Almost 13 years after its release, Trackmania Nations Forever still has a small but extremely loyal community of hardcore fans – and with their inventiveness they are still discovering new abbreviations and tricks that can be used to break records that have been in place for years.
A few weeks ago we already showed you the story of one of these shortcuts, which could only be taken with a breathtaking maneuver. Now the YouTuber Wirtual has reported on a new shortcut that has been a big mystery to the players for years:
Link to YouTube content
An almost impossible jump
The abbreviation can be found on the D03-Acrobatic route: Despite its spectacular appearance, the slope is one of the easiest maps in the whole game. Even if a large part of the route consists of a “wall ride” in which the pilots drive along the wall, all they have to do is race straight ahead and turn slightly the entire time.
But what makes the route so unique is that Puzzles around a potential shortcut, the player for years to get to the bottom. In 2011, the community came up with the idea of leaving the Wall Ride early and thus possibly being able to fly straight to the destination.
However, the idea failed: The Europe player Philkos always missed the finish line by a few centimeters despite maximum speed and a perfect take-off angle and always ended up in the abyss.
A brilliant idea
Three years later: Another Europe player named Bast7mon has discovered a way to tease out the missing centimeters – with a simple trick. Instead of going full throttle right at the start, he takes a step backwards.
Thanks to the extended acceleration distance, the driver was able to build up enough momentum to just barely reach the section of the route. A new best time was not achieved with this, however, because one would probably only reach the finish line with a ricochet.
However, this seemed completely impossible at the time, so that the speedrun community concentrated on other routes for a long time despite the potential super shortcut.
Absurd Strategies
In 2017, some players turned their attention to the D03-Acrobatic route again – and developed some absurd maneuvers in the process. For example, a player came up with the idea of jumping into the last quarter of the first wall ride with a deliberate driving error and using a so-called bug slide to catapult himself from there to the finish.
If you can’t imagine anything like that: Just watch the following clip:
Since this tactic was only able to undercut the fastest time, Nixion came up with another curious idea: He drove to the top of the Wall Ride, touched its top edge with his rear wheel, turned upside down in flight and touched the thin edge again with the tip of his nose to fly towards the destination.
A ricochet with the tip of the nose of the car should pave the way to the finish.
Unfortunately, this breathtaking idea was not crowned with success either, as a few centimeters were missing again.
The solution to the riddle
In March 2021, over twelve years after the original release, the community finally found a way to jump to the finish line unhindered from the wall ride.
And the solution was a lot easier than expected: Shortly before the first wall ride there is an acceleration field with small green edges on the sides. If you drive over one of these edges, a so-called speedslide can be initiated, which provides additional speed.
However, for a long time no one had the idea of starting the Speedslide on the right edge. Only last month, in April 2021, did a player try this – and found the last missing piece of the puzzle.
The increased acceleration distance enabled the drivers to pick up even more speed with this method and so on Jump straight from the wall ride to the finish. A tough fight broke out for the fastest time, which the Croatian Hefest ultimately won.
The following clip shows his run, with which he still holds the world record:
Even more about speed runs
If you enjoyed this extraordinary story, you might also like our GameStar podcast on speed running:
more on the subject
GameStar Podcast – Endgegner Speedrunning
Dimi and Micha talk to two Twitch streamers about how the dedicated speed running community is organized, what different types of speed runs there are, and how to become a speed runner at all.
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