And when you bought Expansion Module #2 for your ColecoVision...
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...you got Turbo:
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The only game I know of where you could race F1 cars in the snow...
Those old arcade racers were amazing. And of course I get it... it's all tongue in cheek when we discuss about them.
But I think generally it's crazy how big role nostalgia plays in people's preferred racing games.
There are still people who play GP4 and RF1. I played those games for years and when you get used to certain gameplay, the driving physics it kinda becomes "second nature". Then you can easily overlook the flaws.
Geoff Crammond games were amazing and they really revolutionized sim racing. But I went back to GP4 a while ago and went through all that trouble to get my Thrustmaster pedals working with it and all that. It's still okay but let's be honest... time has not been kind to the driving physics and the graphics. Same for RF1. No... those sims are NOT as good as the modern sims. You may like them but that doesn't change the fact that they're way outdated. Yeah GP4 ai is great... but let's face it... only because the AI is very bad on most hardcore sims. LMU has better ai though... AMS2 too. But they're not great, either.
RF2 and AC1 revolutionized sim racing to the current level where we are now. I never play RF2 these days as I hate everything about its interface and menus. It's just too horrible. But it drives well and the FFB is arguably one of the best. AC1 is what it is... still looks great and modern. So those games are timeless. Sim racing has not been able to take a step forward in 10 years. All this talk about "new and more advanced tyre models" is useless if the car doesn't feel as good as AC1. I haven't played iRacing for a while but I never liked the oversteer physics on that. AMS2 is just unplayable for me... I don't even want to go into that.
I still wonder how can we determine how "realistic" some physics are if we haven't driven those cars. I've driven kart in my youth quite a lot and I know how the open wheelers should drive. I mean fundamentally only of course... those are toy cars compared to real F1. But some
elements are the same. Being from Finland and spent my youth with cheap real wheel drive cars (Escort mkII and Capri 3.0 S) on ice surfaces and even ice tracks I know what oversteer means. Some Kunos cars like Nissan GT and modern Porsches drive amazingly well and realistic.
AC1 has some amazing F1 cars, like the RSS, even Lotus98T, VRC etc. I know they drive at least somewhat realistic and Max Verstappen has praised AC1 in many occasions how he trains F1 circuits with it.
Last three months I've played Codemasters F1 games almost endlessly because I wanted to play modern F1, which AC is not suited well for. And I've driven my vintage AC F1 seasons to death. I needed a break. When you watch the footage of 2020'ish era of F1 and you compare it to F12020 (the absolute pinnacle of this series) you'll see how amazingly close it looks. There's the feeling of tyre grip and downforce even through that relatively lifeless FFB. But it's extremely precise and driving that game is just pure pleasure. According to real F1 drivers that game drives the most realistically with TC medium. That game was developed under the supervision of the real F1 drives. Maybe that's why it's so good. Sure... compared to AC it's pretty easy to drive but you can add difficulty almost endlessly from the settings (not the case with AC when sometimes even 100 is not enough). The difficulty comes from AI speed, not that you have to fear of spinning all the time. Sure you spin sometimes when you make a mistake but you can trust the car and its enormous grip (which the real 2020 F1 cars actually had). You actually can concentrate on perfect racing lines which the real F1 drivers execute with insane consistency for 60 laps. Sure they are great drivers but even then
that would not be possible if the cars were as difficult to drive as some sims.
I bought F125 a few weeks ago and just finished a season with it. It's ok but not even close to F1 2020. 2020 driving and gameplay is so good that I doubt I'll ever try to play a AC F1 season (post 2010) again. There's just no way to get the superior AI, team radio, all the rules, safety cars, decent rain physics, and other modern F1 quirks to out sim.
My point? "Sim snobs" say that some Codemasters games don't drive as good as AC F1's. Sure anything post 2021 don't feel correct to me, either.... and 2022 was pure garbage. New ones are not that great. But how do we know that? Why do they keep saying that "they're too easy to drive"? How do they know? Most driving sims are purposefully made way too difficult and most pro drivers say that most of them have way too little grip. How can we determine what is actually realistic in those cars? We can't. Most people automatically assume that when it's difficult it's realistic, which is total bollocks.
Some people still praise Grand Prix Legends and said how "great" its physics are. When a real racing driver played GPL he said that it's not realistc at all... and there would be ZERO real drivers alive today if the actual driving was really
that difficult.
AC's modern RSS cars are probably the best driving open wheelers out there. But we can't make a proper full season with these cars. Too many variables and too many issues. I wish the AC modding gurus would concentrate on those issues. I mean who really cares about some additional eyecandy as AC with SOL/PURE whatever looks as good as any sim out there. Is it possible to improve the championship mode in Content Manager for example... with more options?
LMU's GT3 cars are the best I've driven. Not to say they're the most realistic because I've never driven a GT3 car. But I think the biggest determining factor is how enjoyable they are. ACC cars drive like trucks in comparison. I'm sure we have better driving GT3 cars on AC1 though... but there are some benefits of these purposefully built sims that concentrate on only one or two classes.
PMR driving video looks great. Can it become the "go to sim" for AC1 fans? It supports mods. But what kind of mods? Is there an open wheeler that we can use as a base? Does it support unlimited track modding like AC1? What kind of modern F1 rules can be implemented there? Can we modify the rules, the championships, etc? Or maybe it's just a bit polished Project Cars 2? Either way I will buy that of course. Very curious to see that after all the hype.
There are so many things that could have been very simple to add to AC1 relatively easily. Those would have made it the perfect sim. I just don't understand why Kunos never finished this game. As good as F12020 is it still suffers from varying AI difficulty on some tracks. You can win Austria left handed as the ai is so slow. With the same AI level the ai is murderously fast on Hungaroring. Why don't any driving games support the
individual track AI level settings? Stuff like that
must be relatively easy to do, coding wise. Why can't you modify the championship rules more? As much I don't like AMS2 driving it has the best season adjustments... by far. Why can't we define "engine failure and tyre failure possibility percentage" or slow pitstop screw-up percentage? Stuff like this. I could go on forever... I have a lot of ideas. We have a million car setting adjustments but fundamental realism stuff like this is completely overlooked. It's weird.
Sorry long post... I probably already said some of these things in my previous posts.... but I couldn't sleep so I typed in my thoughts again.