Midnight Club


Midnight Club is a series of arcade-style racing video games developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games. Inspired by the real hashiriya gang, Midnight Club is similar to the Midtown Madness series, with a focus on competitive street racing in open world urban environments. Throughout the series, players race through condensed depictions of New York City, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo, San Diego, Atlanta, and Detroit.

Premise

The Midnight Club series is inspired by the real life Japanese street racing group, known as the Mid Night Club, that hosted illegal street races on the Bayshore Route of the Shuto Expressway in the Greater Tokyo Area. Two kanji letters appear in each of the series' logos; The Japanese manga series Wangan Midnight — also inspired by the club — includes the same two letters in its logos. The kanji is removed from the titles in the Japanese versions of Midnight Club: Street Racing and Midnight Club: Los Angeles as to avoid legal conflict with Wangan Midnight rights owners Kodansha.
In each game, the player begins with a relatively unmodified and slow vehicle. Higher-performance vehicles can be won or purchased by the player after competing in races against other club members. The goal is to defeat each of the other opponents en route to becoming the new champion of the Midnight Club. Later installments of the series include real vehicle brands with sophisticated customization options for each, and "club" races, which consist of racers using vehicles of the same class.

Titles

''Midnight Club: Street Racing''

''Midnight Club II''

''Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition''

, developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games, is the third game in the Midnight Club series. It is also the first game in the series to feature licensed vehicles and allow players to customize their cars and bikes with performance and visual upgrades. It was released for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox on April 11, 2005, and later ported to the PlayStation Portable in June of that same year. The three cities featured are San Diego, Atlanta, and Detroit. The name derived from a partnership between Rockstar and DUB Magazine, which features heavily in the game in the form of DUB-sponsored races and DUB-customized vehicles. The PlayStation Portable port was developed by Rockstar Leeds.

''DUB Edition Remix''

is an updated version of Midnight Club 3. This edition has an extra map of Tokyo updated from Midnight Club 2 which adds new missions to the game. Along with that come several new cars, new races, new battle maps, rims, vinyls, hydraulics, body kits, and music.

''Midnight Club: Los Angeles''

is the 2008 addition to the Midnight Club lineup. It was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 20, 2008 in North America and October 24, 2008 in Europe. As the name suggests, the game is based in Los Angeles, featuring Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Hollywood Hills, San Fernando Valley, Downtown L.A., and most recently South Central. The designers used real street maps in developing the game. The game features online play and downloadable content. Licensed cars and bikes return, including new models and brands such as Ford and Mazda, which were absent in Midnight Club 3.

''Midnight Club: L.A. Remix''

is the portable adaption of Midnight Club: Los Angeles for the PlayStation Portable. The port is developed by Rockstar London with Rockstar San Diego. The game features the map of Los Angeles used in Midnight Club II rather than the map used in the console versions of Los Angeles. The game also features the city of Tokyo, using the map from Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix.

''Complete Edition''

Reception

The series has received generally positive views from critics.

Cancellation

In January 2010, it was reported that Rockstar had stalled plans for a future Midnight Club installment, and the development team was slowly dismantled. In 2012, Take Two Interactive re-registered the Midnight Club trademark. There are currently no known plans for a future title.