WHY DO PEOPLE LOVE THIS SIM? A Look Back at NASCAR Racing 2003
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- These old games. They don't all work properly on modern systems, they look like they're PS2 games (and that would be because they're from that era) and getting online is hard. But they all have a certain... Ah I don't know what, but they have something that has endeared them to all of us.
NASCAR Racing 2003 is THE NASCAR sim, much like Richard Burns Rally became THE rally sim. But why this particular installment? Why this one specifically that makes us go 'this is fantastic'?
Enjoy! And remember to like and subscribe for more!
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It's weird. In Vegas picture look fine, but at some point in the export.
E X P O S U R E
Does my proverbial nut in.
Welcome to my personal hell.
In photos you have things like glare and saturation. If it were a photo, I’d turn those down. Dunno about video. But even if you filmed in b&w with sepia, we’d watch. Just add those nibbled edges for extra cringe
@@Tacko14 yeah. Just trying to work out why it’s being dumped in once the video has been rendered. Might have to switch software.
@@AidanMillward isn’t there some default setting on whatever you export to, that you can change? The times in the past when I cussed at my DAW when I just didn’t know what a particular feature really did… The horror… Still learning fine detail on buses and how they crosslink with the base tracks, just for a bit of reverb
I find NR2003 more as a sandbox game more than a racing sim: all my custom paint schemes use NR2003 as an engine to showcase them, plus with the easy to edit ini files you can make some fun racing on it
The reason why Nascar fans (like me) love Nr2003 is because it’s like wine, as the years go on, it just ages better and better.
I can only imagine how many hundreds and hundreds of hours I sunk into this game. This was way ahead of its time.
Yarp... a lot of hours!
Whoops it was an even earlier version 95 or something. This one looks fancy!
I still am...
@@LessThanStesame lol I just created a mini ARCA custom season that’s 9 races long and I’m going to do the points myself
NR2003 is still the gold standard of NASCAR games. No other games by any other companies before or since has even come close. It's why I've dedicated myself to preserving the history of this franchise with hundreds of gigs of Papyrus racing game history on my hard drive backed up several times over. I also have an IROC project using the PWF IROC mod involving as many different series as I can possibly muster.
Did you download things from MasGrafx Racing? If you did, e-mail my, in my "page" bio. I'm looking for some of my stuff I lost in two hardrive crashes. My things were labeled as; FW2 from MasGrafx.
I want to get into it, I’m driving NASCAR in iRacing, Assetto Corsa and Rfactor 2 but I’d love to play nr2003 and get into all its mods.
Can you send me I’m the right direction on where to get the games and mods and how I can learn about modding it?
Thank you so much in advance :)
In spite of the fact that EA, and the other companies since, have tried to make NASCAR games accessible and arcadey, none have never been particularly fun since Papyrus lost the license. Papyrus cracked the code on how to make an engaging racing sim for the turn left set.
What I love about this game is that the cars have their iconic sponsors and liveries, the ones I grew up watching
I never grasped how great we had it back during the "golden years" of this era. I also had enough time to sit down and really play them back then too!
The customization is what I loved the most. I know a few people who took the game and basically created their own racing series with their own drivers, paint schemes and tracks.
Same here. The community I'm in, who's now set to launch a series onto iRacing using its AI, basically began there and I was one of two primary painters for said series (which was an Indycar Series).
For WEEKS now, I've been working on a custom Gen 6 carset of my own. I'm now only 6 cars short of the intended 26
NASCAR Racing 2003 is truly the great swan song for Papyrus Racing to go out on as the visionaries at that studio set the standard for the future of sim racing in iRacing. No matter how many others try, they can't dethrone the greatness Papyrus made in 2003. In some ways it's charming and in others it's disheartening. Regardless...I can say as someone who enjoyed the 1999 edition of Papyrus work that racing sims would be a lot worse if Papyrus never got to release NASCAR Racing 2003. It truly was, is, and continues to be ahead of its time. Long live Papyrus Racing. Long live NASCAR Racing 2003.
