- 10,007
- Upside-down in the final corner
- rallymorten
Small collage of pre-"split" (and arguably the most memorable) SimBin titles, featuring GT Legends, the GTR series and the RACE series.
News Log:
February 5, 2017 - A bunch of NSFW material if you're a fan of racing games
February 1, 2017 - GTR 3 confirmed for 2018 release
October 11, 2016 - SimBin is reborn
Seeing as this doesn't really fit in the RaceRoom section (yet?), I'll just put this here. Should the moderators feel different about this or feel like this should've never been a thread, well, you're the moderators and can do moderator things.
In case you haven't heard yet, SimBin has pulled off the greatest "rising from the grave" by reanimating in the month of Spooktober of 2016. Although there's already been a news article on what's new (including multi-platform games), I'll sum up the history as briefly and yet detailed as I can (and correct a few errors), because it gets a little complicated towards the end:
- Early 2000s - SimBin starts as modding team for F1 2002 by releasing a 2002 FIA GT mod.
- 2003 - SimBin is properly formed as a developer. Klaus Wohlfart is CEO, Johan and Henrik Roos (yes, the guy with the red and white Oreca-esque GT-class Viper) as well as someone by the name of Ian Bell are co-founders.
- 2005 - GTR - FIA GT Racing Game is released, featuring the 2003 FIA GT Championship, including Spa 24 Hours, which, because dynamic daytime transitions wasn't a thing, meant the game had to pause and load the next time of day (four versions, covering morning, afternoon, evening and night)
- Later in 2005 - The team behind GTR, lead by a certain Ian Bell, establishes Blimey! Games, which becomes the core development team for future SimBin titles, mainly the GTR series.
- Later in 2005 - GT Legends is released, featuring the FIA Historic Racing Championship for racing cars of the 60's and 70's, including Ford GT40, Lotus Cortina and the Austin Mini.
- 2006 - GTR 2 - FIA GT Racing Game is released, featuring the 2003 and 2004 FIA GT Championship, featuring dynamic weather and daytime transition on all tracks. Given its features and relatively simple internal system, this has become one of the most popular games to mod, and pretty much every other SimBin title has been converted to GTR 2.
- Later in 2006 - RACE - The Official WTCC game is released.
- 2007 - RACE 07 - The Official WTCC game is released. It goes on to tie RaceRoom (as of October 2016) for featuring the largest amount of expansion packs in a SimBin title. GTR Evolution, STCC - The Game and Formula RaceRoom, just to name a few.
- 2008 - Ian Bell founds Slightly Mad Studios.
- 2008 - 10Tacle, who published the GTR series, enters insolvency.
- January, 2009 - As a result of the above, Blimey! Games goes into administration.
- A few days later - Slighty Mad Studios acquires the business and assets of Blimey! Games. Thus the majority of the GTR development team is now at SMS and goes on to release Need For Speed: Shift that same year, with Shift 2 and Project CARS releasing in later years. We won't focus on them since they no longer carry the SimBin name.
- 2009 - Volvo - The Game is released as freeware for PC.
- 2012 - The remaining part of SimBin releases the Free-2-Play title RaceRoom Racing Experience.
- 2014 - SimBin changes name to Sector3 Studios, due to the SimBin name being contractually tied to the location while the team wanted to move out.
- 2016 - The name SimBin is apparently no longer tied to a location and is thus reacquired by Sector3 Studios.
Ian Bell plays himself a few times
As mentioned above, the team that developed the GTR series is now the team developing Project CARS and its successor, so a proper GTR sequel seems unlikely. Rebooting the RACE franchise is a possibility, with either the WTCC or TCR championships - but then what? Granted, especially TCR has a lot of regional series and is a popular addition in endurance events such as the Nürburgring 24 Hours, but it's still only one category of cars, and that probably wouldn't last long in the modern world of games.
What seems most likely then is continued development of R3E (which, as described above, they do still own) or a successor, either as a F2P or "bundle-game". Maybe a RaceRoom bundle?
Either way, I'll be following this with the greatest interest. I don't remember when I got it, but the GTR series (particularly GTR 2) has been to my teens what Gran Turismo 2 and Need For Speed 3 was to my childhood, to the point where I can't remember life without it being installed. I do feel like it's too much of a coincidence that GTR 2 had it's 10th anniversary just last week..
Last edited:
