Astraware® and Pazzazz Games are excited to announce the release of GTS World Racing for Palm OS and Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs. GTS World Racing is the sequel to the highly acclaimed GTS Racing Challenge, and has been created by Pazzazz and published by Astraware.

Fans of classic coin-operated arcade racing games will love the retro style graphics and exhilarating sound effects. Experience the roar of engines as you select your car, race your opponents, set the fastest laptimes, score points for most race wins and burn rubber to gain championship victory!

GTS World Racing offers 64 track layouts across 16 worldwide locations - from snowscapes to dusty deserts; 3 car types to choose from each with their own handling characteristics; and 4 difficulty levels from Easy to Extreme!

The game offers 4 play modes to satisfy every level of expertise: Single Race - check out the tracks and practice your skills before heading for the main event; Challenge Cup - race at each of the 16 locations and achieve the required finishing position for your chosen difficulty; Grand Tour - complete all 64 tracks in all 16 locations and achieve the required finishing position in each; and Championship - complete the full 16 race season and score the most points to win the championship.

GTS World Racing is available for a wide range of smartphones and PDAs running Palm OS® 5 and later, and Windows Mobile Professional, Classic and Standard 2003 and later.

On May 23rd the new TrackMania United Forever will be released in the stores. Today a new trailer shows off some of the new cars and the seven new environments.

At the end of June or in early July the arcade racing game FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage is heading to the PC platform.

With over 2.5 million sales worldwide, the award winning FlatOut franchise is now one of the most successful racing series across multiple formats. FlatOut Ultimate Carnage debuted on the Xbox 360 in Europe in June 2007, and the game has been a critical success, remaining a Top 5 seller in all European markets for several months. This high demand prompted Empire Interactive to develop FlatOut Ultimate Carnage for PC, improving graphically upon the XBOX 360 version, and bringing PC gamers up to date with the latest instalment of this high-octane, destructive racer.

EA’s demo of Burnout Paradise is now available for download at the Playstation Store and on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Discover jumps, billboards and smashable targets all over Motor City, Big Surf Beach and Ocean View in search of the fastest Burnout Route in the Hunter Cavalry car. Also, attempt your shot at a race and check out the all-new Stunt Run mode. If you’re online, invite up to three friends into your game and connect with them instantly using the EasyDrive online system. Once online, players can work cooperatively to complete three FreeBurn challenges or simply smash each other up and grab their Burnout Mugshots with the PLAYSTATION®Eye and Xbox LIVE™ Vision cameras.

The development team at Criterion pushes the boundaries to make each Burnout game stands on its own – reinventing the franchise with every iteration. The Paradise experience is all about freedom and exploration. The game has been designed to embrace speed, freedom, social online play and spectacular crashing, but now with all new modes, a completely open world and events at every intersection.

So make action your middle name and take to the streets of Paradise City.

When the coin-ops were starting to die out during the nineties there was one game that resisted: SEGA Rally. Even to this day it’s not impossible to still find the cabinets around, insert your money, grab the steering wheel and show once and for all who’s the king of the forest.

The launch of this new game creates a nostalgic warmth, but also a fair bit of nervousness. Any sort of ideas you might have that the original arcade game hasn’t been honoured at once feel unjustified when you start to steer the insanely sliding rally cars in the same crazy pace you did years ago. Just like before this isn’t rally against the clock but head-to-head and metal-against-metal. With thirty tracks in five different setting there is entertainment to be had for a long time. The biggest new addition to the concept are the deformable terrain. The cars leave tyre tracks in the roads and since the courses are driven for several laps the roads get incredibly bumpy and in its places really hard to drive during the last lap. A feature that works really good and means that no laps will be the same.

SEGA Rally in its 2007 clothes is a perfect game when you’re in the mood for some crazy non-serious driving.

SEGA Rally (or SEGA Rally Revo as it’s called in North America) arrived today in the mail box and I booted it up for some quick races.

It’s all very clear just by looking at the title screen that SEGA are staying true to the classic original. It’s all very arcadey, almost to the point where you want to insert coins. Today’s debut boot of the game resulted in two quick races:

1. Safari.
I chose the Peugeot 306 and the first Safari stage. It’s apparantly the easiest of the stages. The first thing I realises was that the car was incredibly edgy and was twitching left right as soon as you were even considering moving the analog stick. My first two laps were a bit like a drunken driver but I became faster and faster while bouncing on the deformed tracks and splashing through water. Ended up third after a pretty damn splendid last lap.

2. Arctic
Snow. You can’t really beat it when it comes to rallying. And in SEGA Rally you even get to plough it, leaving deep tyre tracks in the road which makes every lap a bit different and a bit more shaky. After the three icy laps I got third here as well after a much more stable race.

The nervous steering does take some getting used to, but once I started going forward instead of just counter-steering wildly I started to feel that this could be the arcade racer (or rallier) that I’ve been looking for.

Stay tuned for a small, but proper, review.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment will launch the Speed Racer videogame based on the upcoming film written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. Speed Racer is a Warner Bros. Pictures presentation in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, of a Silver Pictures production. The game will be available in 2008 on the Wii and Nintendo DS systems as the Speed Racer film hits cinemas. It will be released on the PlayStation2 computer entertainment system with the DVD launch.