N2003 was the first great sim I played. Back in 2006, I started Simracing by racing in public server lobbies. A year later, I found a league called V8Thunder that ran the sim and I felt I learned 75% of my Simracing craft in just a few years I ran there.
V8Thunder still plays the game to this day with pretty decent grid sizes.
Came out in 2003, and we haven't had a better Nascar experience yet, even considering Irenting.
Nascar 2003 was definitely the apex of Papyrus's run of Nascar games, and it was a brilliant way to bow out before EA came in and arsed it all up. By far the best feature of Nascar 2003, as with all other Papyrus games, was the livery editor - get a Chevy Monte Carlo and repaint it in John Cleland Vauxhall warpaint. Ah, simple pleasures.
Hope you're feeling less bunged up.
I played this game for like 6+ hrs a week back my youth. The clunk of the CRT monitor, the springiness of my Logitech Wingman… good memories.
I discovered NASCAR racing sport only today. And I started with this game. This game is amazing! It's plays great after 20 years!
This brings back a lot of memories. Countless days lost between this and NR4. So many amazing mods and fantasy schemes available.
I've been begging iRacing to add Papyrus Motorsports Park for years.
This game was/is awesome. Haven't played it in years but I have fond memories. So many things you could do to the cars and add new tracks. Drafting at Daytona was awesome, the physics of the game fantastic (tire wear, grip levels), pit strategy, the AI was really realistic. I read that Papyrus was able to go testing with Dave Blaney and the #77 Jasper team and that's how the developers were able to get the physics so well. Why did I stop playing? Idk but I had graduated from college and starting a career and dating seriously, and the game required me to have top mental focus to compete at harder AI strength, and it was mentally draining.
What I like the most about nr2003 is its artificial intelligence so clean, smooth and fair.
Best AI I've ever played with in a racing sim
To expand on the bit where you mentioned the Trans Am physics, one thing I never see people mention is how amazing/fun this game felt when driving on road courses, especially when using pta physics. Which is crazy considering that it's a NASCAR game that only comes stock with 2 road courses, so you wouldnt think the feel of road course driving would be as good as it is. And if you wanted to drive, say, an f1 car, then it is really easy to find the physics editor online, meaning you can put F1 levels of downforce on the cars, F1 vehicle weight, etc. and boom now you have F1 Racing 2003 Season.
Another commenter called this sim a "sandbox", and while I never even thought about using that word to describe it, that is so true. NR2003 isn't just a simulator, it's a racing sandbox game disguised as a simulator.
This isn't the most coherent comment ever, I'm tired and wrote it up quickly, but you all get the point. I love this game so much
there's modded exe's for the game that let you do green white checkereds and double file restarts just like in current nascar, you have the freedom to do pretty much any era of nascar and that's what is cool about it
Now you can. Now that it is in the public domain. Years ago the owners of the code had a s**t-fit when someone cracked the .exe to create a sprint car mod. You could do anything you wanted, as long as the .exe file was unaltered. All of the AI adjustments, tracks, and mods were done through the .ini files being modified.
I finally started to play NR2003. Before I struggled with the installation but after finally make it work, I understand why everyone still love this game.
Even without mods, the base game is still awesome. There's sims that need mods to reach to their maximum potential, but NR2003 came ready to be played like that, even if Busch and Craftman series weren't included.
Look for .bgn and .cts mods and your in like Flint.
The sheer fact that me a bloke from the south of Italy back in the days played THIS game is explanatory.
I absolutely love this sim, great Video! Love that you shine a light on our beloved NR2003😊
Edit:
A couple of buddys and me race regularly online against 35 or so AI drivers and it's pure amazement and enjoyment
Can I get in this? I used to do that but the group died so yeah.
6:00 is one of the biggest things for me. This is one of the few more recent games that has great Oval ai. That is what I love most about it.
