Players may choose to respawn (retire) at any time, for example if they land upside down, leave the track or get off to a poor start.

This free, stand-alone game had one new environment, "Stadium", and many of the Sunrise edition features, including the advertisement panels, which show ads from sponsors streamed from the internet.

Nations quickly became popular with almost 1 million registered online players within weeks of its launch[citation needed]), largely due to the wide availability of the freeware game.

The updated graphics engine includes a shadow mapping acceleration system, which is used in the most recent Stadium version.

The new engine allows for more realistic shadows on high end systems while the Stadium environment has double the number of blocks featured in the free version, including dirt paths, water, and indoor sections.

The game became available in retail outlets in France, Canada, Australia, Belgium, the French-speaking part of Switzerland and Russia later in 2006, then on February 23, 2007 in Germany, then on March 9, 2007 and later in other regions.

It was published by Focus Home Interactive and developed by Ubisoft Nadeo and has a similar layout to Trackmania Nations Forever.

Nadeo has stated that because they want the game to have a long lifespan, they are working on the engine and user interface rather than adding new content.

TrackMania United Forever, for instance, no longer requires the CD to be in the drive due to different copy protection and anti-cheat systems.

[11] These changes were made as an incentive for players to upgrade to the paid TrackMania United Forever as Nadeo could no longer make money from in-game advertising.

It has a more primitive online play system than the PC line of games and also uniquely features a special "F" class of tracks unlocked after a certain amount of medals are accrued.

An updated Wii release date on the Nintendo website for the UK version published by Focus Home Interactive has been given as September 23, 2010.

[16] The base game is free-to-play, with additional content available with a paid subscription model, including a more advanced in-game track editor, online events and car customization.

[17] The game series' featured environments are "Desert" (also known as "Speed"), "Rally", "Snow" (also known as "Alpine"), "Bay", "Coast", "Island", "Stadium", "Canyon", "Valley", and "Lagoon".

The original TrackMania United features StarForce restrictions built into the executable to check the software's key, but it does not install the driver.