cross-posting from the DOS-games topic, since I’ve been saying a few words about NASCAR1/Indycar2 …
[quote=“meauxdal, post:31, topic:4996, full:true”]
would love to hear this expounded if you don’t mind <3. did they feel wrong then or is this a modern retrospective take?[/quote]
hmmm I’d say it’s more a rose-tinted glasses kind of thing?
When I got access to the internet™, after a short while, I started digging around to find a community for NASCAR1/Indycar Racing 2. Lo and behold, there were some people as crazy as me around then, and suddenly a whole new world was waiting to be explored, a world full of trucks (iirc, it was called CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES back then. From a quick google-check, it must have been the 1997 to 1999 field that I’ve been modding into NASCAR1.
Then I got interested in the tools that made this whole thing possible, and dipped my toes into a lot of the tools that were necessary to pack/unpack the game assets. Made some Windows (3.11…) front-end tools to make packing/unpacking the game assets a lot easier, and without realizing, “got” the very idea about front-ends and back-ends almost naturally.
And from there on, I did a lot of fiddling around in the game, even creating some 3D model assets, and I remember the fun I had when crashing the game because of some mis-calculations. Fun times!
Needless to say, Indycar 2 got treated to an updated pack of cars, and also a High-Res pack that made my PC refuse to start the game, it was a bit _too_ advanced for my trusted DS4-S. Also quite cool, driving some NASCAR1 tracks ported to Indycar2 by community. That was _so cool_ ;__; Hell, I even modded the _intro-bgm_ to some other track. And would re-shuffle the field so that the battles going on in the intro would feel more "natural" in the context of 2000'ish CART era, i.e. Ganassi battling with Penske and Team Green, and not w/ Dale Coyne.
So, with all the modding and tinkering and fiddling over a year (at least), I did actually also manage to do some driving! Joystick only though … and moved away from NASCAR to Indycar2 after a while. In hindsight it is easy to see that due to exposure to F1 since 1994ish, I understood the rules of racing in CART better than NASCAR (pack) racing, and thus ended up playing way more of indy2 than NASCAR1, and the joystick as input meant that I was never able to do close combat side-by-side racing for long, which is a requirement in NASCAR.
Anyway, I started out at Dale Coyne and fought my way up the ladder to mid-field teams after two seasons that were a lot of DNFs … and later on even managed to get a few Oval wins on Talladega and Michigan, so after all, I learned how to trim out a car to survive a few stops.
Then new hardware came 'round, also during that time, my focus on racing games shifted slowly away from F1/open wheel style racing to GT-class racing, due to various reasons:
watching Le Mans, also FIA GT, playing some GT-racing game from EA, modded F1 2001 to include Champcars (my brother was taking over playing those), and I shifted completely to endurance racecars.
Games played during that time reflects that, I think. Sega GT, that EA Sportscars game, some other racing games that featured oddball car choices (one game had the Lister Storm LMP, for whatever reason!) and the official™ Le Mans© Dreamcast® game.
Oh yeah, and then the PS2 with GT3 happened … followed by GT4, where I got a good friend of mine to start (virtual) racing.
Come to think of it, he also started out racing with NASCAR 3, then 4 and 2003. I am probably partly at fault for this ~~~ anyway, a few years later we ended up at GTR2, modding it like crazy to include Le Mans style prototypes (and GT-field) and raced on for years to come.
… until life™ needed more screen-time and we ended up doing racing only a few times a year. Forza Motorsport 3 and 4 filled the gap, I also got interested (and somewhat ok’ish) at rally racing after dipping my toes into that (sub-)genre for a few years.
And after a few more years, in 2015, I did pick up Project Cars and started racing a bit more seriously™ again. I did try out the Indycar (Dallara) they included in the game, but it didn't click anymore, and it felt like revisiting a love that's been in the past, and rather should remain a good memory.
Endurance racing tho?
That’s still the cool shit. Even more than before, I’d say …