In our first Throwback Thursday, we covered one of my favorite racing titles, Monster Truck Madness 2. Now, we are going to take a look at a sim developed by the same company, CART Precision Racing.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8HKAqP9UpA[/youtube]
CART Precision Racing was released in 1997, and was developed by Terminal Reality Inc and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It featured cars and tracks from the ’97 CART season, and had a full roster (strangely enough, Newman/Haas co-founder Carl Haas was a driver in the game, but he never raced in CART). All 17 venues from the real life season were recreated in the game, utilizing GPS data.
The sim was one of the first to take advantage of features such as Force Feedback, 3D Graphics Acceleration, and online multiplayer over the Microsoft Gaming Zone (Who remembers using that?) A racing school taught by Bobby Rahal helps teach you basic racing concepts to get the most out of your driving. There was even a telemetry system, that could help you analyze your driving, and make setup changes to your car in the garage!
CART Precision Racing was one of the first racing sims to go toe to toe with Papyrus’ IndyCar Series, and hold its own. It brought quite a bit of innovation to the table, that paved the way to some things that are now commonplace in the industry. I would have loved to see a sequel, and see how much further it could have been taken. If you want to give it a try for yourself, I think you can find it on abandonware websites, but I’m not certain. I also can’t speak for how well it’ll work on Windows 7 and up, but I was able to get Monster Truck Madness 2 working alright, so here’s to hoping!
Did you take racing lessons from Bobby Rahal in CART Precision Racing? What did you think of the game? Let us know in the comments!
Yes, I did receive my CART Precision lessons from Bobby Rahal- and enjoyed every lap. This game has a very unique essence. I also was hoping for a sequel because
Terminal Reality Inc. did a lot of things right to make it a good title, and a sequel would have been grand. It took some time getting used to the handling, the car seemed loose and felt like it was bottoming out. Once I got used to the handling I was hooked. Great game!