UJJ'S ULTIMATE SIM REVIEW

NASCAR RACING II

The sequel to the IBM-PC compatible racing simulation Nascar Racing by Papyrus is almost upon us. Nascar 2 is scheduled to be out (hopefully) by the middle of December just in time for Christmas... hint...hint. A lot has changed since the release of their highly successful racing simulation, Nascar Racing. They merged with Sierra-on-line and ventured into the arena of online gaming, namely 'Hawaii'. Hawaii is still in its Beta testing phase but may give us some foresight into the future of racing simulations. Their assimilation by Sierra-on-line made many racing enthusiasts very nervous about the future of racing simulations. Face it, Sierra-on-line does not have a good track record when it comes to quality, bug free software. At least, that was my opinion after buying 'Outpost'. However, that was then and this is now. Hopefully, Sierra-on-line has cleaned up its act and their demo release of Nascar 2 may bring some optimism about the quality of new Sierra-on-line software.

After downloading the demo, I proceeded to unzip the file using 'pkunzip -d' to ensure that the files are extracted to their proper directories. With much anticipation, I ran the setup program. It looked pretty good! It had the auto sound card detection which worked flawlessly with my system. The setup program also had an option for installing a video graphics optimizer program called 'Univesa'. I did not use this program and quickly proceeded to exit the setup program and run the nascar 2 demo. To my disappointment, the program did not display properly. The display of the main nascar menu was totally messed up. It turned out that I needed this 'univesa' program in order to run the nascar 2 demo. I actually ended up by going to my video card manufacturer's website and downloaded ATI’s vesa extender program. After loading up this memory resident program, I tried running the nascar 2 demo again and it worked flawlessly. From then on, I knew that this was going to tax any system tremendously.

The main menu looked very similar to the main menu in the original nascar. It had the same options but with a nicer background. One big difference in the main menu was that it was mouse driven. In fact, I had to make sure that my mouse driver was installed prior to running this program. This is definitely a good thing to know if you have to create a boot disk. Since I ran this after starting win95 and shutdown to the DOS prompt, my mouse driver and sound driver were already loaded (Win95 doesn’t really shutdown when you go to the DOS prompt.)

Two tracks and eight cars (including Dale Earnhardt!) are included in the demo. The tracks, Atlanta and Watkins Glen, are both improved graphically and physically. Watkins Glen now has curbs and the inner loop has been improved. There is still a wall around the inner loop which is not there on the real track. Papyrus knows about this and did all they could to get rid of the wall. The cars also look a bit more realistic and incorporate 3D shadowing. It seems that damage appears more realistic also. A huge mug shot of each driver appears with their bio in the Driver Info menu.

The Drive menu has been completely redesigned along with the Car Setup Menu. Although, I did not have the ability to change the car setup in the demo, the interface was mouse driven and looked very well done. Pretty much every change you could make is on this one page that looks like a crew chief's clipboard. You can even right a three line comment about the current setup you are working with. One of the things that I noticed missing in the car setup screen was the ability to change the front air dam. Everything else is there including a weight distribution diagram showing how much weight is on each tire.

A major addition in the nascar 2 demo was the spotter feature. Ned Jarrett is your spotter as you drive around the nascar circuits. With sound enabled, he will guide you as you drive by informing you what position you are currently in and if there is a wreck. He will also let you know if the car in front of you is a lap down. When you are passing a car, he will let you know if the car is still to the right of you or to the left of you. Once you pass the car, Ned will tell you if you are clear of the car. Other actions will cause Ned to blurb out a message. For example, if you are the meat of a 3 wide sandwich, Ned will tell you to "Keep Digging... Keep Digging!" This spotter feature, I am told, is supposed to be greatly enhanced in the commercial version of nascar 2. That’s one feature that I’m looking forward to.

Another nice addition to nascar 2 is the ability to access the game options from the drive menu. Many of these game option features were not enabled in the demo version so it is unclear of what all can be changed during an actual race. Potentially, it may be possible to change the options like number of cars, opponent strength, game controls, etc. during a race. The replay screen has been redesigned to show the actual speed of the car. This will help out when trying to find that ultimate setup.

A couple of problems I noticed with the demo was that the rpm gauge in arcade view differs by about 1000 rpms from the in-car gauge. Another thing that I noticed was if I accidentally got on the grass, it was like I was driving on ice. The tires had way too little grip causing it to be very difficult to drive back to the track. Other than these few issues, nascar 2 should kick butt; the question is, will it kick your computer's butt? I guess it’s a time to upgrade the computer for nascar... uh for Win97... yeah that's it... good excuse!

Ujj