Ace Racer, NetEase's futuristic racing game, hosting open beta for North American gamers

Today, NetEase announced the launch of the first North American open beta tests for its high-speed futuristic racing game Ace Racer. The beta is set to launch today, becoming North America’s first chance at playing the title.

After soft-launching in the Philippines in early access, NetEase is looking to bring the game to the west with an open beta test running from the 8th to the 26th of this month. While you can expect the content included in this test to be similar to the previously mentioned early access client, there might be a few surprises lying around for the North American version as well.

In case you missed the Philippines announcement, Ace Racer is the latest in NetEase’s extensive catalog and includes a high future setting with neon-soaked streets, bright and colourful sleek vehicles, and breakneck pace racing action. To make it even more interesting, each car also has an ultimate ability for some added spice to the typical racer formula, special tricks you can pull off mid-race to get ahead or take out the opposition as well.

Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on

To get a bit more specific, these abilities range from passing through walls, drifting at high speeds, and even transforming into an entirely new vehicle altogether, so this is far from your average complete-the-lap-fast methodical racing game. Instead, Ace Racer seeks to reignite the genre, adding in some action to make it all a bit more engaging.

Two of the other major points of Ace Racer are the short races, which aim to be finishable within a minute or two to respect mobile gamers time, not keeping you busy for too long in case you just want to knock out a race or two on a lunch break. The tracks are the other big sell, featuring locations from all over the world that include cities, forests, countrysides, and the desert. They’re truly gorgeous to look at, if you can afford to take your eyes off the incredibly fast action on screen.

If all of this sounds like your type of thing, you can install the beta client on Google Play right now. Unfortunately, there’s no word of an App Store release just yet, but given NetEase’s massive influence, I’d be willing to bet you’ll see one once the game officially launches. For now, if you want to keep up, you can follow the Ace Racer Twitter account for any news.