{"id":1044,"date":"2012-09-19T11:38:28","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T11:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2012-09-19T11:41:23","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T11:41:23","slug":"and-now-for-something-completely-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1044","title":{"rendered":"And now, for something completely different!"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’ll notice that one game\u00a0will be\u00a0curiously absent from\u00a0my Top 100\u00a0countdown.\u00a0 I’ve probably dedicated more hours to this series of games than I ever have\u00a0to Mario <\/em>or Zelda<\/em> titles, and this one game was considered (until recently) to be the cream of the crop.<\/p>\n

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2003 – Sierra (PC)<\/p><\/div>\n

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NASCAR Racing 2003 Season <\/em>is the final NASCAR game released by Papyrus, the end of a long line of simulators dating back to 1994.\u00a0\u00a0At the time of its release, NR2003<\/em>\u00a0was the most in-depth racing simulator on the market.\u00a0 You could tinker with every minute detail of the car, from shocks and springs, tire pressures, camber, gears, all the way to track bar adjustments and steering ratios.\u00a0 The game even had a great paint booth for cars, and if you were handy with Photoshop, schemes could get even more complex.<\/p>\n

Driver Denny Hamlin was a Nextel Cup Series rookie in 2006, and a race at Pocono Raceway was looming on the horizon.\u00a0 Aside from the ARCA Series (which is not affiliated with NASCAR), there are no lower-tired divisions that run at\u00a0that\u00a0track, one of the most unique and difficult on the circuit.\u00a0 He had to learn the track, but with testing rules being strict at the time, options were limited.<\/p>\n

Of course, he turned to NR2003<\/em>.\u00a0 One virtual lap at a time, he learned every bump on the track, how the car would react to certain setups, what the tire wear might be like.\u00a0 No, he didn’t get a seat-of-the-pants feel for it (as in, he didn’t get to feel the G’s, the heat of the car, the smell of burning rubber, etc), but the feel of the gaming wheel in his hands told him much of what he needed to know.<\/p>\n

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At Pocono in 2006, Hamlin did just fine. Twice.<\/p><\/div>\n

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He did pretty well for himself.\u00a0 In the June\u00a0event at the Pennsylvania track, he won the pole position.\u00a0 Halfway through the race, a blown tire all but ended his chances at victory.\u00a0 He was mired back in the pack, but made a miraculous recovery and won the race\u00a0by a mile.\u00a0 When the series came back to Pocono in July, Hamlin won the pole again, and won the race by an even bigger margin.<\/p>\n

Hamlin credited his time with NR2003 <\/em>as being the catalyst for his success at the track he’d never been on before that first practice session.<\/p>\n

I had owned the original game way back in ’95 (what’s a “force feedback”???), then eventually got 1999 Season<\/em>, and recieved\u00a0NASCAR Racing 4<\/em> in 2001 as a graduation present.\u00a0 I felt like my skills had improved enough through the years, and I dabbled in racing online against random people from around the globe.\u00a0 Finding a tight-knit group that raced NR2003<\/em>, and more importantly, raced clean and fair was hard to do; but I got lucky.<\/p>\n

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Me running some NASCAR Racing 4 tests from the floor in early ’01.\u00a0 Who needs a chair?<\/p><\/div>\n

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The main roadblock I had in joining online racing communities was the fact that I didn’t have high-speed internet at home.\u00a0 In July of 2005, that changed.\u00a0 Having gone to a local\u00a0sim racing competition with a grand prize of a race trip to Loudon, New Hampshire (which I qualified for, but couldn’t compete in, due to a technicality), I heard about the New Brunswick Virual Racing League<\/a>.\u00a0 I signed up immediately after getting high-speed, hastily downloaded a paint scheme among the tens of \u00a0thousands that were posted online, and went racing ASAP.<\/p>\n

I started my first race off pretty well, but the game ended up disqualifying me for driving in reverse to find my pit stall!\u00a0 100% my fault!\u00a0 Rookie mistake!<\/p>\n

Of course, I didn’t let that get me down.\u00a0 The group of competitors was so easy to get along with, and I found I was quite at home when 8:30 on Tuesday nights rolled around!\u00a0 We all got to know how we raced one another on the track, and I even managed to snag a couple victories in the latter part of that season.<\/p>\n

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