Awsome video, so many happy memories on this as a kid and more than just creating pile ups...the racing was actually fun and the cars didn't feel on rails or react like they were, which was so rare at the time. I remember constantly alternating between this, Geoff crammonds GP4 and NFS Porsche Unleashed (pc version of course, totally different to the console game)....Good times!
It blows my mind how they could nail the AI with individual driver profiles and the 2022 NASCAR game by motorsport games just has the cars as immovable blocks all driving around the same. Its a shame Papyrus is gone. Hell, its a shame that that kind of passion seems to be lost on the development side of gaming in general. Look at the AAA scene.
@@extragoogleaccount6061 It is still alive. Unfortunately as pay-to-play with iRacing.
My stepdad actually used to race in lobbies with Dale Jr. Didn't even know he wrecked him at one point until the group he was with pointed it out.
I bought this thing on the day it was released and I’m still playing it online now. There’s hundreds of leagues out there.
NR2003 is special. I put it in the same category with games like Super Metroid, FFVII, Ocarina of Time, ect. I can't imagine how proud the people who worked on it must be, they hit it out of the park.
Oh, it's FAR from single-player only these days, as you suggest at 7:30. Online league racing is still very much alive and well with NR2003. Our league runs 5 nights a week, including a live broadcast on Friday nights. There are many other leagues, too. If you're able to race in a prime US time there's online racing to be had any night of the week.
you also got
IFAR
JERRYCAR
Meloncar
Stinger
SRA
Bombsquad
DSRA
and like 30 more im forgetting
Hey, can I ask you if there is a way to get it working on MacOS?
@@extragoogleaccount6061 I don't know, TBH. I don't know anything about it or anyone that runs that way.
I still make videos with NR2003 with the AI, a little show called the TM Master Cup series, and I still make tracks for it.
Bought for £7.99 in the local electronics boutique. I think I've chucked it though. Lots of great online racing with friends I've still got.
Clear up a couple of things. the FAST Racing that purchased the code and rights for NR2003 were and are, for all intents and purposes, Papyrus. FAST racing was the original name for iRacing when it was still in development, also the guy who "heads up iRacing" that had previously "worked on NR2003" is Dave Kaemmer, he didn't "work on NR2003", he CREATED NR2003, 2002, 4, 3, 1999 Edition, 2, the OG NASCAR Racing, and also ICR2 and ICR, as well as the OG OG sim, Indianapolis 500 The Simulation. In short, he founded and for a time WAS Papyrus.
1:37 "...it was still a racing series..." Thank you thank you thank you! Some marketing genius at NASCAR somehow conned everyone into thinking it would improve the sport if they dumbed it down to [American] Football terminology with "playoffs" and "overtimes". Also let's split the "race" into stages (quarters would be too short) while giving the TV people time for ads where there isn't any racing which also shortens the race by 10 laps. Be sure to give the commentators crib sheets about how glorious this is for "racing" though. In reality the Daytona 500 is really the Daytona 475 now, which honestly isn't even that - it's three short races separated by parade laps.
B-R-I-A-N . . . nuff said. Either him directly, or someone talking him into it.
I only have a keyboard and mouse, and I have messed up the controls so severely I can’t race. But I don’t need too. I have hours and hours of fun just watching cars and trucks turning laps. From quarter mile bullrings to a fictional 10 mile jaunt through the icy backroads of South Dakota.
I loved NR2003. I know I was physically and mentally wiped out after running a full-length race at Bristol.
I think that's why I stopped. Life got hectic and the game was too mentally draining once you got experienced and wanted to compete hard.
I been using this simulator since it first came out. I constantly find ways to enjoy it. It is one of those things that was truly great that the other and new people don't understand about.
I have my setup to use cars from the 1960s all the way up in the 2010s. I ran everything from modifieds to late models to stop cars and yes I even run some indie mods on it this is a great system is always have been you will always will be and we're still discovering new things in the code.
This was the last great NASCAR game. Papyrus did an amazing job with it. That era is clearly missed by a great many.
I remember setting up my car to receive zero damage but....I could destroy all of the competing cars.
