BRGoF25 - 20 Years The Prototype

Welcome to BRGoF25, a look at the Best Racing Games of the First 25 years of the 21st century. A love letter to the titles that defined the genre during this time of immense growth in the industry, transcended boundaries and broke the glass ceiling to become the very best that video games had to offer.

Inspired by Giant Bomb polling their users on what they say is their 10 best games of the 21st century, this series of articles will focus on the racing games that, in my opinion, rubs shoulders with the giants in the industry that make up what GB's users submitted themselves. These are racing games that you should find a way to play for yourself, regardless of your gaming preferences.

"If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."

Four years is a long time to wait for a sequel to come out for any video game franchise, and is an eternity when it comes to licensed sports games. But that is what was asked of those who live and breathe NASCAR, with NASCAR 21: Ignition an absolute disaster after it was clear Motorsport Games, under their previous management, were a mile in over their head trying to get any source of income rolling in. It was clear they blew their one big shot, and after NASCAR Rivals came and went it would take another year before that downbeat nature that began to fester through the later NASCAR Heat titles would turn back to optimism.

That optimism would be paid back tenfold, as the iRacing Studios-developed NASCAR 25 was everything that a first crack at the license should be two years after it was announced that iRacing had acquired that console license. If you wanted a modern NASCAR experience that was fun to play, engaging, good to drive and race, and had a single player campaign worth investing time into, you got your wish. There is room to grow for future titles and plenty of time to remove the ai-generated spotter calls and staff portraits too, but that journey of growth will be one already traveled before. That journey resulted in a half decade of the very best licensed racing games consoles had ever seen to that point, and serves as the prototype that licensed racing games should follow for success. In particular, the third game of this run found the right balance in what it was trying to achieve, and cut to the chase before the games got larger, and the sport started to mess with it's own success.

Up next on my list of the Best Racing Games of the First 25 years of the 21st century: NASCAR Thunder 2004 on Playstation 2, Xbox, and on Windows PC.

In their previous two titles, EA Tiburon laid the foundation for this golden generation of NASCAR games before putting it all into a package that gave the player a reason to be invested come the Career Mode. Though similar in it's mechanics to the previous year's entry, moving away from the Career Mode existing in the same space as the main menu and creating scenes and environments was the change needed to bring it all together for the player. Instead of a development cap you were leveling up, you were buying parts and equipment to fill out your race shop. The reason your staff were able to better build and redevelop cars was made tangible, and believable; with your racecar now in the shop as you choose to repair or build engines and chassis and that equipment showing up in the scene. It was your name on the door, using parts and equipment you bought to develop NASCAR Cup Cars on your terms to go up against the best. All of this uniquely possible with NASCAR being one of a few series where the teams were in full control of the car they build and race within the rules, which has continued to be exploited in the best way through modern NASCAR titles. It's fantastic, and how a career mode should be with sponsor objectives funding your journey the entire way.

The big change mechanics-wise to the Career Mode is another significant element that puts stock car racing apart from it's European counterparts. Added in NASCAR Thunder 2004 was an allies and enemies system with the 42 other drivers you're racing with, with your actions directly dictating how they race with you. Do you work with the other drivers and share draft before being on your way? They'll remember that and give more leeway when racing, knowing that there is a natural ebb and flow when people can be quick over a tire run and that there is bigger fish to fry. But if you rough up other drivers, intentional or otherwise, things get ugly. They will block you, they will run you hard into the corners to try and pass, and just hip check you and try and run you off the road if they have an opening. They hate you.

Theses relationships you foster come and go as you progress through the seasons, but these rivalries and feuds existing with such physicality helped NASCAR grow through the 1990s into the 2000s; it helped bring NASCAR to prominence in the racing world in the best way. For the player, it's an added level of accomplishment when they come out on top in a season long showdown with the likes of Jeff Gordon which would be a focal point in EA Tiburon's NASCAR games to come. For a career mode that already had the perfect structure in place, all it needed was for the enviroment and racing itself to tell a story that made the player feel fully immersed in the world of the NASCAR Cup Series, with your driver be featured in the PRN commentary before and after races making it that little bit more intimate.

Oh, and you have a trophy room now to see the fruits of your labour too.

But NASCAR Thunder 2004 wasn't just a career mode that mastered how such a mode should be in a licensed racing game, it was the complete package when you just wanted to pick up and play or hone your skills. Speed Zone was a set of challenges set on refining your race craft, and building up your abilities on road courses while the returning Lightning Challenge scenarios create iconic set pieces for you to try and complete. There's Thunder Licenses too, which act similar to the Circuit Experience mode in Gran Turismo Sport and GT7: allowing you to learn the tracks and use one of the Cup Series drivers as a voiced mentor and their car to follow as you learn the tracks of the tour. And for 2003, it was the first NASCAR console game to have online competitive multiplayer which would have been an incredible experience for those who had the chance back in the day. Those servers have long gone away but the single player more than makes up for that, and there is still split-screen multiplayer too on offer. It's as full and as complete as a roster of modes there can and should be in such a racing game. It may be missing the additional national tours featured in future EA NASCAR titles, and the in-race teammate management from 06: Total Team Control, but that can be seen as having less clutter to deal with as you go on your journey in NT2004.

While the actual wheel to wheel racing is fantastic and the ai do a great job across all the track styles, your main conflict will be with the car your driving yourself. There is this slushy nature to small and slow speed inputs that can have you weaving back in fourth as you attempt to hold a line on a straightaway or on corner entry. It's paired with a chase camera that has it's rotational axis when you turn a little too high on the car at the same time which can exacerbate those issues. If you can't tame the car in that balance of tight and loose, you're a passenger and your car is going to slide into the wall in the middle of the corner, or you're pancaking the wall on the exit of the corner. But, there is this fantastic feeling when the car hooks up on the bigger tracks and you're not fighting your stock car on corner entry. In particular, Atlanta Motor Speedway is an absolute blast if you're able to nail the drive off of turn 2 and carry all that speed down the back straight. The big tracks you're going to thrive on, with survival on the short tracks and road courses the priority; a similar story for the EA Tiburon NASCAR games to come. But the racing on the big tracks, there's nothing quite like it.

Those future EA Tiburon NASCAR titles would keep the momentum building: expand the career mode and adding the Grand National Series, Truck Series and Featherlight Modifieds in the process to be the most comprehensive and complete sports titles that EA Sports was putting out during the era of the PS2, Xbox, and Nintendo Gamecube. But there is something about NASCAR Thunder 2004 in particular before EA Tiburon went all-in on expanding the scope of their NASCAR games. It's not that the following games are bloated, it's more that I appreciate that they were able to execute that more direct nature as good as they were able to and made as complete of a singular NASCAR Cup Series experience as possible to fit the demands of console gaming. The games that followed showed what was truly possible when a license gave a developer the flexibility to make the game they truly wanted, and the games that resulted is why many consider this to be the golden age of NASCAR video games.

That ball got rolling with the improvements made in NASCAR Thunder 2004, and being able to connect your achievements across all EA Sports titles made in 2003, and Madden 2005, with the revolutionary EA Bio system gave so much more reason to check out everything from a watershed year for EA Sports, with NT2004 near the very top of that roster. Twenty-plus years on, the foundations that made NASCAR Thunder 2004 great still ring true with NASCAR 25 doing those things the right way in it's wake, with the modern Codemasters F1 titles following in kind.

Up next on BRGoF25: We go from the consoles to PC and look at the game that is the new nostalgia, and still worthy of your track time.