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?
Better known today as the developer of Skyrim and Fallout, Bethesda once had a well-respected racing game franchise and were deep into development of a licensed Skip Barber Racing title that never released.
NASCAR Racing, followed up two years later by its sequel, NASCAR Racing 2, is a 1994 racing video game by Papyrus Design Group.
The game simulated the 1994 NASCAR Winston Cup. It featured many drivers, Gen-4 chassis (Ford Thunderbird, Chevy Lumina, Pontiac Grand Prix) and both Hoosier and Goodyear tires.
Nine tracks were included that could be raced individually or as part of a championship season. A subsequent expansion pack added a further seven tracks, but neither Daytona or Indianapolis were ever released.
Versions
NASCAR Racing was released for PC on 3.5″ Floppy with a separate addon pack, CD-ROM combined in various versions, and also as hardware accelerated builds for Matrox Millennium, NVIDIA NV1 and 3D Blaster VL Bus graphics cards. It was also bundled with a lot of early hardware including wheels, pedals and gamepads.
The Mac version, released in 1996 for Power PC Macs, included an updated 1996 carset as well as a number of other exclusive features such as voice commands, replay export to Quicktime MP4 and an uncapped framerate.