And I often did...
For me there was no finer moment of blissful satisfaction than driving the wrong way at Talladega (at over 190 mph) wrecking the entire field into absolute oblivion for an easy victory, by sending 32 cars to the junkyard.
Oh, sweet domination.
In those triumphant moments I felt like a classic James Bond villain, but that's just me.
Yep, that was just you. 98%, I'd guess left that stuff to Carmageddon rather than NR2003.
@@DDS029
That was just me? How do you know that for certain. Did you conduct a study?
I'm still playing NASCAR 2k3, Indy Car Racing II and GTR2. If I could get Grand Prix 4 to run without crashing I'd be doing that too.
I started with N2 and the Ten network. Spent too many hours racing pickup, creating setups, and league racing. I was in a couple pickup races with Jr., but raced in leagues with T.J Major and Justin Marks. Real life , and the change in the NASCAR product, along with my favorite driver, John Andretti, leaving the sport, I did too.
I had the 2002 version, does it count? So many great memories, when NASCAR was NASCAR! Nice video.
2002 was pretty good as far as AI goes. 2003 seemed to crank the AI and graphics a notch though.
@@DDS029 unfortunately I haven’t played the 2003. In those days I had whatever I could get my hands on. But it believe you :)
What I remember most fondly about this game was the sound. I had my first surround system with an actual subwoofer connected to my pc. These engines made an awesome noise!
The same goes for the GT Racing mod for F1 2002, about the same age.
The first time I drove was at Michigan and remember still how that engine sound just went thru you lol.
I’m more impressed with the space quest references! Grew up playing that with pops!
I was a Sierra fanboy. Quest for Glory and Leisure Suit Larry were my non-racing go-to's.
I have Got To Get This Game..Intalled!!! I’ve tried several times but something always goes wrong but being a rookie to ALL of this plus I’ve only been on a computer about altogether a year it’s a challenge. I know I’m an exception these days but I was busy Racing Real Cars an in a Band an Chasing Girls an Drinking Beers an well you know the drill but never had any time for video games maybe Pac-Man but I do iracing but it’s kinda stressful almost this is more my type of thing. I’m gonna keep trying and I read every comment and makes it even more interesting ohh btw I’m 62 Lol idk so I got some catching up to do. Wow Pac-Man to Iracing that deserves some award lol. Great Video btw Rock On Everybody ✌️🏁
My neighbour gave me this game. Damn I miss it a far bit and I wasn't even a NASCAR fan.
I still play it for my oval fix. iRacing doesn't have enough content, and what it has costs too much, and they force you to pay every time someone gets updated IRL, because they just go on and release a whole new 11.99 version. And while physics wise the original rFactor did ovals the best (IMO), the AI in NR2003 is second only to it's younger counterpart. It is truly a marvel. And with the NRE updated exe, the ice-racing spin lock can't get oversteer without dying thing is almost completely gone. Not completely, but close. I also use physics mods for everything. I have like 7 installs. I've got Short track stuff, like SLM, modifieds etc. I've got the 80's. I've got the 2000's. I've got the COT. I've got the Gen6 era, etc. When Racing can do that, without me having to sell my left ***, I'm all in.
I just recently came across NR03 and so far it’s the most fun I’ve had on a nascar game since I played thunder 04 on the ps2
Papyrus also made the best IndyCar games in the mid-90s as well.
I loved NR2003.... I made pit box size smaller so I could race 44 cars at Bristol. Still have force feedback wheel & pedals but haven't played in years. Love your work Aiden!!! Thanks
This game was always fun and easy to get into. It really was the golden age of PC sim racing. I've played and owned most of those titles in that list. There was a sim out there, no matter what you were into. We have better peripherals, force feedback and VR now, but a real lack of diverse sims across all the genres. Maybe it's time for a startup dev team or two to make a splash? Or maybe us sim racers have changed?
