Your jaw-dropping moments in race-gaming history?

not sure Chris, i raced on other servers once in a blue moon but almost exclusively on Steering Wheel's server.

i'm proud to say that even back then i was giving dedicated servers the cold shoulder

 

Those were the days. Full 28 car grids on the TC65+ server. Great battles with Alfa GTAs and Lotus Cortinas in my blue Ford Mustang. Memorable names like Joni Jurmu (a super fast keyboard driver), and "The Legend of Akihabara" (Takumi Fujiwara) before he was banned from the Gamers Crib servers for modifying the performance of his Mini! A Lotus Cortina doing 1:33s at Dijon Prenois, even though the driver was crap. Five lap races at Mondello Park Short that were over in less than four minutes. Wielding the ban hammer with effortless grace as misguided idiots went on a wrecking spree. Leading a race at Magny Cours GP in a Ford Falcon until I binned it at the final corner.

Happy memories

 

One of my jaw dropping moments was on gran tourismo (i forget which one) I finally nailed the weight transfer on the dodge viper going up that virtual hill to get a gold medal.

The Nissan primera btcc same game I think in an endurance race. After toca this was a divine experience for me.

Reverse parking an artic on Euro truck SIM in one go with a wheel was also quite memorable lol.

 

Apologies for quoting one of my own comments, but this was one of the features of the Gamers Crib GT Legends TC65+ server that I really liked. Five lap races, 10 minute qualifying sessions, no practice session, and steady track rotation resulted in lots of races in quick succession. I would love to see this in Assetto Corsa. I assume that track rotation is on the cards for a future update? Some people prefer longer races and practice/qualifying sessions, but I just want to have as many races as possible in the shortest (sensible) amount of time. Five laps at Mondello Park Short might sound ridiculous, but it was fast, frantic fun! Anyway, it was offset by five laps at Spa.

If track rotation is added to Assetto Corsa, I would like to try and recreate that "TC65+" feel over at Gamers Crib. The added benefit for me would be that I would almost certainly be able to obtain "admin" status, and therefore have the power to kick the idiots.

I would have to think very carefully about which cars would be added, but different sets of reasonably competitive road cars would definitely be on the agenda.

 

Long post alert!

My first ever racing game I played was the Grand prix circuit by accolaide:

That intro music is burned into my mind... But that really gave me the spark about racing games. I played that game a lot on my friends house. Later on when I got my first console (8bit nintendo) I mainly bought (or made my parents buy) car games. Ever since then I've not just been a fan of racing games and later sims but also critic.

There really weren't many great racing games for nes. But there were games like Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off Road, bigfoot and rc pro-am 2. But also loads of other great games. I still miss that I never got to try the rad racer which I saw in many nintendo brochures but my local gameshop never had it.

So a decade later (1996ish) after playing all kinds of racing games I got psx and the need for speed. It felt like another step to right direction. Amazing fun on 2 player mode. But the real killer was the first gran turismo. It just had all the things I wanted. Great selection of cars, tuning and career mode. I just spent hours and hours playing that thing. Lots of races in split screen mode. Learning to drive all kinds of cars. All the way from low powered tiny cars to 900hp awd mitsubishi gtos and rwd supras. Such a leap forwards!

Then I got my first pc and also got viper racing and sportscar gt. Both kinda nice games but each also had their faults. Scgt had the grip issues which would plague all future isi sims until somewhere 2007 when finally real values were used for tires with proper falloff of grip at higher slip angles. But in the meantime this totally killed several games for me between 1999-2007. But scgt had loads of mods too. I remember some finn called mika hirvonen who made loads of mod cars for that game.

Viper racing was fun racing game and had what I've been hoping for a long time. Proper career mode where you can earn and buy upgrades and physics which are fun to drive.

But somewhere in the 1999 I also bought a wheel. The demo that made me do it was:

Grand prix legends! This was amazing. When I read forums I see people complainig about how hard it is to drive these cars but for me it was amazing. Definitely easier than the sportscar gt for example where you'd autospin everytime you tried to slide the car more than 5 degrees or so. With gpl for the first time almost ever you could slide the cars. After just 15 minutes with the demo I had to get a wheel. Microsoft sidewinder non-ffb wheel was what I got. For me gpl was never difficult in the same sense as all the isi games. Of course gpl was demanding to drive but it was predictable.

