Hello everyone,
Oh wow, Headline analyser actually likes that one. It’s a widget that tells me what it thinks of the post title that my brain semi randomly stumbles upon. Usually it’s in the range of 30 to 40 out of 100. You know, make you feel better about avoiding clickbaiting. It’s saying 65 today. It still thinks I need to add in some uncommon words, emotional words and power words.
(What’s a power word ?)
And does it count as digressing if you never started on the point to begin with ? Here’s what was behind the door today.
Actual pod racer today. Which meant it was time to talk … racing games …
That’s Revs, a game that came out in 1984 for the BBC Micro made by none other than Geoff Crammond. Yep. The one that next went on to work on the first F1GP game by Microprose. Not sure if that got continued on to become the F1 games we have today but Revs was an excellent start. It was a game simulating a Formula 3 car and when it came out, only the original Silverstone layout was available. It was later expanded to include Snetterton, Oulton Park, Brands Hatch and an older Donington park layout.
And it was a cracking game too, although with the amount of practice we got, we were far faster than the computer drivers. As you’ll see in the picture, it was very much limited to the graphics of the day but those graphics worked extremely well.
It had some weird tricks too to make that work. The old BBC had 8 display modes and I think that’s using 2 of those at the same time. This is from the days when computer memory was measured in kBytes …
The other game of the day is approaching becoming my most played game on Steam. It’s …
Of course I had to choose the Dragon team first. This is from the very earliest days of the game on PC, before custom teams were made available. Oh ! I forgot to name it, this is Motorsport Manager. I’d been bouncing through a few racing games but none of them held the attention. Let’s see … from the picture :
Grand Prix Manager 2 – nicely detailed … too detailed. If you have to select individual gear ratios and there’s no help from the game for set up, then the detail has gone too far. That said though, Grand Prix Manager and GPM 2 were the benchmark games in this genre for a very long time surpassing :
F1 Manager – I have no memory of this. It may have been so bad my brain deleted it.
Grand Prix World – this one came along in 1999 as a sequel to the Grand Prix Manager games. It was pretty good to start with, although it did have more than its fair share of bugs. It had the usual problem of Formula 1, that of a lack of overtaking. If you set up the cars for high top speed, the rear wing would fall off (known bug). The sponsorship amounts would also be static while team costs increased, so there was a finite amount of time one could run a team for.
Back to Motorsport Manager. It started with the Formula 1 style single seaters, with those going across all conditions, whether that be rain or shine, hot or cold. Whoever managers the drivers and tactics better wins the race. One of the reasons why I like this game so much is that good tactics work, bad decisions get punished. My number 2 driver there, Maduka, had tyres that were near the critical point and would have started losing seconds per lap if they’d degraded further. Like Barth being overtaken before the line, losing 3rd place.
The locations owe a lot to real life tracks too, although suitably altered for licensing purposes. The above track was the “Milan” track, which looks suspiciously similar to Monza. There’s a Guildford track, Black Sea (Sochi) track, the Rio de Janeiro track turns right instead of left at the start and there are analogues to Nurburgring and Spa too.
The tracks don’t matter that much though, outside of emphasising different parts of the cars.
The game was expanded later with downloadable content expansions covering GT cars …
And Endurance racing that could go up to 6 hours long for a race. (Lots of fast forwarding).
Some seasons go better than others … (This would be at the start of my current campaign when the cars and factory is rubbish !)
There are a few issues with the AI though, which can make the races a bit easier. They don’t handle the changeover between wet and dry well, which can lead to situations like :
There’s my two drivers on the dry tyres for the first three laps of the race, making a gap big enough to make a stop for wet tyres. And in the meantime, the computer cars tyres have all been wearing out fast in the dry.
That wet / dry issue is the only issue I have with this game though. Apart from that, amazing game. If you’re interested in a racing management game where you watch the races and occasionally intervene at key moments, this is perfect.
(The limited interaction is also great for my hands).
One last pic ?
There’s a comprehensive livery editor in there as well where you, yes you too, can create cars that will make the scrutineers shout NO ! OFF MY RACE TRACK !
Stay safe, be well everyone.