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All this time, and I have not committed a full post to this awesome game! What a shame! No more, though. I am going to dissect this game like never before!

Ok, with that out of the way, let me introduce you to the world of Simulation Auto Racing! Yay!

This game and this franchise has been a part of my life since I can ever remember owning a computer. This game franchise started in 1994 with the incredible game NASCAR Sim Racing. This was followed by NASCAR Sim Racing 2, NASCAR Sim Racing 1999 Edition, NASCAR Sim Racing 3, NASCAR Sim Racing 4, and finally NASCAR Sim Racing 2002 Season.

(PHEW!!)

I have owned every single one of these games except NASCAR Sim Racing 2 (and various expansion packs I didn’t have the money for). The transformation these games have made has been astounding. Ever since the release of NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition, this game had a new version released yearly.

The success of this franchise was in its realism. Simply put, the tracks, the cars, the physics and everything associated with NASCAR was the best in the business. No one had more official tracks in their games, or more official car sponsors, or more official drivers.

This game had all of it. On top of this, though, they had the most realistic driving game out there too. Graphic quality aside, this game looked right. Cars were hard to handle. They spun out in the right way, they crashed the right way, and damage models were scary-real.

As computer technology improved, so too did things in the graphics department and the sound department. During the transition to NASCAR 3, Papyrus (the game’s developers) added cool effects like a ‘groove’ that closely resembled a ‘groove’ you would see at a real NASCAR track. They added translucent smoke, so no longer were you left with cartoon-ish looking smoke. You could the see the fog surrounding cars in front of you, and better avoid wrecks (although heavy wrecks you couldn’t see through, so good luck getting through! Another dose of realism!).

Once NASCAR 4 came around we were allowed to have Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Daytona at our fingertips for the first time, as these venues had open rights to appear in games (Daytona had been SEGA exclusive previously). In addition, the NASCAR team implemented new physics, which allowed cars to get airborne (previously only sliding and rotating happened, which was fine because hitting a wall upside down or not still was a wreck). This just upped the ante on the realism.

NASCAR Racing 2002, and then NASCAR Racing 2003 season (NR2003 for short from now on) added new effects like blimps hovering around the tracks and helicopters, as well as sunlight effects on cameras, with reflections at an all-time high, and shadows playing a major role in the game.

These things have allowed NR2003 to live on, even to this day, even though the game has passed it’s 6th birthday.

The game has 2 comprehensive modes: Single Race, and Multiplayer. There are two additional ‘support’ modes: Season and Testing.

Single Race mode acts the way you would expect. You set up the settings many different ways. You can have a short race at any of the tracks available, you can set the number of computer controlled cars, their strength and also things like whether yellow flags are enabled and how fast fuel and tires get consumed.

Of course a rate of 1x is considered ‘normal,’ as in, closest to real life. You cannot slow the rate of fuel consumption to slower than that, although I don’t know why you would want to.

Computer controlled cars and their overall strength is determined by a combination of the base strength you assign them when entering a race, and also by their stats as defined by the game. You can go into the settings and adjust the strengths of any driver. The game does not inherently know “Jeff Gordon is this good at this track,” it simply got supplied these values by a human.

You can make your own cars using a paint shop in the game (although making skins for the car out of the game and then simply importing them works much better). You can then set the settings of this player any way you like. You can make your own player, or you can add a player you wish to be included.

This level of customization really brings the fun into racing. It’s fun to try to beat the ‘other guys’ with ‘your own stuff.’

To go along with the single player mode is Testing, and Season mode. Season simply is a predefined series of Single Races that compiles a rank of drivers based on the order they finish after each race. The driver with the most points at the end of the races wins. This mimicks the way the Championship was decided at the time the game was released (NASCAR has since changed it).

The testing mode is a practice mode that allows you to go to a track without any other cars and practice. This is the place to go to get better. Driving around while trying to avoid other cars is no way to get better at a certain track, although if you wish to get better at passing then that is the way to go .

Multiplayer is an experience all its own. Unfortunately at this point the servers are no longer maintained and the only way to play online is through dedicated servers. Finding these servers can be tricky, and you must connect via IP address. This is ok, but the standard 40 car fields is hard to come by.

Onto the gameplay itself: the physics (which is central to a simulation being good simulation) is nearly spot-on. Issues I have noticed, though, are that the cars seem to ‘stick’ to the walls, rather than bounce off. This is maddening as it can quickly ruin any form of momentum you had. You can try to steer quickly off the wall but this usually results in a spin, and if you don’t turn away from the wall, you will grind almost to a complete halt (not kidding).

Also it appears that the computer controlled players are not being controlled by physics the same way your car is. This makes their cars seem to rotate around a corner, instead of drive through it. This isn’t a big deal though, since all cars spin just as easily as you do, and generally slow down and speed up in the same locations you do. There does seem to be issues with the AI running into the back of you if you go too slow, and they can spin you out quite easily if this happens, but generally if they are running into you, you are running at way too high a difficulty level.

Physics in the game on the whole are strong though. The car gets airborne exactly the way you would expect. It doesn’t happen all the time. usually it requires you to get hit in the side at a very high rate of speed to turn you over.

The difficulty level on the whole is high, but driving cars on the brink of spinning out is not supposed to be easy. Conquering this and winning races is a challenge, and as such, is very rewarding when you pull it off. Even finishing 2nd can feel like an accomplishment if you run a long enough race.

This game, just as in real life, is about minimizing your mistakes. The longer you go, the harder it is. While no single small mistake will take you out, multiple small mistakes or one large mistake will put you behind in a hurry. This is true-to-life.

In addition to the total package Papyrus has brought us, the community has brought us even more. Perhaps the most beneficial add-ons have come from the Project Wildfire (PWF) Stable. These guys have released mods for different car types such as the craftsman trucks series, and the Busch series. They have released a few tracks that are of extremely high quality, and they have released the most beneficial tool of all: Sandbox.

Sandbox is the tool Papyrus used to create the tracks in-game, and combining this tool with others has allowed anyone who wants, to make their very own tracks.

The way the game simply sucks in game resources (such as tracks and cars) has allowed the community to update the game for us.

It is very easy to download and use up-to-date tracks, and cars in the game. I have even made my own track that has gotten some love at one of the places still offering online racing.

The overall impact of this game is immense. The effects of this game are un-matched. Smoke still to this day looks spot-on, as well as damage models and light effects. While driving and winning are hard to do, succeeding is VERY rewarding.

Combine these things, and an ever-present online community providing fresh updates to the game and we have a real classic here. This game still takes up tons of my time, and I am thrilled to be able to share it here.

If you are able to get your hands on a copy, I recommend you pick it up. I wouldn’t pay the $100 or $200 it fetches from 3rd parties, but if you can get it for cheap, do it.

NR2003 Review Scores