Shortly after the release of Grand Prix Legends the sim racing community looked forward to another title that promised to offer a similar insight into historic racing. Trans-Am Racing ’68-’72 ultimately never released, a victim of a publishers shady dealings, but as a part of my research I uncovered a VHS of a never-released trailer for the game. Watch the trailer and read about what sim racing missed out on.
Asobo, known today as the Microsoft Flight Simulator developer, created groundbreaking technology for large scale maps that was intended to be used in a high quality rally raid title. It was never released and ended up as FUEL, a post-apocalyptic open-world racing game. What happened?
NASCAR Racing 2 is a 1996 racing video game by Papyrus Design Group based on the NASCAR Winston Cup Series of the same year, with a later addon for the 1997 Busch Grand National Series. It featured many drivers, Gen-4 chassis and tracks from both series.
Papyrus developed this title and released multiple NASCAR-based video games with incremental changes up until their transition to the “GPL engine” used in NASCAR Racing 4.
Daytona, Indianapolis from the Cup schedule and Daytona, Vegas, Homestead from the Busch schedule were not officially available for this product.
1998
Papyrus presents the award-winning NASCAR® Racing 2, the finest NASCAR racing simulation in the world! Don’t believe us? Listen to the pros:
“Why am I so good at this? I’m in my basement, every weekend, playing NASCAR Racing 2!”
[spacer] — Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Busch Series driver
“It doesn’t get more realistic than this!”
[spacer] — Randy LaJoie, NASCAR driver
“Race NASCAR2 on the computer…!!!”
[spacer] — Bobby Labonte, NASCAR driver
[spacer] (exclamation points are his)
Race on 16 different tracks, all modeled after the real thing using official blueprints. Tracks include Bristol, Darlington, Talladega, Michigan, and more…!
Tracks
On release NASCAR Racing 2 included 16 tracks while the Busch Grand National Addon Pack included 12 more tracks.