The Concept

Developer: Angel Studios
Publisher: Microsoft
Midtown 2 official page: http://www.microsoft.com/games/midtown2/
More Midtown 2 resources
ETA: Q4, 2000

Start your engines

What's the whole idea behind Midtown Madness? Take a car, fire it up, and drive around a major modern city. You can do a time trial or race through checkpoints - or, the most popular way to play - reckless endangerment. Cars, trucks and buses are generally viewed as methods of transportation, or - for more expensive models - a way to attract the member of the opposite sex (commonly referred to among men as "panty droppers".) Sure you can have some fun with one, speeding a bit here and maybe doing some racing - but it's always in secluded areas or on occasion, a pro track. Hardly anyone has the opportunity to strut their stuff in primetime, unless it's for Los Angelenos watching the 6 o'clock high-speed pursuit on the news while eating dinner.

Set it up

Wrong way cool man

Here's where Midtown Madness 2 comes in. Take one of 20 different vehicles, fire it up in London or San Francisco, and just go! That's right, just like a part of Chicago was almost perfectly replicated in the original Midtown Madness, now you get to enjoy driving in the well-planned-with-massive-traffic-in-mind towns of London and San Francisco *cough*.

Bring the beast around

Crash Course indeed

Real life sucks

Unlike real life, where you have to sit frustrated in a car while two long-lost girlfriends chat and exchange phone numbers at a green light, in Midtown Madness 2, you can simply switch to neutral, rev up, shift and slam one of them straight into that intersection just as a semi is going by. "Did I do that?" Yes Urkel, you sure did. That's actually one of the simpler things we were doing in Midtown. Ever consider what your life expectancy would be taking a 300hp car full throttle into a freeway in downtown SF - going the wrong way? Fire up Midtown 2 and your stopwatch then start counting the seconds. That's the appeal of the Midtown Madness games - you're in the 'real world', with its cops, traffic and (insert grin here) pedestrians.