NASCAR Racing: 2003 Season (Mac)

Rating:
Summary: Caution: you will loose sleep if you buy this product
Review: Driving simulations, thanks to today's fast personal computers are VERY realistic, and 'NASCAR Racing Season 2003' (NASCAR) is one of the best, but also consider 'F1 Championship Season 2000' (F1CS2K) also available through Amazon. In either case, don't let the dates make you think these simulations are old-they simply refer to the tracks, cars and drivers from that year.

Before you read further, understand that you WILL want a $55-$100 USB steering wheel and pedals set too. They really are a necessity. Both NASCAR and F1CS2K can be driven with keyboard input, but how realistic is that? That said, if you download one of the demos from the publisher's Web site you can "try before buy" using the keys and get an idea how the programs work. But a force feedback steering wheel makes it an entirely different, and very realistic, experience.

NASCAR cars are big, heavy and powerful. The sim does an amazing job of modeling the feel of drifting and sliding; you really can steer with throttle and weight shift. Instant replays are fun to watch, and the program even includes a limited editor so you can create your own movie with highlights using several different camera angles. The sound of the big V8s really adds to the fun, and for you hot-rodders out there you can tweak just about everything about the cars to try to scrape another .1 second off your lap time. Online racing against drivers on your LAN or around the world on the Web is also possible too. A downloadable demo is available free from various sites, but they're huge at 100+ gigabytes, so unless you have DSL or cable modem just let Amazon sell you one. You'll be glad you did.

F1CS2K cars are small, light, very nimble and very fast. With a force feedback steering wheel you can feel the road better than with NASCAR, indeed you can even feel the rumble strips at the apex of a turn and the wheel gets loose when you're briefly airborne over a rise. To drive fast you MUST practice, and the drivers' school, which is very demanding, really helps improve your skill. F1CS2K is, in my opinion more realistic than NASCAR, but it's also the hardest to drive well and thus-for my money-the more enjoyable. But I still drive NASCAR periodically, just because the big cars are fun in their own macho noisy way. Once you're turning respectable laps on a Grand Prix track (my favorite is Spa in the mountains) try it again in the rain! Very humbling even with the "grip" set-up. LAN and on-line racing also available with dozens of pre-established cars and set ups and thousands of possible combinations, as with NASCAR, if you want to tweak things yourself. You can save a loop of the last 20-120 minutes of driving at each track for instant replays depending on how much disk space you have (min. 500Mb but none required to drive). Free download demo also available on the Web.

My Logitech Momo Racing USB steering wheel and pedals set work very well with NASCAR, and F1CS2K. If you have an old, slow computer go for the NASCAR sim which has more 'low end' graphics options. But with any G4 or G5 Mac both NASCAR and F1CS2K will bring you amazing graphics, realistic handling, lots of fun and, if you enjoy them as much as I do, hours of lost sleep.

BTW, if you ever thought a couple of beers doesn't effect your driving, have a couple and watch what happens to your lap times. Very sobering.

Rating:
Summary: No Mac/PC compatibility
Review: Okay, the game is fun. The graphics are great. The cars and tracks are very realistic.

IF you are thinking you can race against everyone, though, you are going to be disappointed. Mac players CANNOT play against the PC version. If this is a typical Aspyr copout I can see why Mac games don't sell as well as the PC side.