Grand Prix II

Amiga version

In late 1995 OTM, authors of technically impressive Amiga racer Virtual Karting, contacted MicroProse about doing an Amiga port of the game, but never received a reply.

Development

The game was being developed with the help of the Williams Renault Formula One team.

Mods

The huge GP2 internet community managed to improve the game in many aspects: F1 carsets from all decades can be included using GP2Edit; Thanks to GP2Lap it was possible to play the game over a local network; Using Paul Hoad's track editor over 200 racing tracks from all over the world were created. As on 2012 there are still people who build new addons for the game. They are all being published on http://www.grandprix2.de. There were various racing leagues being run using the game. The biggest was LFRS (www.lfrs.com) which had hundreds of drivers all using GP2 to race each other.

Reception

In 1996 F1 driver Jaques Villeneuve used the game to learn the tracks. One year later he received the FIA World Championship title.

References

The picture used after you crash out of a race features Irish driver Eddie Irvine surveying the scene after a crash. Also, in the background on the championship race screen is what appears to be a picture of the start of the 1994 Italian Grand Prix, seconds before Irvine collides with Johnny Herbert. If this appears to present Irvine in a bad light, this is unsurprising - as 'Irv the Swerve' himself once quipped "I got punched by Ayrton Senna after my first race, crashed in my second, wrote off 4 cars in my third and got banned form my 4th. People are going to think I'm some sort of nutter"

References to the game

Clips of the game can be seen in the 1998 film Taxi.

Weather

The weather modus was taken out of the game just weeks before the release, because the graphics did not look good enough. When some members of the internet community managed to activate parts of the weather code later on, they understood why it was taken out of the game.

Awards

• PC Games (Germany)
  • Issue 12/1996 - PC Game of the Year

Information also contributed by GP4Flo and Martin Smith