Midnight Club: Street Racing is a 2000 racing video game developed by Angel Studios and published by Rockstar Games. It is the first installment of Midnight Club franchise, which focuses on competitive street racing and the import scene. Two distinct versions of the game were released for the PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance platforms, the former being a launch title in North America.

The PlayStation 2 version received generally favorable reviews, while the Game Boy Advance version received mixed reviews. Estimated sales of the game were 1.5 million units, with series sales reaching 2.5 million in the United States.

Gameplay

thumb|left|Midnight Club features racing in two fictional representations of real-world locales: New York City and London.

Midnight Club: Street Racing is a racing video game that focuses on the import scene and illegal street racing. Players can explore the open world or race in organized street races. A career mode has the player working their way up in the street racing world, defeating named opponents in various races, ultimately culminating in pink slip races to win the opponent's car. The game features numerous vehicles for the player to win throughout career and arcade modes, ranging from taxi cabs, buses, and other city vehicles to fictional representations of famous Toyota, Nissan, and Honda tuner cars. Players can again compete for pink slips from various racers. Each named racer has three variants of the same car, and the player earns these with successive wins. Each new version of the car features upgrades over the previous car. Environments have many destructible objects such as trees, bushes, lampposts, and trash cans. Each locale features police cars that will attempt to arrest the player based on their illegal actions. Each city contains landmarks from its respective real-life counterpart. Some of London's visible landmarks include Trafalgar Square, the Palace of Westminster, Big Ben, the River Thames, 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. The PlayStation 2 version was developed by Angel Studios and published by Rockstar Games. The Game Boy Advance version was developed by Rebellion Developments and published by Destination Software. They were released on October 26, 2000, and November 9, 2001, respectively. It was released alongside the North American release date of PlayStation 2 as a launch title. To promote Midnight Club, Rockstar Games received permission from the City of New York to shut down Times Square to photograph promotional material and box art for the game.

The game's soundtrack features music from house and techno artists Derrick May, Surgeon, and Aril Brikha, as well as drum 'n' bass artist Dom & Roland. Terry Donovan, COO of Rockstar Games, said that "their passion for creating superior music versus conforming to the industry standard is what makes them and their music truly unique," and further stated that the music represents the "dark" motivation of the members of the Midnight Club. Gameplay is locked to 30 frames per second.

Reception

The PlayStation 2 version received "generally favorable reviews", while the Game Boy Advance version received "mixed or average" reviews, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In another GamePro review, The Freshman called it "a good game that could have been great with a little more attention paid to really pushing the PS2. It's still one of the better launch titles, and a shoe-in for anyone who wants something different in their driving games library."

For the GBA version, Nintendo Power called it a "decent" if not "repetitive" drive. In February 2001, the game placed ninth in overall sales. By July 2006, the PlayStation 2 version sold 1.5 million units and earned $43 million in the U.S. NextGen ranked it as the 32nd highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, or GameCube between October 2000 and July 2006 in that country. Combined sales of Midnight Club console releases reached 2.5 million units in the U.S. by the latter date. The PS2 version was a runner-up for the "Best Driving Game" and "Best Game No One Played" awards at GameSpots Best and Worst of 2000 Awards, which went to Test Drive Le Mans and Samba de Amigo, respectively.

Notes

References

  • Midnight Club official website

<!--

Please be cautious adding more external links.

Wikipedia is not a collection of links and should not be used for advertising.

Excessive or inappropriate links will be removed.

See Wikipedia:External links and Wikipedia:Spam for details.

If there are already suitable links, propose additions or replacements on

the article's talk page, or submit your link to the relevant category at

the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) and link there using .

-->