore Route on Tokyo's Shuto Expressway, which is why the "Wangan" (Bayshore) kanji is also included in the title, although it is also a shout-out to "Wangan Midnight", as the "midnight" portion of the logo is stylized similarly. Curiously, the few Japanese releases of the "Midnight Club" games (the first game and both "Los Angeles" and "LA Remix") omit the kanji from the logo, presumably to avoid potential rights issues with "Wangan Midnight" rights owners Kodansha. Plot. A mysterious group of urban street racers known as the "Midnight Club" race for pride, power, and glory in sleekly customized , enhanced sports cars. As a regular New York City cab driver, the player learns about this secret club and decides to join. The player begins with a relatively unmodified and slow vehicle, that being the Taxi. Through a series of races, each with different goals, they defeat other racers and win faster and more expensive vehicles. The goal is to defeat the world champion, who is revealed to be a young Japanese woman named Anika whose father manufactures concept cars in Japan. Being the only person to beat her in a race, the player is the only one who sees  her identity and become the World Champion of the Midnight Club, along with winning her concept car. Anika returns to Japan afterwards. Gameplay. Players race through the cities of London and New York City. At the time of release, the game's cities were considered highly detailed and large. Along with "Turbo Esprit" and "Midtown Madness", the game pioneered the use of an open world environment design instead of predefined circuit tracks. Both cities are designed for the street racing scenario. Each city contains landmarks from their respective real life counterparts. Some of London's visible landmarks include Trafalgar Square , the Palace of Westminster and its Big Ben, and the Tower Bridge. New York includes such landmarks as Times Square, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, Rockefeller Center, United Nations Plaza, Plaza Hotel, Madison Square Garden, Washington Square Park, the Wall Street Bull, Battery Park and Central Park. Multiplayer. Multiplayer modes, such as Capture the Flag, are available for play on the PlayStation 2 by using additional controllers. Reception. The game was met with mixed to positive reception. GameRankings and Metacritic gave it a score of 76.99% and 78 out of 100 for the PlayStation 2 version, and  48.43% and 50 out of 100 for the Game Boy Advance version. The PlayStation 2 version was a runner-up for "GameSpot"s annual "Best Driving Game" and "Best Game No One Played" awards among console games, losing to "Test Drive Le Mans" and "Samba de Amigo", respectively. Kevin Rice reviewed the PlayStation 2 version of the game for "Next Generation", rating it four stars out of five, and stated "... an incredibly addictive arcade racer with excellent graphics and a rock-solid framerate. Oh, and you can hit pedestrians (by accident, of course). What's not to like?" IGN gave the  PS2 version a score of 8.6/10 and wrote: "In addition to the litany of cars, the huge cities are riddled with secrets and original ways to make shortcuts, which makes single player gameplay and two-player games extremely fun". GameSpot, giving it an 8.4/10 rating, called it "an extremely fun arcade-style racer". Game Revolution, however, gave it a B−, stating "While offering a decent helping of fun, the bland textures and ubiquitous gameplay make for a somewhat unexciting PS2 start". For the GBA version, "Nintendo Power", rating it 2.9/5, called it "a decent if not repetitive drive". Game Over  Online, rating it 56%, wrote: "There is no solid gameplay to back up what is, at the onset, a graphically engaging 2D engine, complete with special effects". "Play Magazine" gave it two stars out of five: "Unless you stay within the given path, you're guaranteed to lose every race". By July 2006, the PlayStation 2 version of "Midnight Club" had sold 1.5 million copies and earned $43 million in the United States. "Next Generation" ranked it as the 32nd-highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube between January 2000 and July 2006 in that  country. Combined sales of "Midnight Club" console releases reached 2.5 million units in the United States by July 2006.