Hot Wheels Head To 'Forza Horizon 3' On May 9 (Updated)

Update, 5/9/17, 11:30am PT: The Hot Wheels expansion for Forza Horizon 3 is now available on Xbox One and Windows 10. It's included in the season pass, but you can also purchase it on its own for $20. Microsoft said it will stream the expansion on Beam and Twitch to celebrate its launch. The company also released an update for the base game with "significant improvements" for Windows 10 players.

Original article: 4/26/17, 9:20am PT:

Remember when racing cars in your living room meant dragging plastic vehicles along the floor, up the furniture, and around other fixtures? Well, soon Microsoft will appeal to that nostalgia with an update that will bring Hot Wheels to Forza Horizon 3 on PC and Xbox One on May 9.

For anyone unfamiliar with Hot Wheels: They're small toys featuring bright colors, over-the-top designs, and wheels that would allow them to travel a few feet on a hard surface if you pushed hard enough. Before racing games let you drive hyper-realistic cars along real-world tracks, Hot Wheels were the closest most people would ever get to commanding a race car, and their only limitations were the boundaries of their imaginations.

Microsoft decided to recapture those feelings with the coming update to Forza Horizon 3. The company said in its announcement that the expansion will include a new location in Australia featuring "insane high-speed stunts on miles of looping, banking, giant iconic orange Hot Wheels tracks." (Oh, if you weren't content with driving a car along the furniture, Hot Wheels also sold "tracks" along which its cars were able to race.)

Microsoft said the expansion will take you to "six new themed islands located off the coast of Australia," all connected by a network of Hot Wheels tracks. The tracks will be hundreds of feet high and offer "classic Hot Wheels configurations like loops, corkscrews, and more." Besides racing, the tracks also emphasize performing cool stunts, and the expansion will feature a Stunt Swap feature that will let you modify track sections.

The expansion also has a new campaign, multiplayer races, and a skill-based Playground Arena. Microsoft said you'll be able to earn 28 achievements worth 500 gamerscore by playing the expansion. Forza Horizon 3 Hot Wheels will cost $20 when it debuts on May 9; it's also included in the game's $35 expansion pass. Forza Horizon 3 is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, so you have to pay only once to play on both PC and Xbox One.