NASCAR Racing

The NASCAR Racing series of video games, developed by Papyrus, started in 1994 and ended with the release of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season in 2003. Later NASCAR games were released by Electronic Arts who, through their EA Sports brand, took over the official NASCAR license. This article deals with the original series release, NASCAR Racing.

NASCAR Racing was released in the fall of 1994 for DOS personal computers. It featured more than 25 of the 40 regular drivers in the 1994 NASCAR Winston Cup season. Notable absences included Dale Earnhardt (who would go on to win the Winston Cup that year), Bill Elliott, Dale Jarrett, Kyle Petty and Darrell Waltrip, although the latter's brother, Michael, was included.

The game let the player race with up to 38 other cars (32 on shorter tracks like Bristol and Martinsville) and it also offered multiplayer action via direct links (one computer connected to another via a LAN) and also through an online system owned by Papyrus called Hawaii.

The CD-ROM version of the game also offered a SVGA graphics mode which was accessible through the command prompt (by entering "nascar -h"), but it was too demanding for many of the computers of its age, mostly 486 and early Pentium PCs. A hardware accelerated version was later created and bundled with the Matrox Millennium video card.

NASCAR Racing 4

NASCAR Racing 4 is a racing simulator produced by Papyrus and released in February 2001. The game was a huge step forward over its predecessor and addressed many requested features for the game. Namely was the introduction of full 24k color, as the previous games had only allowed 256, vastly improved car models and environments and, for the first time, the ability of the car to rotate in three dimensions (i.e. the ability of the car to get airborne and flip). The simulator also continued the increased efforts to reflect the aspects of driving a real car.

This was the first version of the game since NASCAR Racing 2 to have actual car manufacturers represented . Additionally, it was the first version of the game to feature the ability to race a full 43 car field. It was the first installment in the "NASCAR Racing" series to include Daytona International Speedway, and included all 21 tracks that were raced in Winston Cup in 2000. It included 25 of the drivers and teams from the 2001 season, including Dale Earnhardt, as well as 42 fictional drivers and teams, most of which carried fictional sponsors or are sponsored by a Sierra company.

NASCAR Racing 3

NASCAR Racing 3 is a racing simulator produced by Papyrus Design Group in 1999. Players can compete in the 1999 NASCAR Winston Cup Series and the 1999 NASCAR Busch Series. The game's multiplayer was powered by the World Opponent Network(WON), but is now inaccessible by this method after the end of WON servers in 2000. The game had an expansion called Craftsman Truck Series Expansion. Patches are available for updates for both the main and expansion games on the Sierra Entertainment website. The import and export features on the paint shop feature do not function upon installing the update.

Reviews

NASCAR Racing 3 was released to largely positive reviews: IGN gave it a 9.2, GameSpot a 9.4, amongst other high ratings.

References