The Free Rider Universe
FRHD is the last instalment of the well-renowned Free Rider series. After the inspiration that was Line Rider in 2006, created by Boštjan Čadež, Pete Shadbolt of Parroe Games released Free Rider the following year on OneMoreLevel.com. In the same year, Pete released the next version of his game, Free Rider 2. The popularity of the game skyrocketed, with dozens of websites hosting the game.
With the work of community member Maxime Simon, he created the first database of both Free Rider and Free Rider 2, allowing players to upload their tracks for the whole world to play instead of sharing the track code on forum pages. In just 2 years, Free Rider 2 amassed over 1.5 million tracks and 500 million plays, a feat FRHD has hardly replicated after a 10-year existence. 2010 saw Maxime release Canvas Rider, Free Rider 2, completely reimagined and in HTML 5.
However, come the start of 2013, OneMoreLevel and Kano Games shut down any Free Rider clones with the release of Free Rider 3, almost a step backwards for the community, being built in Flash with poor performance and interface appearance. This fueled the emergence of Black Hat Rider by haxzerz, an exclusive Canvas Rider clone where under 1000 people gathered together to save the Free Rider community when the Canvas Rider editor was sut down.
But, all hope was not lost, there was word spreading around that Kano were making another Free Rider game, one that would outdo every other official and unofficial edition of the game. In late 2013, Free Rider HD was unveiled to the world. Despite scepticism from veteran players, once they released the enormity and popularity of the game amongst new players, they simply had to join the fun.
And now, almost 12 years later, the FRHD Community continues to change, and the legacy of the games before it lives on. This thread serves as a time machine, allowing players to go back to the original Free Rider days, an ultimate nostalgia experience. Perhaps you've never played the other games or wanted to go searching through abandoned forums, all rich full of history. Who can forget the very creators, developers and companies who made the Free Rider Series possible.
The history of our game must be archived, and you have just found the Free Rider Universe. Don't get lost amongst it all!
If you want to know the brief history of each game: Free Rider Series: A Brief History
If you want to use niche editors from certain games: Free Rider Mod, Tool, Script and Editor Catalog
