Asphalt 6: Adrenaline

Gameloft built Asphalt 6: Adrenaline as the sixth main entry in its arcade racing series, and it first appeared on iPhone in December 2010 before the Android version followed in 2011. Gameloft Montreal handled development. The game came out right at the point where the series stopped feeling like a phone-sized novelty and started looking like a console racer, with licensed supercars, crash damage and online races for up to six players.

What Is Asphalt 6: Adrenaline

At its core it is a street racer that cares more about speed and spectacle than braking points. You race through traffic, knock rivals into walls and fill a nitro meter by drifting and collecting bonuses along the track. The career is split into 11 leagues holding 55 events, which Gameloft pitched as roughly ten hours of single-player racing. Around the career sit event types such as Normal Race, Beat’em All, Elimination, Time Attack, Drift, Duel, Collector and Under Pressure, the last one throwing a stream of cars at you that try to wreck you before the finish.

Gameloft Brought Asphalt 6: Adrenaline To Android In 2011

The Android release took a slightly unusual path. Gameloft first sold the HD version through its own web store in March 2011, after showing it at CES that January, and the game reached the Android Market in May 2011 at $6.99, a little above the price on Gameloft’s site. The Market listing only showed up for phones that could actually run it, which was one of the first times players saw Google’s device filtering at work. Gameloft also gave the Android build three locations the iPhone launch did not have: Detroit, Hong Kong and Rio.

How Adrenaline Mode Changes A Race

The name comes from its signature trick. Once the nitro meter is full, a tap triggers Adrenaline mode, the screen takes on a blue tint and starts to shake, and your car becomes close to unstoppable for a few seconds, smashing through traffic and opponents that would normally end your run. Saving a full meter for the final straight or a crowded corner usually wins more races than burning nitro the moment it fills. Jumps, destructible scenery and the more realistic handling Gameloft aimed for make each track feel busier than in Asphalt 5, though the cars still grip the road far better than any real Ferrari would.

Cars, Bikes And Tracks In The Asphalt 6 Career

The garage holds 42 licensed vehicles, twelve more than the previous game, and that count includes motorbikes as well as cars. A 3D garage lets you spin each model around, and every vehicle has seven upgradeable areas such as turbo and tires, plus decals and rims for looks. Locations are a mix of new and returning places:

• New for this entry: Nassau, Chamonix, Reykjavik, Cape Town, Havana, New Orleans and Moscow
• Returning from earlier games: New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Monte Carlo and Shanghai
• Added on Android: Detroit, Hong Kong and Rio

Reviewers at the time mostly liked it. The iOS version averaged 79 on Metacritic, Pocket Gamer gave it 9 out of 10 and IGN 7.5, though several critics felt the series was starting to repeat itself from year to year.

Can You Still Buy Asphalt 6: Adrenaline Today?

No. Asphalt 6: Adrenaline is no longer sold on Google Play, and Gameloft has long since retired the older numbered entries in favor of its current free-to-play racers. Phones from the Android 2.x and 4.x era ran it well, whereas a modern handset is a poor match, since the last builds were made long before 64-bit-only devices existed. Players who want the same arcade formula on a current phone can turn to Asphalt 8 and Asphalt Legends, both of which Gameloft still updates.

Who Will Still Enjoy It

Anyone who remembers this period of Gameloft racing will recognize the formula right away, because the later entries kept the nitro, the traffic takedowns and the exotic city tracks. Gameloft later described Asphalt 6 as the series’ first truly massive mobile hit, with close to 120 million downloads across platforms. Its value now is mostly historical, a snapshot of how far phone racing had come by 2011, when a full career, crash damage and six-player online racing in one paid download still felt surprising.