Gpl was my number one sim for a lot of time. I kept trying all the newer games and sims but at that period of time almost all of them suffered from the icy spins issue at higher slip angles. The first sportscar mod made for f1 2000 (by the original simbin group before they started their company I think) was a huge blow for me. I was just gigantic sportscar fan at the time and would have paid fortunes to get a good sportscar racing game without the faults of sportscar gt. But the physics were just unplayable for me. Any slide was just crash. I tried the porsches around monaco and every atttempt to rotate the car into corners ended me facing backwards. Countersteering did nothing.

I even started to wonder whether I should just stop sim racing if it is this difficult to just keep the car from spinning. But in gpl I was able to slide the car. Are (or were) the modern sportscars so difficult to drive? New games were released but I played gpl. I tried all of them and was mostly disappointed with the same issues.

Then came lfs. I did not really like the S1 but in 2005 when the S2 was released it was amazing. Lot's of innovative features. First racing sim you had to buy "from the internet", online skin sharing, visual tire deformation and solid playability. But at the time the physics was what set it apart. Lfs was finally the game that slowly pulled me away from gpl. It also had gt cars kinda so I played those a lot at first but later found my true love in road cars. Stuff like lx4 and lx6, the fz50 were just great fun to throw around. Lfs was also the game that transformed me from offline player to playing online.

After that I played some nkpro and kept trying new demos only to find that the tire issue still persisted. Some honorary mentions go to driver's repulic which had a short open beta but was closed down soon as eero piitulainen was snatched by simbin I think. There was also that oddish japanese nissan silvia game. And of course nbike. And of course racing legends. I'll wait it!

Then rf1 finally started to come alive years after its release. Niels Heusinkveld started doing his mods and suddenly it was proven that the physics engine was indeed very capable. Just use realistic tire data and the icy spins vanish. His corvettes, supras, nsxes and later the historix mod were and still are just amazing fun to drive. If only gtr, gtr2 and gtl had used realistic tire data and I would have been isi fanboi for life.

Then came iracing. It drove a bit like gpl/n2k3 at first but also didn't. It was definitely a step forwards though but it also turned out that the kind of scheduled racing concept was not for me personally. Just one race per hour is not enough for me. I liked driving the skippy but the car selection was not really to my tastes. The track selection then and now is still insanely good.

So at this point I became a bit burned out and did less and less sim racing. There wasn't anything new coming. So I decided to try the consoles. Bought ps3 and xb360 along with gt5 and forza 3. Out of those games forza was the better game but gt5 was the better "sim". It wasn't really a sim but it was much better suited to be driven with a wheel and the online portion of gt5 was just trillion times better than forza's horrible wreckfest. And the latter even did cost money whereas the online in gt was free. Anyways played loads of gt5. Online was very good at times and with an active host willing to kick the idiots the racing was sometimes super close and competitive. Also did loads and loads of laps in nordschleife. Forza also had some steering issues (lag and unlinearity and speed sensitiveness which was actually a big deal for me)

Then came rf2. A bit disappointing at first but nowadays it is a great sim. Then assetto corsa. After trying the tech preview I liked it from the first moment. Did not buy it until mp was added. Great sim, needs more features though. For along time ac is the only game where I like to drive all kinds of cars. With most other games I mainly focus on road cars and trackday cars with not much downforce but in ac I found the gt cars very fun to drive along with the single seater which have never been my favourite.

So tl;dr:
Grand prix circuit
need for speed 1
gran turismo 1
Grand prix legends
Live for speed S2
rfactor (after 2007 and onwards)
gt5
Assetto corsa

 

Those Atari ST years...

My preferred game was African Raiders

 

I say.... Go for it.. I'd love to see your admin style . It'll certainly be a great place to race.

 

1. Stunt Car Racer for Amiga: Many hours at a friend
2. Mario Kart 64: First ever game I owned. First ever multiplayer
3. Need For Speed Underground: Brought me back to racing after a long period of flightsims (I was a weird kid). First wheel for this
4. Need For Speed Underground 2: Picked up interest into the car world as a whole through this. Still want a Infinty G35
5. Live For Speed S2: First long time game relationship 2007 till last summer, sloooww development killed it a little
6. Assetto Corsa: First sim after/next to LFS, and first serious modding attempts

Honourable mentions to the whole Gran Turismo franchise. Never owned a Playstation, but my cousins did, played the **** out of that game every time I was there

 

When AC was announced for consoles.