NASCAR Racing 2002 Season Goes Gold For Mac

Surprise! Westlake Interactive today announced not only that they are working on a version of NR2002 for Mac (10.5 Power PC only), but that it’s already gone gold (meaning production has begun on duplicating CDs). Aspyr will publish, and have listed the minimum system requirements as follows:

Preliminary System Requirements (These may change before the game’s release):

Mac OS X only
256MB of Memory
G4 processor at 733 MHz or faster (Dual Processors supported, 500Mhz x2 or above)
4X CD-ROM (16X recommended)
Hard Drive, with 665 MB minimum free space
3D Graphic Acceleration or better ((ATI Radeon/NVidia GeForce2 or faster)

Multiplayer Requirements:

Internet and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported
Internet play requires a 56 Kbps or faster

Here is the Westlake announcement:

NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season Goes Gold (December 4)

750 Horsepower.
3400 Pounds.
Fender to Fender.

Is there any better way to describe one of the most exciting and popular sports going today?

Westlake Interactive is very excited to announce that NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season for Mac OS X has gone Gold Master. The software is currently in duplication and is racing to store shelves just in time for the holidays.

NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season was originally developed for the PC by Papyrus Software and published by Sierra. The PC version has received numerous accolades from both gaming and automotive publications. The Mac version will be a real treat for racing fans and gamers alike. The software is AltiVec™ accelerated for PowerMac G4 owners and will be one of the first applications to support force feedback control under Mac OS X via compatible steering wheels.

Westlake programmer Duane Johnson had this to say about NASCAR® 2002: “NASCAR has been the most challenging, but also most rewarding game I’ve done. Porting the physics engine was especially difficult since the PC version has an on the fly assembler that required I rewrite the engine in C & AltiVec. It was also very cool getting to be the first game with force feedback; I think it makes the driving come alive.”

The Mac version of NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season has been in development and under wraps for several months. We previously listed it as project “Finest Hour” — a reference to Winston Churchill’s famous Battle of Britain speech. The Winston Cup is NASCAR®’s top honor.