Grand Prix Legends Re-releasing Under Sierra Originals Label Next Month

Havas Interactive, the new owners of Sierra, announced today that Grand Prix Legends will be released on the Sierra Originals label on March 10, 2000.

Press release:

BACK ON THE STARTING GRID

February 17th 2000: Once again, Sierra is looking back to the year 1967, when daring drivers throughout the Grand Prix circuit took their primitive-yet-powerful machines to the streets and tracks of the world in the most dangerous racing season there has ever been. Sierra is giving a new breed of racing simulation fans another chance to experience that historic Grand Prix season through the re-release of Grand Prix Legends on the Sierra Originals label.

Grand Prix Legends, developed by the award-winning Papyrus Design Group, features the most realistic vehicle dynamics model available in a racing simulation. To complete the experience, Papyrus went to great lengths to re-create the historical tracks, drivers, teams and cars that made 1967 one of the most thrilling years in racing history.

“Grand Prix Legends set a new standard for racing simulations when it was first released in November 1998,” says Jon Sloan, General Manager, Games, of Havas Interactive UK. “It has been a constant point of reference for racing games released over the past year or so throughout the gaming community, particularly in the specialist press.”

Grand Prix Legends contains many revolutionary features; the physics model gives extremely realistic race conditions, allowing the cars to drift, ‘catch air’ and interact more realistically with the environment than ever before in a racing simulation. The enhanced artificial intelligence gives a more competitive racing environment and offers native 3Dfx and Rendition graphic accelerator support.

Papyrus has faithfully re-created the experience of 1967 Grand Prix racing, when safety regulations were much less stringent than they are today. The game’s designers went to extraordinary lengths to meet the specifications of the original tracks, in many cases unearthing the original blueprints. The tracks of 1967 were sometimes no more than country roads, where spectators lined the shoulders as the classic racing machines roared by. Some of the legendary tracks included in Grand Prix Legends are Nurburgring, Monaco, the historic Spa and Zandvoort.

Similarly, cars were less technically advanced in 1967, and Grand Prix Legends re-creates these cars as they existed in this ‘golden era of racing’. Papyrus worked with some of the original car designers to ensure that the cars in the game look and perform as authentically as possible. Grand Prix Legends also features drivers from the era, including Jack Brabham, Jim Clark and Graham Hill, and authentic teams such as Lotus, Ferrari, Brabham and BRM.

Grand Prix Legends will be available from Friday March 10th on PC CD-ROM. Further information is available from the Sierra website (www.sierra-online.co.uk).

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Note to editors: Sierra is a brand of Havas Interactive. Havas Interactive is a global leader in interactive content. It is the second largest publisher of entertainment software for PCs and the second largest publisher of educational software. Its various divisions – Blizzard, Coktel, Knowledge Adventure, Sierra, Won.net – are famous for releasing critically acclaimed and award winning titles. It has operations in the US and in Europe. It is a subsidiary of Havas, world leader in print and electronic publishing, itself part of Vivendi Communication.