It’s easy to forget — and we certainly don’t blame you if you have — that, at one point, Rockstar Games was shipping out titles other than Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, two franchises the company has been beholden to since 2013 when Grand Theft Auto 5 was first released.
Chief among the franchises that Rockstar had under its umbrella was Midnight Club, an arcade racer series that was partly inspired by the real-life Mid Night Club of Japanese street racers, hence the Kanji for “Wangan” in Midnight Club’s logo. In all, there were four core Midnight Club games, with multiple re-releases built in, before the series ultimately faded away in late 2009.
Speaking of racing games, I can’t be the only who misses the era of arcade racers, like Blur, Split/Second, Grid and Burnout. None of these games were entirely GOTY material, but they were massively fun and extremely unique.
All that is to say, if the wait for Grand Theft Auto 6 is proving to be too unbearable, or you miss Midnight Club, then video game fan and creator Vinícius Medeiros has done the unimaginable — repacking Midnight Club 2, a title that has long been delisted, complete with modern controller support.
That repack, plus any version of Midnight Club 3 being Backwards Compatible on Xbox One and Xbox Series hardware, at least helps keep the franchise alive.
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It is one of the few Rockstar Game franchises that the studio has not made available on modern hardware, likely due to expired licensing, making it effectively abandonware, which is where people like Medeiros come in with their preservation efforts.
At One Point, Rockstar Even Had A Table Tennis Game
Beyond Midnight Club, Rockstar also had a hand in Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, a — you guessed it — table tennis game that was as realistic as it got, believe it or not.
There was also Beaterator, the music-making game that came out on the PSP, plus the adpatation of The Warriors, along with Bully, Manhunt and Manhunt and L.A. Noire. Rockstar also had a hand in publishing several other notable titles, like a surfing game on PS2 called H30 and The Italian Job.
Finally, lest we forget the work with Remedy on Max Payne 1 and 2 before ultimately hitting the mark and then some with Max Payne 3. Again, it wasn’t always all about GTA, and the repack of Midnight Club 2 is some of the most painful proof of what we used to have.
- Released
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April 9, 2003
- ESRB
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t
- Developer(s)
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Rockstar San Diego
- Engine
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RenderWare
- Multiplayer
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Local Multiplayer
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