Then you look in your rearview mirror just in time to see Billy Joe Bob Willis Johnson, your NASCAR hero, bump into you, triggering an agonizingly slow slide. You’re driving aggressively but smart, everything is copasetic. The roar of engines surrounds you, everyone jockeying for position, green flag is out and like Milli Vanilli from the top 40, you are gone! The scenery is a blur, 30,000 HP worth of cars are trying to take your spot.
You’re accelerating, looking for the green flag, listening to your race engineer (though he sounds like the New York subway announcer) and the race starts. The BIG RACE! You’ve paid your dues in Mario Kart 64, suffered through grueling sessions of Muppet Race Mania, and earned yourself a nice starting position in the season opener in NASCAR. Admittedly, it can be hugely satisfying and thoroughly enjoyable to earn a good result after starting from the rear of the pack. Leave too much sponsor paint on the wall and you might as well start the race the next day. Qualify with one good flying lap and your race is so much easier. Race weekend is when you test your mettle. It’s cool to think it matters but I doubt that it really does. The fact of the matter is that I question whether many people can reproduce racing lines consistent enough to differentiate a lap with 600lb springs versus 650lb spring. Undeniably, a player can tell if the toe-in is at one extreme or the other. Higher tire pressure, less camber, more grill tape, stiffer springs, all of this makes a difference. Remember all those obscure and seemingly inconsequential adjustments I spoke of a moment ago? Testing is where you fuss with them to produce the fastest, most efficient car you can. In simulation mode, you can do testing, single races, or an entire season. Well no, don’t do it, but you could.Īs with most racing games, the player is offered both arcade and simulation. Want your pit crew in your Dad’s baby blue tux? Fine, do it. Since no self-respecting NASCAR team would have a pit crew in team wear that didn’t match the car, customize that too. Once you’ve painted, decorated, and numbered your car, you can rotate it in 3D to be sure it’s to your liking. In fact, you can export your car to a third-party painting application to really make it something special, then import it and race it. Here you can use some of the tools commonly used in graphic programs to customize (though somewhat clumsily) your race car. While painting a racing car isn’t unprecedented in a game, NASCAR Racing 4 allows you to create a whole team. If that just isn’t enough, you can create your own car and team wear. Also, the driver can watch tire temperatures (inside, outside, and centerline of all four tires), tire pressures, ranking and race-related timing, all and all, more than most care about. Players have control over how much tape is used to cover the grill (affecting cooling and aerodynamics), how much air pressure tires should have, a broad array of suspension adjustments, the amount of "wedge" (the term used to define adjusting the amount of weight on a stock car's chassis), how much (if any) fuel is to be added during a pit stop, and much more. The fact of the matter is, NASCAR Racing 4 may have set a new standard in that regard. well not entirely.Īs the owner of many racing games, notably Sierra’s own Grand Prix Legends, I should have expected that the level of adjustability and detail would be remarkable. I mean really, its just oval track racing, stomp on the loud pedal and turn left, right? Ummm. As a veteran of simulation racing and a fan of real racing this should be a cakewalk. I had some issues to resolve and this was the perfect outlet for my van pool frustrations, quick and effective. After a ninety minute commute home, I was more than ready to swap paint and reshape body panels.
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