Nascar Racing 3 was my first Nascar game too I loved that game so much. The only things I would change about NR2003 are as follows:
Let me save my races (like nr3)
The cars lose grip too easy (same issue Iracing has)
Thats literally it. You could re-release this game with those 2 improvements and updated graphics/rules and it would be an instant classic.
NASCAR SimRacing (2005) is EA SPORTS' attempt at a simulator. Didn't quite have as loyal of a fanbase as NR2003 considering the fact that it mostly went over to other games like NR2003, rFactor 1, and possibly iRacing.
I played this for years online. I even lucked into a win for a "televised" race with announcers in the "booth." I probably haven't played for since 2010 :^(
It’s my favorite racing game and it’s older than me which is crazy to think about.
1:01 Because it was made by Papyrus, the GodKings of racing sims. They understood how to make it look good, feel good, be customisable, have legitimate randomness rather than driver X always winning (the Bortolotti Lambo in ACC, Hamlin in Nascar Heat 5 etc etc) unless you do, and strategy that actually works.
Although I'm sure that it's because at the time the licensees were less twitchy so Papyrus could do more, and show people crashing. Example : I remember emailing Pennzoil in about 2004 asking for hi-res logos to paint my car for the game, and they just gave me a username and password for their FTP. Because I'm just a nerdy spod playing video games. Not sure they'd give those out these days.
Great video. Some of my most fun racing was on OSW using NR2003. It was way head of it's time.
Haven’t played this for at least 10 years! I wonder if my modded Martinsdega track is still doing the rounds? It had the exact turns of Martinsville but the straights were extended to bring it to Talledega’s 2.66 mile lenght.
Dacid Kaemmer one of the founders of Papyrus moved on to then create Iracing in 04 with public release in 08 I think... I could be wrong with the years but I'm close. I love the game because when you don't want to race other people and you just want to zone out you can do that with a similar tire model as iRacing so you don't lose the feel of that Sim changing back and forth.
The Fenway part of Roush-Fenway-Keselowski also was a part of that group. John Henry used to run production-based road racing, which eventually led him to NASCAR as being the more profit potential series.
I remember seeing that NR 2003 turned 20 years old and realized I've been Sim Racing for 20 years.
I go back to NASCAR 1. Although it wasn't labeled that way. Back then they probably weren't thinking about a NASCAR 2.
Yes, NR2003 game is an amazing racing game even today in 2024. Maybe the graphics is outdated, but the game play isn't. We can do the old style full length races from green flag to checkered. Not this modern day STAGES racing.
I used to race hours on end on the "FREE" yes "FREE" Siera Servers with NR2003. Then Siera closed them down when IRacing in 2008 came out. I never joined IRacing and their stupid Subscription fees. I did 3 private leagues back then and was fun on NR2003.
I have the NR2003 game installed and running on my Windows 10 PC and works very good. With VORPX program, I can use my VR headset with NR2003 and works to some degree while racing.
I am waiting for 2025 to come around and see what this new PC Nascar game will bring to the table. IRacing has some involvement with this game development. We shall See.
Take care.
There are some games that just have the right juju and they stay around forever. I still play rFactor 1, Race 07 and GTR2. Some NON-RACING games that are still around after years one is celebrating 25 years this year is EverQuest 1. Another series of games that came out at the end of the 1990's is Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Still great games though those mentioned sim racing titles are just great. I wish I could get my OLD Indy Car games to work. Those were the ones that got me into sim racing. Also, I can't forget Sports Car GT Racing. The Indy Car games got me started but Sports Car GT was when I bought my first steering wheel and pedals.
The company that bought the code and sued wasn't FAST racing, it was FiRST - which became iRacing. And the GTP mod is AMAZING, but the only full-fledged physics mod that's been allowed. All other mods are graphics only using one of the 4 physics models unlocked by Papyrus on the way out the door. I'd love to see what people could do if they weren't afraid of iRacing suing them - modern rules for modern series, bias-ply tires for older ones, etc etc.