In the Wii and PlayStation2 system games, developed by Sidhe Interactive and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, players will be able to take on the role of the characters from the film, getting behind the wheels of each character’s signature vehicles to experience firsthand the film’s high adrenaline, combative racing style. The car-fu style of action within the game will closely represent the action style being designed by the Wachowski brothers for the film itself as they lend direction and assets to the development team directly from their Berlin set. John Gaeta, a long time Wachowski collaborator and Co-VFX Supervisor on the Speed Racer film, is working with Sidhe and WBIE to assist in maintaining a close film-to-game aesthetic connection.

“Speed Racer is an exceptionally creative property and teamed with the Wachowski brothers’ vision it makes for action-packed racing gameplay,” said Samantha Ryan, senior vice president, development and production, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “The game will capture the intensity of the racing in the film to give gamers and movie fans a chance to take the wheel after the experience the film.”

The full game has Playstation 3 launch date of September 14th for PAL regions but you can already get your hands on the wheel and try out DIRT by downloading the demo from the Playstation Store.

The demo features three modes:

• Crossover: Compete against Colin McRae himself on a twisty tarmac super special stage in a Subaru Impreza.
• C.O.R.R.: Ten V8 650hp buggies at the same raceway!
• Rally: The start of the Cuconi B rally stage in Sardinia.

Already a 700,000+ best seller on other formats, Colin McRae: DIRT is a thrill ride through a massive range of off-road racing experiences on gravel, mud and dirt, right across the globe. Race in challenging, heavyweight 850bhp cars through high speed blind corners and along perilous cliff edges in the Hill Climb events, including the world famous Pikes Peak International through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Multiple car races take players across grueling desert terrain in Rally Raid competitions, while Rally Cross switches between dirt and road racing. There’s also Crossover circuits and events from the CORR (Championship Off-Road Racing) series in the U.S., which combines powerful buggies with exciting dirt tracks and tabletop jumps, drop-offs and moguls for an intoxicating mix. DIRT also offers a dedicated mode for rally championships and an online race mode for up to 100 players.

On September the 21st PC gamers will have the opportunity of racing in seven European cities when European Street Racing by Team 6 and XIDER gets released.

The top street racers from across Europe have been competing against each other in their various home towns in racing ‘turf’ wars. But now, the seven national champions are looking for a fresh challenge in a bid to find the all out champion of Europe.

An influential event sponsor has requested there be one further contender, an eighth contender, someone to challenge the champions, a wild card with little experience but great racing skills… In European Street Racing you are the wild card, and the winner of all seven cities becomes the European Street Racing Champion winning a place in street racing’s hall of fame.

Crucial to success is making the right tuning and modification choices before the chequered flag falls. Prior to hitting the streets of Berlin, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris and Warsaw with a brand new car, you have to decide whether it’s speed or control that will win the next race. Speed may put you into first place, but also into the first corner!

Engine and gear box upgrades are available and needed as the racing becomes more intense. Cars can be acquired by beating opponents on their home turf and prize money can be invested in new cars or parts to make the ultimate racing machine.

There are 3 types of racing mode. ‘Drift Racing’ looks to develop the player’s skill at using handbrake turns and dramatic manoeuvres to win a race; ‘City Racing’ is about speed and the knowledge of the course as timing is everything, while ‘Challenge Racing’ is a personal battle between two racers who admire or hate each other.

FlatOut Ultimate Carnage has now gone gold and is set for release for Xbox 360 on June 22nd. The game is being developed by the Finnish company Bugbear Entertainment for Empire Interactive. Commenting on the completion of the game, Empire European Marketing Manager, Rob Noble said, “It’s done! All the hard work is over and FlatOut Ultimate Carnage is ready to hit the primetime and to take its rightful place as the number one destruction racer on the market. This is one game you need to check out for its amazing action, spectacular visuals and just superb action racing!”

Building on the success of FlatOut 2, including multiple Racing Game of the Year awards and its status as an Xbox Live multi-player favourite, European support is focused on Xbox 360 websites and Xbox live marketplace.

“The media is tightly targeted towards 360 specialist websites for front-of-site rich media advertising. Xbox 360 gamers will see the ads more than two million times. This will include video footage of the destruction racing and invite people to enter competitions to win the chance to drive FlatOut Racing Experiences. The video trailer is now on Marketplace, the downloadable playable demo will be next and www.flatoutgame is designed to deliver the feel of the chaotic destruction in FlatOut with video, 3D screens, music and a special focus on the new Deathmatch Derby mode” added Noble.

Exceeding the already high expectations set for the game, FlatOut Ultimate Carnage has been hailed by the Specialist Gaming media as one of the best looking and technologically advanced racing games on the Xbox 360 platform. “Wow, no seriously WOW!” wrote Xbox 360 World. “We’ve played it and we’re very, very hot for it. Beautiful” said Games Radar. “…set to take the 360 by storm” according to 360 Gamer and “…this really can’t be beaten” from Gamesmaster.