Midnight Club: Street Racing

Midnight Club: Street Racing is a racing arcade game developed by Angel Studios (currently known as Rockstar San Diego) and published by Rockstar Games. It is the first installment in the Midnight Club series. The game focuses on competitive street racing and the import scene, as popularized by the first four Fast and Furious movies. The game is available for the PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance platforms, the former being a launch title for the platform.

Objective
From the back cover of the game: "In secret gatherings around the world a mysterious group of urban street racers, known as the Midnight Club, race for pride, power and glory in sleekly customized, tricked-out street sports cars." "Speeding through crowded streets, running into red lights, terrorizing pedestrians, driving on sidewalks and outrunning the cops are merely the beginning for the 'Midnight Club'." "You know the rules, there are no rules." 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, a taxi. Through a series of races, each with different goals, they defeat other racers and win faster and more expensive vehicles.

The player begins their career by chasing a racer named Emilio Sanchez. As the player continues to follow Emilio Sanchez, the first race starts from the World Trade Center and ends at Central Park. After they win the race, the player is now part of the Midnight Club and Emilio Sanchez tells the player to continue to race him. When the player finishes the second race, they will unlock the Crusero Bueno. When the player decides to change vehicles or continue career, the game will introduce 3 other racers and they must follow these hookmen to the starting line and win their cars.

After the player has beaten all the racers, they can now beat Kareem Windross, the New York champ. After beating Kareem Windross and his PT Phoenix, the player now travels to London and continue to challenge Kareen Windross and four new racers. The game's cities are known for their gravity-defying jumps and shortcuts. Like any other racing games, when the player is racing in the rain, it can make the player very difficult to handle any fast vehicles since the streets are slippery especially when the player drifts around street corners.

Game Boy Advance
Midnight Club: Street Racing(GBA) brings you a top-down view street racing action of high speed driving and adventure to the Game Boy Advance. The concept behind this game derives from the illegal races of real-world Midnight Clubs.The core gameplay consists of races of high-speed maneuvering through completely open city streets. Live life in the insane lane, escape the law and accumulate an arsenal of vehicles.

Opponents

 * Emilo Sanchez
 * Larry Muller
 * Keiko Hatano
 * Kareem Windross
 * Lukas Howell-Jones
 * Emily Morton
 * Darren Thurrock
 * Anika

Vehicles

 * Taxi Cabs
 * Crusero
 * Jones
 * Piranha
 * PT
 * Modicum
 * Ascent
 * Amata
 * Zender
 * Kuruma
 * Manhattan Bonus
 * London Bonus
 * Manhattan Police
 * London Police

Cities
Players race through the cities of New York and London. By modern standards, they are significantly less detailed than their real life counterparts, but were highly detailed and large for the game at the time. Both cities are designed for the racing scenario. Each city contains landmarks from their respective real life counterparts. New York includes such landmarks as Times Square, the Empire State Building, the now-destroyed World Trade Center, and Central Park. Some of London's visible landmarks include Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, and Tower Bridge.

Multiplayer
Multiplayer modes, such as Capture the Flag, are available for play using PlayStation 2's additional controllers.

Beta Build Features
Main article: Pre-release and unused content

There were features that were removed from the final build.
 * Vehicle Select was different, without stats at the bottom and in the left.
 * Vehicles in Vehicle Select were more 'chrome'.
 * Speedometer was different, with no damage meter and gear indicator.
 * There was only one song.
 * The pitch of the song was different but at the final beta release and final release the pitch of the song changed and the song had problems looping.
 * When the player and hookman reach a racing point, a message will say "You da man".
 * The Beta Map was different, the background was black and no blue outlines at the second and third beta release.
 * The menus were slightly different than the final version such as the background was different.
 * The Timer HUD and Position HUD is different also and didn't had any outlines yet but at later beta releases it had the outlines at the HUD.
 * The Arrow of the player is red like hookmen, but smaller in earlier betas, then the arrow was the same size as the hookmen and changed colour to dark blue later and finally the arrow's colour is changed to grey.
 * The Hookman's X-Ray is yellow and the Homeboy's X-Ray is green.
 * The cars seem to have the same car engine sounds as placeholders.
 * The Police appeared at Cruise mode, but only that they had Traffic roles rather than normal police roles.
 * At the commercial district in NYC, the commercials at the earliest betas never animated, but in later betas, the commercials were changed for unknown reasons.
 * Hookmen's vehicles are in different colors an such as Emilio's Bueno vehicle is red, but the vehicle's colors were all changed afterwards.
 * Some of the sound effects of the game are missing.
 * The sound effects of the car tires has a slightly different sound effect.
 * The sound effect of a waypoint cleared has a lower-pitched sound effect.

Legacy
Midnight Club: Street Racing was the first game in the series of Midnight Club that spawned three more sequels until the franchise was closed down. Rival games like the Need for Speed series released by Electronic Arts had a similar style of illegal street racing and modified cars. Midnight Club has a dedicated fanbase that long wait for the return of the series and there hasn't been any announcement from Rockstar Games whether or not if they will make another Midnight Club game.

Trivia

 * The song used in the opening introduction is named Strings of Life by Derrick May and Mick James. Also, it was released in 1987 and is considered to be a techno classic.
 * The song that is used at the start menu is named The Beginning by Derrick May. Also, the song that is used at the car selection menu is a portion of the song named Icon from the same artist.
 * Interestingly, the Japanese version's logo lacks the 湾岸 (Wangan) kanji which is the logo's symbol used in all games. It was removed to avoid copyright infringement and confusion with the Wangan Midnight series.
 * Once the player presses "Start", and if they choose "Extras", and then click "Biographies", the player can see all the racers' backstories.
 * The London map was featured before in Midtown Madness 2, another racing game by Angel Studios. Remarkably, the city has been remodeled from scratch with a slightly different layout, despite how similar both games' engines are.
 * This was the only Midnight Club game to be released on a Nintendo console, however it was developed by a different company.
 * A Nintendo 64 version was in development, but never got released. This can be proved in the game files of Banjo-Kazooie.