Test Drive Unlimited Launch Event Day 2 – Online Racing

by Louis Bedigian

During the second day of the Test Drive Unlimited launch event, Atari linked four Xbox 360s to Xbox Live for some races between the other launch events in New York and San Francisco. As you can see, their setup was anything but generic:

Gaming chairs by VRX Industries http://www.vrx.ca/

We were not alone, however. Though the competition was intended for attendees of the event, it wasn’t long before others on Xbox Live caught on and started jumping into our games. In fact, toward the latter half of the competition, we couldn’t start a new game without having outsiders challenge us – some of which had clearly been playing the game for a long time.

(For anyone who wonders if they raced us, I believe one of the Gamertags I used was Atari US 11.)

As many of you are aware by now, Test Drive Unlimited is a massive, persistent world that lets you find opponents by cruising the streets. It also lets you set up online games the traditional away, allowing anyone to jump right into your race.

The online races we participated in were fast, consistent, and loads of fun. Though we were fair, we wished we could’ve had the controller all to ourselves.

With every rev of the engine the specialty gaming chairs vibrated with realistic intensity.

The chair was powered by an Xbox 5.1 surround sound system, as evidenced below. 

Needless to say, if MTV wanted to “pimp my ride,” I’d tell them to forget my car and just give me a setup like this: