Platform

Platform is a highly-competitive game mode in TrackMania Nations Forever. Unlike the popular time attack mode, the completion speed in platform is only a secondary factor, with the amount of attempts to finish taking the primary focus.

It is speculated by many that the platform game mode gave birth to the famous trial map style.

History
The platform mode was first added to the game with its initial release in 2006. According to Hylis and other Nadeo staff, the idea for it came after seeing a fly struggling to get out of the office window. The improbable success of that fly inspired the developers to create a game mode where the player would have to suffer a similar fate, bar eventual death. The fate of the Nadeo Fly (shortened to NF by the community) is preserved in many platform maps, including the very first one, and also the hardest - PlatformA1.

Many players initially found the official platform map pack incredibly difficult. It was deemed impossible by some to even complete some of the maps on the very first attempt, let alone all of them. Nevertheless, as time progressed, few truly gifted players began to achieve the impossible, setting respawn counts that were never attained before.

In the year of 2009, the total lowest respawn count went from 61 to just 8 (3 on PlatformE1, 1 on PlatformD3 and 4 on PlatformA1), thanks to the efforts of a dedicated platform community.

After the infamous player Fred had finally completed each and every platform map in 2010 (his last being PlatformA1 in 0 respawns), he demanded a new challenge from the TrackMania community. It is firmly believed that Fred kickstarted the map style that we know today as trial, which he then dominated until the 2023 cheating scandal.