Racing remains the one portable armament race in which PSP has left its dominant rival spluttering on the starting line. Comical efforts such as Burnout Legends and Need For Speed: Most Wanted, released early in DS’s lifespan, were inept enough to convince most big-name publishers to brand the concept of DS racing games as a folly. In this light, the decision made by Glasgow-based Firebrand Games to identify itself as a ‘DS racing game specialist’ may have been seen by some as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, the up-and-coming studio’s developmental tunnel vision has resulted in an explosion of light at the end of it all. Building on its inaugural success with Codemasters’ Race Driver franchise, Firebrand’s DS interpretation of Nadeo’s sublime TrackMania series is so speedy and smooth that it leaves previous DS racing games looking like relics from a bygone era – even Mario Kart DS seems sluggish by comparison.

TrackMania DS, in replicating its PC source material so meticulously, is something of a technical feat. Locked at a steady 60 frames per second, it’s also the fastest racer on DS. The instant restart feature, so integral to the ‘one more go’ appeal of TrackMania, is present and correct – a tap of the X button is all that’s needed to return to the starting line. The camera even zooms in to a firstperson mode upon hitting a loop – the infusion of vertigo loses nothing in its translation to the small screen.

The necessary concession to storage capacity comes in the number of track types available – Rally and Desert join TrackMania Nations’ Stadium environment in a streamlined line-up that does well to capture the essence of the TrackMania series in just three disciplines. The other notable absentee is the ability to save ghost data – a truly disappointing omission, but one that becomes perfectly understandable when you consider where the cartridge’s resources have instead been used.

The track editor – for some, the most important part – allows up to 60 custom courses to be stored, which can then be shared with other users locally. Wifi link-up is an aim, Firebrand admits, for any sequels. Building on the interface used with such success in Race Driver: Create & Race, the track builder allows you to drop into a course in progress at any point to test for inconsistencies and bugs. Only tracks that have been successfully completed by their creators can be shared; similarly, medal targets are staggered by the best times attained by the creator during testing.

The track editing facility has proved so flexible that Firebrand has elected to use it to build the 100-plus single-player mode tracks. Only in a few instances has the developer tampered with the editor’s self-imposed limitations to create a track that could not be otherwise created (intricate knowledge of the machine’s limitations and how to circumvent them coming into play).

Wifi deficiencies aside, it’s hard to see how Firebrand could improve upon a game that doesn’t so much touch the sides of the technical capabilities of Nintendo’s machine as it does smash into them.