Ah well. Still, 20 years on and we're still using the best NASCAR sim ever. Many won't go to iRacing because of the lawsuits or the fact that you're really renting the game. NASCAR mods for other sims have come and gone with little fanfare because Papyrus are still the only ones who get oval racing right.
It's not hard to run the sim these days. It runs just fine on Windows 10 and 11. You just have to apply a community updated patch to make it play nice with Windows DEP or turn DEP off.
Bias-ply, you say? Get Papyrus NASCAR Legends. It was done around the time of NASCAR 4. And it sounds like you missed the glory days of NR2003 also. Denis Rioux made awesome mods that were more like total re-works than mods.
@@DDS029 NASCAR Legends was on the older engine - not the GPL-based one that started with NR4. I've been around off and on since the beginning - I don't remember Rioux mods being any more than new 3D models using one of the 4 physics like all the other mods. Was he one of the modders that got sued?
Yeah he totally missed on this. They sued a former employee and settled out of court. Then they sued Tim Robinson for modifying the exe for his open wheel mod and he foolishly kept going until he lost in court and owed iRacing like 20 or 30k.
I raced 2003 for about 10 years. 3 different leagues. The game I bought in 2003 was not the game I raced in 2013. The wiz kids got a hold of it and I Racing was born. The mods and different tracks , some done very well ,others not so much kept the game fresh. Its biggest problem was the players. Too many forgot it was a game, too many wanted everyone to have the talent of Jeff Gordon. it led to some crazy fights. (The reason I quit).
Hearing those stories is what kept me from "missing out" on not having good enough internet to race on-line.
i love Nascar Racing 2003. I know Papyrus from „warm up! 2001“ which was my first ever f1 game. I love it. If you like, I’d love you to make a video about it
Still playing this sim started a 94 season 25 percent and loving it
I still like GTR and Race 07. They still make it fun, especially doing crazy stuff like running an "F1" car up the hillclimb or the Nordschliefe.....
It's probably my favourite bit about sim racing. F1 cars at Bristol. Why? Because it's fucking hilarious, that's why.
Trucks at Monaco 😁
I ran Monaco on NR2003 using a 4cyl./Rally mod. that was . . . interesting . . .
1:35 To be fair, I'm happy they don't race back to the line under yellow. Way too easy for someone to get hurt like that.
great video Aidan, been enjoying your content for a while now due to the intricate and fine look you take at the presented topics whilst keeping the narrative engaging.
keep it up, cheers.
Hey there, thanks for all the content you keep spoiling us with ! I wanted to ask (and may have done so already in the past, and if that's the case, sorry), do you intend to go back on posting simracing videos with you using older F1 cars going around tracks ala trip back into memory lane ?
Papyrus was awesome. I bought my first PC in 1997 to run GP Legends.
This game was really good,mods and an AI that seemed to work, showed me nascar wasn't just turning left, and got me actully interested in it,the aim of all simsports games surely?made the EA follow up appear even worse than it actually was which was average at best.
Great tribute. NR2003 was my introduction to serious NASCAR league racing. Starting with the base, our league moved to the Redline GTP mod for a few seasons and then to trucks. Great fun for many years. I went to iRacing for a while and then got tired of the money drip-drip-drip. I just reinstalled the original NR2003 (still have the box/disk in my closet) and I'm remembering how much fun it was/is.
I have it somewhere still too but none of my PCs have a CD drive lol.
I never got into NR2003, by the time it came out, I was over to Gran Turismo, but I had Nascar Racing 1 & 2. Despite the even worse graphical fidelity, those games were awesome. Both had a built in livery editor, and the ability to create a whole grid of fictional drivers, if you wanted. Papyrus really made some excellent racing sims in their heyday.
V8 Thunder online still use NR2003 for their league races. Cup, Trucks, Lites.
We used to race an NR2003 online league based on the ASCAR/Days of Thunder series which predominantly raced at Rockingham Motor Speedway in the UK, although our league also raced a lot of NASCAR tracks as well. It's a shame no-one was able to come up with a way to replicate the Papyrus servers to allow for simple connection to online races after the servers shut down. We had a private server, but the open servers were a lot of fun, if a bit annoying at times.
Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
Thanks to mods, it's basically not even NASCAR Racing 2003 anymore. It can be whatever you want it to be. You can have multiple installs and each be a totally different game. I have an install that's all short track stuff with late models and modifieds. With current mods and new paint schemes coming out hourly, for many people NR2003 will the NASCAR game of the 2023 season. The AI is so good, you don't even have to race to have fun. To that point, the replay editor has enough camera angles to create your own NASCAR broadcast to upload on TH-cam.
played all of them regularaly and thats where the bug began for me!
the GTR and GT legends games do still feel great on a wheel today in my opinion- not to mention the sounds still hold up well- and are better than some recent titles too!
God, what games did we have back then? I’d just moved from NFS porsche challenge to gt2. By ‘03 it must’ve been gt3 time. Colin mcrae 2 was in there somewhere, and dtmracer 3. All on a trusty ps2. Time has flown harder than I ever drove
The 2000s were a golden decade for racing games (yes, the 90s had great games as well but I believe the 2000s had a greater number of them) and we didn't even realise it. Or at least, we never thought it would actually get worse going into the 2010s.
I just reinstalled it about three days ago :D
Didn't even realize how good my timing was. I haven't played it back in the day, I haven't played any of the "golden age sims" when they where new, I just started Sim stuff last year and since I am mainly interested in doing offline seasons I was quiet dissapointed in most modern sims, the best thing was AC after paying for the Content Manager "pro" update, so I could run my own championships... but AC's AI is more in the lower end of the spectrum for such things. Then I found NASCAR2003 and Grand Prix 4. Those games, wow. Many thanks to all the modders out there, keeping these games alive!
But the strangest thing, a year before I started simracing, I got into flight sims, combat flight sims, mostly. And it's the same there, modern games with amazing graphics and really nice physics do exist but if you want to have a decent single player career mode in a WW1 or WW2 flight simulator, yoiu have to go back to games from about 2004.
So I'm a guy in 2023, having all the new sims, racing and flying but 90% of the time I play GP4, Nascar2003, Il1946 or wings over flanders fields, all games from the early 2000s kept alive by modders and fans and at least offline still on another level than everything since. Even games from 1998 like GPL or Falcon4 are still better then most things in the 2020+ games... And I don't think it's nostalgia speaking, since I have not played any of these games in their prime and known the modern versions or replacements first.
The future is here...
Yup. It was an nr03 mod ported over to NSR (nascar sim racing by EA) that got my first ever win and title. Ran nr03 once NSR died. Got more wins. Then ran rFactor. Whupped rFactor. Went BACK to NR...then went to rf2....and then iracing.
Also nascar thunder 2003 is amazing as well
I was 13 when it came out and it was my go to game for many years, ended up getting a second disk from Germany because I wore out the first one, lol. I always wondered why EA kept getting worse with every release and why they got the licence and Papyrus lost it, it was so upsetting back then.
Honestly, it was because of this game and the hours painting cars for it that I ended up going to graphic design school and getting my career out of it.
Dude, that is awesome!
Oh, and designed any cars recently?
@@extragoogleaccount6061 not recently, I eventually ended up moving up from sim racing to driving stock cars at my local speedway.
Found the game online a few months back modded the hell out of it and still playing it alot .........raise hell praise Dale 🤣
I still love this game and it runs on my previous laptop (in a cupboard) and I played it all the way through to 2020, but my current laptop it will not run (a windows OS issue).
I still play the game and it is fun with updated mods and tracks
LFS is still alive and online. But I recently reinstalled Nr2k3 and aim to do some AI racing whilst iRacing does Wk13 again.
Personally NASCAR 98 was my favorite one cuz paintballs!!!
I remember a little pattern break when I started this game at first time. As a big F1 Challenge 99-02 fan I found "pretty" big similarities between them. Of course, because it used the same game engine! For me it used to look just like a mod for F1 Challenge.
