In the day, one of the best Racing Sims out there was NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (Referred to as NASCAR 2003, NR2003 or N2K3) that was put together by Papurus and distributed by Sierra.
It had the technology way before its time. It’s still a competitive physics simulator to any game out there today.
There have been wrecks in my game that I thought would never happen in the real world and yet through time, I’ve seen them really happen.
Example: Every now and then in the game, I’d see or get my own car on its side and sliding on the outside retainer wall. Remember Ryan Truex Jr. on the wall at Richmond?
It’s a wacky and accurate game.
Bruce going low (No. 51) under the wreck in NR2003
The game maker lost its rights to the NASCAR name to EA Sports and they destroyed the simulation for me and the game never felt like it had any support after 1 patch. While the NR2003 game went on and on with hundreds of fan supported mods and additions.
The game had legs.
At one point, fans were able to create mods and tack them on to the original engine. Do you remember when Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Talladega race and he was on the radio to Ryan Truex and calling out Brian Ring’s Talladega mod, “BR Talladega baby!” and giving that developer credit for their win? They had practiced a technique in the game or online and it worked on the track. That’s how realistic the sim was, and still is…
But the original creator of the game stepped up after a few years of fan freedom and reclaimed their sole-sovereign rights to the core program.
Cease and desist letters were sent out and the fans had to relinquish their work to the original copyright holder.
The original copyright holder, the co-creator of the game, Dave Kaemmer, pulled the rights to the game back into the fold.
They needed to retain some core parts of the program for their next game, the online racing community called iRacing.
I was part of the Brian Ring test group and many fans were upset with the change of freedoms some developers had.
In time, I had joined the beta test group for iRacing but didn’t join when it went online fulltime.
iRacing [http://www.iracing.com/] would seem to have quite the following and even sponsored a few teams in NASCAR.
The iRacing website says it costs $7.50 a month to join. I’m tempted, but it takes time and practice to be competitive.
When I was running NR2003 full time, I was in a few leagues and was pretty competitive. I didn’t have the set up or tenacity to set up my computer’s steering wheel as wildly as some or had the technique to win the races regularly like a few online drivers did, but I was a consistent top-10 finisher and that kept me competitive.
I knew how to save my tires early on in a run.
I started out with an eBay paint scheme (I was an addict) and then I switched later to my Sobe sponsored car.
Bruce's eBay wrapped car from NR2003
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Bruce's Sobe wrapped car from NR2003
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A victory image made for me after my CA Speedway win.
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I won races by being there when pos. 1 & 2 battled it out into the fence. In one Talladega race, I was 4th coming up to turn 3 (5 & 6?). Cars in posisiton 1 & 2 were exchanging paint hard and the 2nd place car took out the lead car. The 3rd place car accidentally took out the 2nd place car, and as he slowed down, I had goosed it thinking he was going to slide out of my way. Oops. I felt bad, but ya know, racing is racing. Right? I gotta find that video…
One other win I had, was at Atlanta. With 10 to go, a wreck took place. We were all on the last strands of our tires but no one was pitting. Except I was the one that got spun and was in last place. Ticked off, I pitted, took 4 and a “splash of fuel.” It was beautiful as I ate up the 25 car field and took my first win!
I’ve even raced in Dale Earnhardt Jr’s league, but dang, I sucked! (BTW, if you look around the iRacing site, you’ll come across pics of Dale Jr. running one of the best simulators there is… online that is.)
The physics were impressive and what I’d do in a real car, I can attempt and get expected results in the game.
I miss that.
I wish that iRacing would put out a stand alone game and get back into the stand-alone PC game business, aside from the online thing. I need an updated decent game! Even if I don’t have a ton of time these days, I’d make time because my present installation of NR2003 doesn’t like the sound drivers of my present gaming system.
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Interesting article. Since iRacing changed their promotion ladder it doesn’t take as long to move up your “license”. That change allows others like you, with less leisure time, to move up faster through the ranks. Thanks for your article!