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NASCAR Racing 3: The Sim That Never Was

As a direct ancestor of iRacing, the ‘Grand Prix Legends engine’ had multiple stock car racing false starts, before eventually releasing as NASCAR Racing 4. The original NASCAR 3, cancelled and replaced by one that used NASCAR 2’s engine, is barely remembered.

Game DatabaseRSC contains a database of 153 developers, 463 software titles, 374 cars, 42 bikes, 242 tracks and more...
25 software titles indexed starting from 1989.

Originally known as Papyrus Design, the legendary Massachusetts-based software studio developed highly-regarded simulation titles and published with Electronic Arts, Virgin Interactive and Sierra before their shutdown by Vivendi, owners of Sierra, in 2004.

Co-founded by arguably the father of the modern racing simulation, David Kaemmer, the studio created NASCAR and IndyCar titles that consistently pushed the genre forwards.

Their groundbreaking Grand Prix Legends game engine was used in three NASCAR titles between 2001-2003, evolving to become iRacing after Kaemmer re-acquired former Papyrus assets for his new company.

RSC Podcast RSC Podcast Episode 7 – Management Simulations, F1 Managers, Always Used To Be Better?

Join Jon Denton, Tim Wheatley, Simon Croft and guest(s) as they discuss sim racing and racing games past, present and future.

#OnThisDay

Sim racing historic databaseRSC contains a database of news items. Our #OnThisDay page shows current day and current week of years past...
Sim racing video databaseRSC contains a database of videos back to the 1980s catalogued as intros, laps, trailers, unboxings and more...

Laps + More

1985

Ralt RT3-84 + More

Revs

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Play retro racing games in your browser and on mobileRSC contains a database of emulated software you can play in your browser...
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Back from the ashes since July, 2019. First created in 2001 with the merger of Legends Central (founded 1999) and simracing.dk.

A site by a sort of sim racer, for sim racers, about racing sims. News and information on both modern and historic sim racing software titles.

All products and licenses property of their respective owners. Some links on this Web site pay RSC a commission or credit. Advertising does not equal endorsement.
You can email Tim Wheatley directly at tim@racesimcentral.net or send a message on social media (response times on socials will vary).

Hosted Archives

Web Archive

2022

SimRacing Mirror Zone

SRMZ formed around 2003 and grew from the RSC forums Grand Prix Legends community due to the hosting failures suffered there. This community kept Grand Prix Legends very much alive. You can search the SRMZ archives here.

Web Archive

2021

VirtualR.net

VirtualR formed in 2007 and became the leading news source for sim racing. After a couple of false restarts and a news post as recent as 2021 the site finally went offline completely. You can search the VRnet archives here.

Web Archive

2020

Copa Petrobas de Marcas

Although the game remains available for download via Steam, Reiza’s free to play Game Copa Petrobras de Marcas Web site went offline in 2020.

Web Archive

2013

Race Sim Central (Currently Offline)

RSC, for this period under the control of SimRaceWay developer Ignite GT, posted a significant amount of important news between 2010-2013 that is available in this archive.

Web Archive

2010

Blackhole Motorsports

Founded in 1998 and initially operated as a sim racing team Web site, BHMS became a mainstay of the sim racing community with news, reviews, files, forums and more. Search the BHMS archives here.

Web Archive

2009

Image Space Incorporated

This ISI Web site was created before rFactor and includes some really nice company information and images. Downloadables include technical demos.

Web Archive

2009

Rec.Autos.Simulators Newsgroup

RAS is an unmoderated usenet newsgroup that was created on November 30, 1993. The topics begin with discussion of IndyCar Racing (1993), F1GP (1992) and end with users trying iRacing (2008) for the first time. You can search the archive here.

Web Archive

2008

iRacing.com

After dropping FIRST-Racing branding, iRacing’s first Web site contained a great amount of information on early sponsorships, licenses and technology.

Web Archive

2007

GT Legends Product Page

SIMBIN’s GT Legends Web site carried previews, downloads and linked to product reviews by media outlets. It originally included a number of Flash-based animated advertisements for branded merchandise.

Web Archive

2007

rFactor.net Product Site

ISI’s rFactor.net Web site, founded in 2004, offers a complete archive from first public demo up to the time development of rFactor 2 began.

Web Archive

2005

Richard Burns Rally Product Page

Almost entirely designed using Flash, we have converted the available SWF files of the RBR Web site to GIF and retained their functionality where possible.

Web Archive

2005

GPLEA

The Grand Prix Legends Editors Association Web site released and hosted the real “must have” mods for Grand Prix Legends, including the Murasama and Coventry-replacing Honda and Cooper cars.

Web Archive

2005

FIRST-Racing

Founded in June, 2004 by John Henry and David Kaemmer with the acquisition of Papyrus assets, FIRST would eventually become iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations.

Web Archive

2004

Hotgrids

The “Ultimate GPL Links Page” was a great resource to find news and downloads for Grand Prix Legends and other simulations from the time. The archive links to archive.org and in some cases you may need to alter to an earlier date to find a working Web site.

Web Archive

2004

Race Sim Central (Currently Offline)

At this point RSC still used a HTML front-end for all content with the forum hooked in via SSI as a commenting system. A large number of the articles and interviews can be accessed in this archive.

Web Archive

2003

Papyrus Racing Games

Papyrus Web site after the release of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, it’s patches and Track Pack. No further updates were ever made before it was taken offline.

Web Archive

2001

Blackhole Motorsports

Founded in 1998 and initially operated as a sim racing team Web site, BHMS became a mainstay of the sim racing community with news, reviews, files, forums and more. Search the BHMS archives here.

Web Archive

2001

Bethesda Softworks

Better known today for their open world fantasy games, Bethesda released a number of racing games during the 90s and were planning to continue in the genre until the Zenimax purchase.

Web Archive

2000

Broadsword Interactive

Broadsword worked on a number of racing titles but are best known for leading development of Spirit of Speed 1937.

Web Archive

2000

Papyrus Design

Papyrus Web site before releasing NASCAR Racing 4. Includes profiles and downloads for titles released in 1998 and 2000 including NASCAR Racing 3 and NASCAR Legends.

Web Archive

2000

Software Allies

Software Allies developed and released SODA Off Road Racing and worked under the Papyrus studio banner many times.

Web Archive

2000

GP500 Web site

The official Web site for bike simulation GP500 developed by Melbourne House and released in 1999 by Microprose.

Web Archive

2000

Sports Car GT EA Product Page

EA’s product page for Sports Car GT unfortunately used un-archived Flash files for information display and the archived non-Flash version is much more simplistic. However, you can still see the headline information as it was displayed.

Web Archive

1999

Lights Out Racing

LOR were a sim racing team and league site that had some terrific track and driving guides, modern grid mods for Grand Prix Legends and more.

 
 
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