By @nascarcasm and Steve Luvender | Tuesday, March 31, 2020
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A way-back look at the finest NASCAR video game creations of all time, courtesy of NASCAR.com’s Steve Luvender and @nascarcasm.
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RICHARD PETTY’S TALLADEGA (1984)
All my Atari and Commodore 64 people, put your joysticks/paddles up! The original. The trailblazer. This game, in all of its 8-bit glory, was fun for its time. And as you can see by the graphic, the attention to detail to make it look like the actual Talladega Superspeedway was amazing, as Talladega Superspeedway is a road course that winds through neon-green hillsides.
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BILL ELLIOTT’S NASCAR CHALLENGE (1990)
Here’s where it all started: the original NASCAR PC video game. It had all the markings of an early ’90s video game, like glorious 8-bit graphics, a midi soundtrack, and laser-scanned replicas of real NASCAR race tracks that change dynamically with weather and tire wear conditions. Wait, no. Not that last one. Somehow, the iRacing notes got mixed in with the Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Challenge notes.
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DAYS OF THUNDER (1990)
This is on the list only because of the unwritten rule that “Days Of Thunder” has to be on every list we do. Now that that’s out of the way, the game was kind of, sort of not good. It only incorporated the racing element of the film. There was no level where you had to race a guy through a hospital on a wheelchair, or another where you had to use the directional pad on your controller to maneuver sugar packets around on Nicole Kidman’s upper thigh. Weak. Oh and apparently you receive telegrams. Yep, sponsor mad? Well, JUST like in real racing, the ol’ Western Union stagecoach comes rolling up to drop you off a TELEGRAM. Definitely not the best video game based on a Tom Cruise film, those being “Top Gun” the video game, and “Cocktail” the video game.
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DAYTONA USA (1993)
It’s been the gold standard of racing video games for nearly 30 years. It’s the recipient of many quarters from allowances as kids. It’s Daytona USA. It’s still fun to find Daytona USA in an arcade (so many of those these days) and take some laps in the Hornet. The premise was simple and it’s stood the test of time: Pass the cars and collect those time extensions.
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NASCAR RACING (1994)
Papyrus – terrible font, but they made one heck of a racing game for PCs. Around the time you were probably receiving countless AOL CDs in the mail came NASCAR Racing. It was a stunner – graphics and motion that were significantly more realistic than any predecessor, and even the capability to have multi-player games through something called a “LAN,” which you’ll probably have to Google if you’re, like, age 30 or younger.
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NASCAR RUMBLE (2000)
Sort of the “Talladega Nights” of NASCAR video games – not even within 100 country miles of accurate, but good, silly fun. Players raced everything from standard to ridiculously souped-up cars/trucks through insane road courses that made the Nurburgring look like the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru. Tracks had names like “Hog Hollow” and “Crawdad Crossing.” Want to knock your fellow competitor into a guardrail while a tornado chases you on track? Cool, you found the right place.
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NASCAR HEAT (2000)
One of the finest PC racing games was the original NASCAR Heat. It was one of the first NASCAR titles to offer cool features like FLIPS and DRAFTING and ALLEN BESTWICK. For real, though, the Allen Bestwick Beat the Heat challenges were a fun time. Earning Bestwick’s praise for a job well done was good enough to play NASCAR Heat over and over.
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NASCAR DIRT TO DAYTONA (2002)
If you mention NASCAR Dirt To Daytona to any dedicated gamer, you’ll probably get a favorable response – probably a series of thumbs-up emojis, or that animated GIF from “The Wolf Of Wall Street” with Leonardo DiCaprio clapping. This game allowed you to work your way up through the racing ranks, from local dirt tracks all the way to the NASCAR Cup Series. If you played it, you probably loved it.
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Ah, one of the most popular NASCAR racing games of all time — a game so popular it still has an active community of players, painters and modders. If the game play didn’t win you over, it was the sassy spotter that humiliated you for making mistakes. Or maybe the blow-overs. Or the YouTubers.
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NASCAR 2005: CHASE FOR THE CUP (2005)
The game begins by racing a Dodge Viper against Ryan Newman, and really, it doesn’t get any better than that. However, we’re not sure how many NASCAR careers start by racing other pro drivers on the street these days. NASCAR 2005 had one of the best video-game features of all time: the intimidate button. You could pull behind another car, press “Intimidate,” then the car ahead would somehow lose control and bobble out of line. It was revolutionary.
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NASCAR KART RACING (2009)
Who could forget the finest racing game for the Nintendo Wii? NASCAR Kart Racing featured 14 NASCAR drivers cartoonishly Wii-ified, plus karts resembling each driver’s NASCAR car but with fewer safety features like head restraints and roofs. We won’t even get into things like unlockable speed boosts and fictional off-road track portions we’ve been begging to add to real NASCAR races for years.
