Once upon a time, exclusive NASCAR licenses didn’t exist, and more than one developer could produce officially licensed titles. Fourteen years ago, there were not two, but three titles to race with. Papyrus had NASCAR Racing 3, EA Sports had NASCAR 2001, and Hasbro Interactive had NASCAR Heat.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l0g-hWoYAY[/youtube]
For this week’s Throwback Thursday, we are going to take a look at NASCAR Heat. Released in August of 2000 under Hasbro’s Monster Gaming Inc, the title simulates the 2000 Winston Cup Championship. 27 real life drivers are recreated in the game (with many fictional backmarkers) to be raced on all of the circuits but two (Indianapolis and Pocono were left out).
Two physics models are available, Normal and Expert. In Normal, it feels relatively simple, while Expert can be extremely tough to drive, and a wrong stab of the throttle at Martinsville is bound to throw you around. Car setup will also strongly influence how your car handles, and canbe a deciding factor in races. I feel it is definitely is one of the more underrated physics models in sim racing.
There are a lot of modes that can be raced in NASCAR Heat. You can “Race the Pro”, where you drive head-to-head with actual driver’s laptimes. Beat the Heat recreates real life scenarios from the season, and sees if you can either reinforce or change history. You can also win medals for your efforts, which is sure to please the perfectionist in you.
AI actually runs pretty well, with some hard racing at times. It feels nice knowing you can confidently race 3-wide at Daytona. I’ve run 100-lap races with the AI, and have gotten away with no damage whatsoever.
Speaking of damage, it was rather (forgive my pun) hit-and-miss for me. One of the weirdest circumstances was that I felt camera angles influenced the damage model. While on some camera angles, you could whack the wall with minimal damage, in the game’s “chassis cam” a relatively light hit will tear the tire off the car.
One of the greatest things about the sim though, is the active modding community. Despite the title being 14 years old, there is still an active modding community pumping out scratch-built content exclusively for NASCAR Heat. There are alternate NASCAR seasons, dirt racing, even road cars such as Group C prototypes. A variety of add-on tracks are also available, to make this a full-featured sim.
Do you guys have fond memories of racing NASCAR Heat? Do you have any mod recommendations for people looking to find the title?
I rented it for the PS1 and the chassis cam totally freaked me out. Of course I was 12 and afraid/confused by most things…
One of my all time favorites! I raced thousands of miles on this title with my old logitech MOMO racing wheel.
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