F1 2000, 2001, 2002, F1 Challenge and I think 2003 and 04 as well all use the ISI gMotor engine, which became rFactor.
NR2003 used Papyrus' own engine.
Not a gaming fan, but still watch as it is interesting.
Did they call it "the Car of Tomorrow?" I remember seeing the newer cars drafting in pairs bumper to bumper and thinking how sill it looks. When I was racing this sim and actually watching some of the real races is what I think of as the good days of modern Nascar. In an online league that I raced in we used the playoff format in later years, and I remember the playoff winner being different from the overall points scoring leader. I really hate the green-white-checker thing too.
Yea. Aidan said "Car of the Future." Close, but not quite. Those were the ones with wings on the back instead of blade spoilers. Until they realized they would literally become wings in certain accidents.
I'm still playing online to this day, I started this game back in 2016 and I've yet to stop, the online scene is so competitive and so fun that it's hard to get away from. Leagues are still going on to this day, it's insane to me how popular this game got, almost felt like there was a boost in 2020. (gee I wonder what pandemic happened that could've caused this)
To anyone that reads this, I highly suggest trying out NR2003 online leagues. :)
There was a boost when the new NASCAR 2022 by Motorsport Games came out and it was absolutely terrible. Players wanting NASCAR were referred to NR2003. Its a shame that kids cant pick up a decent NASCAR game to pop into consoles these days though, those games definitely created new fans.
I still have my original hard copy. Was very spoiled having this, and basically all the Papyrus Nascar games and a Microsoft wheel to go with it! I can vividly remember Nascar racing 4, and getting this when it came out. There was another one with I think Ryan Newman on the cover circa 2006ish? My dad didn't have enough space to have both on his PC so I picked NR2003 because I liked the handling a lot more
I think that other one was the EA version. You picked wisely.
@@extragoogleaccount6061 Had to be if it was '06.
Me too. NASCAR 1 to 2003, and NASCAR Legends. Now I have the hard drive space to load them all. 😁
I still play indy 500 on the Bleu 3.5 floppy. I have won 3 times since I found it in a drawer in 1992. I am very proud of myself twice in the blue car if you know you.
The original nascar racing on pc (probably 1998) was so much fun. It had an official paint work editor which was rare without freeware mods in those days. I turned the field into BTCC cars using basically ms paint 😂
I used to do that as well!! Great minds think alike
NR2003 is not only the greatest NASCAR game ever, but it’s the greatest Motorsports Game ever!
You can race as any car at any track at anytime for free when you download it instead of spending money on iRacing.
I just need to know how I can actually play the game :/
That Dr John Campbell has let himself go😂
For me the thing that I liked about this game was the blowover physics, nascar games made by ea never had this, I would watch nr2003 crash compilations all the time, especially ones featuring blowovers, the physics of crashes seemed so realistic, like something you would actually see in real life nascar. They went hand in hand with nascar and racing crash compilations which were set to music and just so epic to watch. This was the early days of TH-cam around 2007 and I would spend hours watching nr2003 blowovers and other realistic looking crashes that imitated the real life racing crash compilations that populated TH-cam at the time. Modern games just have such unrealistic crashes. So that’s just what drew me to nr2003, and just for perspective, I didn’t actually play nr2003 until about 2010 or so and it still is my favorite nascar game of all time. I don’t know, does anyone else relate to this take at all?
Totally miss the GTP mod. We had full servers racing a couple of nights a week. Still may be the best time I have
ever had in Sim Racing.
What was the GTP mod? Sorry if its a dumb question.
@@extragoogleaccount6061 It had the cars from the old IMSA GTP Series, like the Sauber C9. It also had the Mazda 787B, Toyota, and Jag prototypes. It was awesome.
20 years, eh? Good thing that car on pole has the right sponsor, then
I loved the Papyrus NASCAR games. Everything EA touches ends up turning to shit in the name of profits.
EAs Nascar SimRacing from 2005 was quite decent though, have many childhood memories from that game.