Miscellaneous Racing Simulations
and Games

Recommended
SODA Off-Road Racing
Dirt Track Racing
 
Acceptable
Powerslide
Monster Truck Madness 2
Midtown Madness
 
Not Recommended
-
 
Not Tested
-
 
Archive
Recommended

SODA Off-Road Racing (1997)

Developer: Papyrus
Publisher: Sierra
Predecessors: None
Descendants: None

SODA was developed by Shawn Nash, an independent contractor associated with Papyrus. Despite rumors, it did not contain any code from Grand Prix Legends and was not a preview of GPL.

Given this fact, SODA is a stunning achievement. It was perhaps the most advanced sim available at the time of its publication, and even in early 2000 its physics model is quite impressive, though its graphics seem crude in comparison with newer sims.

SODA also contained an innovative feature: a track editor which allowed users to create new tracks and to share them with other users. Many new tracks were created and distributed by SODA enthusiasts. To my knowledge, no other simulations have shipped with such an editor on the CD.

SODA was also the first sim that I'm aware of that contained a TCP/IP implementation. However, in the high-latency environment of the Internet, SODA suffers from many of the same problems which afflicted beta versions of GPL, and it's not really practical for online racing.

Unfortunately SODA was a commercial failure. Perhaps it would have been more successful had it been titled SCORE Off-Road Racing or Baja Racing. It quickly appeared in the discount racks.

Dirt Track Racing (1999)

Developer: Ratbag
Publisher: WizardWorks
Predecessors: Powerslide
Descendants: None

DTR is based on the same excellent graphical engine as Powerslide, although the real world of dirt track racing is perhaps somewhat more dreary than the fantasty world of Powerslide. DTR also seems to be more CPU-hungry.

DTR has a very good concept and its game design is quite good. The cars are fun to drive and their behavior is reasonably convincing.

My 7 year old nephew loves DTR. Had it come along a year earlier, I think the sim community would have been very impressed.

Acceptable

Powerslide (1998?)

Developer: Ratbag
Publisher: ?
Predecessors: Dirt Track Racing
Descendants: None

Powerslide is built on an amazingly efficient graphics engine which generates a gorgeous fantasy world. The cars are enormously forgiving and can be slid all over the place. I only tried the demo because I have no interest in fantasy racing games, but I was impressed with the technology. I think the team at Ratbag has potential!

Monster Truck Madness 2 (1998)

Developer: Terminal Reality
Publisher: Microsoft
Predecessors: Monster Truck Madness, CART Precision Racing
Descendants: None

MTM2 was derived the same game engine as CART Precision Racing, but it was much more successful, in my opinion. The physics engine seemed much more suited to monster trucks than Champcars.

MTM2 fascinated me for a few weeks. It had the first reasonable Internet implementation of any racing game I'd tried. This convinced me that racing on the Internet was possible, and helped motivate me to push for changes in GPL that eventually made the latter work quite well on the Internet.

Midtown Madness (1999)

Developer: ?
Publisher: Microsoft
Predecessors: ?
Descendants: None

Someone sent me a copy of Midtown Madness to preview. I tried it for a few days and found the implementation to be passable, but the concept didn't interest me much. I found the randomness of the traffic to be quite frustrating and gave up on it fairly quickly. My nephews liked it, though.