NASCAR Racing

The Good
- Race in oval and non-oval tracks with up to thirty-something AI controlled vehicles.

• Fantastic graphics, specially in the Super VGA mode.

• Lots of fun to play, difficulty level and car settings can be tweaked easily.

• Very realistic physics.
  
  The Bad
  - The Super VGA graphics mode requires a really, really fast computer.

• The car editor has to be accessed through an external program and requires some adjustment.
  
  The Bottom Line
  I first heard of Papyrus during my first years of PC gaming. All the magazines would treat the then recent "INDYCAR Racing" as a staple when it came to PC racing games. I ended up buying a budget release just to learn what all that hype was about. And it was well justified. The graphics, physics and gameplay made it one of the most immersive, realistic games ever to grace a PC screen.

When I saw the first pictures of "NASCAR Racing" I knew it was going to kick a**. You can't possibly imagine what it was back then to see highly detailed graphics of a NASCAR car taken from a chase perspective. This time I swallowed line and sinker and bought the game right away, and in CD version.

I never regretted the move. "NASCAR Racing" was as realistic and immersive as its predecessor, but it was two, three or five times more fun. It was very thrilling to compete against so many opponents, knowing a single mistake would make you loose a position or two, and the graphics were nothing short of amazing for its time.

Which takes me to my only serious issue with this game. With a 486/66 PC, you could only play in VGA mode, and even then you had to turn off some of the detail, which I always found sort of offensive. And when I finally got a Pentium class machine, I was amazed to notice that the Super VGA mode also needed some serious tweaking to get things moving. Damn.

The problem really lies in the game engine, it was too much for the PCs of the time, and for some reason more modern PCs can't run it any faster either. Papyrus tried to solve the problem creating some hardware accelerated versions, but at that time 3D cards were just starting and only a few users could benefit of those specific versions of the game.

Still, don't let that let you down. If you can get your hands into an early Pentium with DOS or Windows 98, this baby is a must try. And if you can't, well, there's always Virtual PC or the rest of the "NASCAR Racing" series, which do look more polished, even if they aren't nearly as much fun as this one.

The Good
This is Papyrus' first entry to the NASCAR Racing series for the Macintosh. Two more versions were released in 2002 and 2003 offering OS X native compatibility. I will be talking about the first entry to this series because it is the only one featuring Classic Mac OS compatibility.

What sets the green flag off in this game is that it's slightly different over its DOS counterpart. It features menu screens that are controlled with a mouse rather than a keyboard. It's often a pain in the DOS version to make a few selections, and the Macintosh version simplifies that using the menu bar provided in the Classic Mac OS, which I really prefer to this version just for that.

The physics are really the best part in the NASCAR Racing series, as their IndyCar Racing games handled the physics already! It also supports a variety of controllers (specifically ADB at the time) for use with the game. (Believe me! I only use a keyboard, but sadly, my iMac G3 only supports USB!)

You need to have enough processing power and memory to play this game at its best! I'm talking about a 350 MHz iMac G3 with 1 GB RAM. I have one of those listed here in this review's paragraph!

Finally, Most of the Macintosh version's portions are linked to the 1996 DOS version of NASCAR Racing 2 (That game is not available on the Macintosh unfortunately, but I'm providing that as a reference).

The Bad
The 3D graphics look a bit pixelated. Believe me, this is 90s stuff after all!

The Bottom Line
This is the earliest NASCAR Racing game out there for PowerPC Mac OS Classic. If you are a NASCAR fan who has an old Classic PowerPC Mac (Wait, your Mac is not ready for the NASCAR Racing 2003 Season? That game needs to have a 1 GHz G4 minimum (my suggestion) and Mac OS X.) then I highly recommend it! Even non-fans will enjoy it too! Papyrus went on to make a few more sequels until 2003 when Electronic Arts acquired the exclusive license for a few more years! But still, it's a fun game to play, even if you are a big NASCAR fan!